Mark, pleasure to meet you.
Thank you. You too.
And this is a different kind of film to one I've seen you in, so what I liked about it
is you get to play quite a schlubby guy. It must be quite nice to go to work and be like
- the hair can be long.
Roll out of bed, just yeah. They need to make me look worse than I actually do, which is nice.
Yeah, you look much better.
Thank you.
You start off in the movie in this apartment, and I kind of thought... Is it a bit like
when you start off as an actor that you're really scrabbling around? You don't really
eat. You've got this mattress with the sheets coming off the thing.
Yeah. I'm familiar with that and being down like that and not knowing where you're headed
or when you're going to hit or where the paycheck's going to come from. You know, that is similar
to starting off as an actor. You just don't want to do it when you're in your mid-40s
like Dan's doing.
Yeah, yeah. Now there's a nice romance with Natalie in sort of the coming back from the
bottom type thing.
Yeah, that's a great storyline. Yup.
Is that part of it? Because this is kind of a different movie because it's a musical,
but it's not cheesy and it's not too trite or corny. It feels real, despite there being
these flights of fantasy in it.
Yeah, that was one of the things that I responded to in the script. I knew that because of Once,
and I love that film. I had a feeling that John was going to be able to do it in a way
that wasn't cheesy. You know, often times the romantic comedies that we see are neither
romantic nor are they very funny, and so I think this movie is actually pretty romantic
and actually is pretty funny, and so I did feel like when I read it, I felt like it was
a nice divergent take on that sort of genre, which is a genre that people love, but I think
I always look at it and go this can be done so much better. And I think he does it well.
You're the one guy that doesn't sing in the film.
Yes.
That must have been another reason.
Okay, I don't sing here. I don't sing. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. I'm not a singer. I was supposed to sing a Leonard Cohen song in the shower,
but we couldn't get the rights to it so that was the end of that.
Oh, is that the reason?
Yeah, I was going to sing Chelsea Hotel, which is not really singing at all, but um...
It's more of a mating call, a sort of whale call.
Yes, but that didn't work out, so we cut that.
Do you have a karaoke song?
No. Everyone...
Has everyone asked that?
Everyone has.
Have they?
It's so funny. I suppose we like the idea of thinking that you, Keira and James...
Went out and karaoked.
You were out in Manhattan, and you just have a few beers and you'll hit the karaoke bar.
No, we didn't. I think James would probably be fun to do that with. I can't see Keira
doing karaoke for some reason. Does she say she did it?
She didn't. No, no.
Has anyone done it?
I haven't met James yet.
He's probably done it.
I would also feel that with James, he's the guy that he's very larger than life, so he'll
busk, he'll sing, he'll dance. He would make me think, well I'm not going to do it. He's
going to make me look bad.
Yeah. He would be tough to do it, but he would be fun to watch, I'm sure. He's genius.
Yeah, Keira I imagine, she obviously prepared to sing in the movie, but she seemed like
she was it was something like okay I've done it now.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was there when we were recording all that stuff, and I could see
that was not... That was tough. That would be really tough to do.
But she did an amazing job. I don't think anyone realised that she had such a great
voice. I don't think she realised it.
Well I said in the screening room, there was a moment where you're going... You're looking
a little bit like okay here comes a Hollywood actress that's going to sing.
Yes, which can be disastrous. Yes.
And this kind of interesting, raspy sort of voice that suits her. It's authentic.
Totally authentic, yeah.
And you go phew. Okay. We're in safe hands.
Yeah, now we're along on the journey. That was kind of a defining moment, that moment
in the movie of are we going to like this movie or not?
Can you... There's a moment obviously where you hear her sing, and it changes your life.
I know you would have been asked this already as well, but is there a particular track that
you go back to that is either a pick me up or one that still gets the hairs on the back
of your neck going, even though you've heard it 100 times?
Um... Yeah, there's those... My brother who's passed away used to play a song that, an Elton
John song Daniel, and that always - it moves me. And there's a Coldplay song called The Scientist
that he gave me, he wanted me to hear before he passed away, and those two songs in particular
are pretty moving to me.
They always get you.
Yeah.
That's the beauty though of it, isn't it? It just gets you out of nowhere.
Yeah, it's pretty... music's an important part of our lives. Obviously.
Absolutely. Um, so what's coming up next for you? Are you jumping straight back into the
Marvel world, or is that all done?
I'm in that now. I'm shooting that now, and that's done in August, and then maybe Now
You See Me, but we're still sort of waiting on a script and a director for that.
-You're a busy guy. -Yeah.