As I’ve been posting the Hollywood Reporter‘s Oscar season roundtable conversations it was pointed out yesterday I actually missed the first one featuring six of this year’s contending actors — Jake Gyllenhaal (Prisoners), Forest Whitaker (Lee Daniels’ The Butler), Matthew McConaughey (Mud, Dallas Buyers Club), Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club), Josh Brolin (Oldboy) and Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station). So, I’ve decided to remedy the oversight today.
What instantly caught my attention were Leto’s comments talking about auditioning for Terrence Malick‘s The Thin Red Line:
Oh yeah. I’ve talked myself out of auditions a hundred times. I auditioned for [Robert] De Niro seven times, years and years ago. I remember auditioning for Terrence Malick, and the casting director upended a couch, and we were supposed to hide behind it and shoot imaginary guns! [Laughter.] In that audition, I literally stood up, took a few imaginary bullets and shoved [the casting director]. I said: “I can’t do this. This is like a bad high school play,” and I walked out. And then Terrence called me — you guys I’m sure have met him; he’s the most gentle and amazing guy in the world — and he’s like: “Uh, Jared? I’d love you to be in my film.”
Talk of quitting comes up and Brolin addresses the feeling of never thinking he’s “nailing” a role and, of course, the question is brought to McConaughey regarding the latest “reinvention” of his career, which he largely credits to a “process of elimination” more than anything else.
One of the better McConaughey moments is him talking about what he thought it meant to be an actor, which was to simply be “your man”, and in the case of the film Scorpion Spring:
I didn’t study acting before I got [my] first job. And I thought: “Hey, maybe you’re not the kind of actor that needs to study lines. Maybe — [laughter] — you just know your man, and you show up and you just do it.” I go do this film, Scorpion Spring, and I got this idea: “I’m not gonna look at anything. I know what I am: the drug lord on the Mexican border in Texas. I’ll just show up on the set, stay fresh and loose.” Well, I get down there, OK, and I pick up this scene, and it’s a page-and-a-half monologue in Spanish.
And with both McConaughey, Brolin and Leto transforming themselves physically for their latest roles, that comes up as well, but I think I’ve said enough.
Give the full roundtable a watch below and when you’re done you can find the writers roundtable here.
