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Tim Roth is an actor's actor, a British supporting actor in the 1980s with his star turns in THE HIT and THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, and HER LOVER. In the 1990s, a little film called RESERVOIR DOGS shot him into the stratusphere with his portrayal of Mr. Orange, the ill fated cop infiltrating a jewelry heist. He would receive an Oscar nomination for playing a villainous lord in ROB ROY and since then has been stealing scenes from Hollywood's elite while being critically hailed as one of the most versatile, diverse actors of our time. Roth has recently fulfilled a dream in portraying the lead in Francis Ford Coppola's YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, his first film in ten years. As the sensitive, brilliant linguistics professor Dominic Matei, Roth provides an engaging performance in flawlessly handling all of Matei's transformations, from a 70 year old man to a split personality that struggles between love and research. To promote YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH in New York, Roth took a few minutes out of his time to take part in a roundtable and also granted the Crypt a few minutes to discuss his latest films and his acting process in this Colonel's Crypt exclusive!!!
COLONEL'S CRYPT: How are you? TIM ROTH: I'm good. Fire away. CC: Were you always a fan of Francis Ford Coppola? TR: Funny you should mention that. When I was 15 or 16, I wrote a letter to Francis saying that I wanted to be an actor and star in his movies. The first day on set after I took the role of Dominic, Francis took the letter out of his pocket and showed it to me, so in a way I've come full circle. CC: So being a fan of Coppola is what attracted you to YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH? TR: When Francis started talking to me about it, he was talking about old movies, movies like GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, and the Alec Guinness movies, movies from that era that we both loved and we were also discussing the modern filmmaking philosophy. So that was that, and then I read the script and I found it impossible. I asked Francis "How are you going to film this," and it was that curiosity that led me to make this picture and go on this adventure in Romania. It was a wild experience. CC: How much improvisation were you given being that it is a film heavy with language? TR: We really weren't allowed to touch the dialogue, we were allowed freedom in other areas but that was kind of hands off. CC: Was that a challenge in making the film, learning all the different languages and dialogues? TR: Well the one thing that we had was we had time to get whatever we wanted. Francis financed it and wanted to be sure he had everything. It was fun but it was also very grueling. CC: Dominic starts off the film as a man of 70. Was that hard for you to pull off? TR: I found that to be very fit, it was definitely for me like old school theater in that performance. I felt Dominic was like Robert Moses. I used to go around Romania, talk to the locals, take pictures, see how they walk, and see what I liked and used it. I have a photograph of a guy and he's trying to find a pen in his pocket and he can't find it. I took interesting things like that and it was all old school acting definitely. I didn't think it was a big deal really with the aging thing because I had ample evidence of aging. From the first films I've done until now, I've seen myself age. What was interesting to me was making it effective on a physical level on what I would look like 25 years from now if I make it to that age. CC: Was it confusing on the days where you would play Dominic's doppelganger so to speak? TR: No although I wasn't quite sure who I would be playing on any given day. I would come in and say "Who am I playing?" and Francis wouldn't give me the whole specifics. But I thought that was kind of interesting because I wanted to see where he went with it, because I wasn't sure if he existed or not. I had to work where we would shoot the Dominic side, and then shoot the double side, and just focus on the monologues and break away at the same moments. I liked that. As an exercise for an actor, it was quite exhilarating to go through. CC: Did you find the subject matter of the film intriguing as you filmed it? TR: It's a little too complicated for me. Did he use subtitles in the film where Dominic speaks the language he made up? CC: Yes. TR: He did? I'm not sure if he had that translated while we were abroad shooting the film. I don't think that was the case there. I don't know how many of them made it into the film but I had to speak a lot of languages, I don't remember the exact count. Chinese I had to do, Mandarin I had to do, Egyptian I had to do, oh my gosh there were so many. For that I would try to find locals of each language, record them, and recite them phonetically. So it wasn't that I had to be fluent in each language CC: Was this the first feature you've acted in that was shot on High Definition? TR: Yes and I've been a snob about that until now. CC: Now that you've worked with High Definition, what were the benefits on set with the medium and would you work with it yourself in the future? TR: I think that for actors it's very useful. As far as cinematography goes, I wasn't sure if it would achieve the same effect as it would look on film. It is great in that aspect but when you start to use effects while using High Definition, I think that's when the medium starts to betray itself. It's beautifully lit in a lot of the shots that Francis did. For actors, it's very convenient to get the shots you need and you don't have to wait for the film stock to change, so that was great. I don't know if I'd shoot with it. I may. CC: You spent a lot of your downtime as an artist in other mediums as well? TR: I had studied sculpture and painting for a time, and created works. I don't do it now but I do wonder what would've happened if I went down that road. CC: Do you still paint? TR: No I don't. Now I take photographs. CC: Was your interest in painting introduced by your portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in VINCENT AND THEO? TR: That had to do somewhat with it. For a time, I had a truck driven by a painter who followed me around with all this equipment, these canvases and oils and the materials to sculpt. Whenever I went around on a film set, he would follow me and I would paint. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. CC: Coppola is known for changing the script while on set. Did that happen while filming YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH where he was literally tearing pages out of the script? TR: That happened even before we were shooting. The script would be changed daily and the dialogue would change many, many, many times. The structure was very meticulous as well and never really changed, to Francis it was all about structure. We had intense rehearsals and what I wound up doing was to find what was available to me at that time and work with it. CC: How was working with Francis on the set? TR: Oh he was fun. He was having a lot of fun on set, very energetic. He had more energy than all of us. Every day he would be like a young kid just having a ball. CC: Did the fact that this was Francis' first film in ten years add to the pressure and the attention that the film was going to receive? TR: Me I don't pay attention to that. I mean we talked about it on set. I think he found it fascinating. CC: What were the differences between shooting YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, where Francis had given some freedom with his shots, and your upcoming film FUNNY GAMES, where it is a shot for shot remake? TR: It was extraordinarily frustrating. I think Michael Haneke is terrific, but I found it infuriating that he was so insistent on that, in handling the film the way he did because he had done the exact same thing ten years before. I can see why, there's a value in it. I did not see the need to be that thorough. I haven't seen the film and I will never see it. I don't think he'll ever know what he could've really gotten. He'll never know. He's a good guy, the sweetest, gentlest fellow, but he'll never know the movie he could've had. It was frustrating. CC: Being that you've worked with so many legendary directors, are there any directors you' haven't worked with yet that you want to? TR: I don't know (laughs). I mean there's tons and tons of people out there, and remember there are a lot of them that haven't made a film yet. I am very eager to work with first time directors. CC: Being you are willing to work with first time directors, what are the factors you look for before accepting a role? TR: How I feed off the script, good plot, story, and if the cast is interesting. To be honest, I really don't have a plan to go about things. Maybe that is the plan, not to have one. I've made some great films so far but I've also made films that were crap. As long as it's a smart script and the director knows what he wants, I'm interested. CC: What was your initial reaction to seeing YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH? TR: I don't watch my films but with this film I am making an exception because it was Francis. I really do cringe when I see myself on screen. You can't watch yourself on screen because you bring yourself back to the performance and you nitpick certain elements. I try not to go "I should've done it this way," or "I should've done it that way." I leave that to the film. I don't have any regrets. I just don't like seeing myself on the screen. When you're acting, you're in the moment. That moment is delivering the dialogue in front of the camera, not on a big screen. CC: Did you ever get the letter back from Francis? TR: No I never got it back. That's his. CC: Thanks Tim. TR: Thank you. (Special thanks to Jeff Hill at International House of Publicity and to Heidi Martinuzzi at Pretty-Scary.net) |
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