Here is a Hollywood Reporter Oscar roundtable I think a lot of you will be interested in. This particular panel concerns the actors of some of the best performances of the year. I say you will be interested in it because it features a group of very talented actors, each with their own unique voice and perception on acting.
The group includes Michael Keaton (Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), Channing Tatum (Foxcatcher), Ethan Hawke (Boyhood), and Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner).
I still need to see Foxcatcher and Mr. Turner, but the roundtable is still interesting all the same. It is moderated by the endlessly annoying Stephen Galloway, his first roundtable of the season, so that is a slight drawback. But this group of guys makes up for it. They six discuss fame, portraying real people, their mentors, and the differences in film and theater.
I particularly enjoyed Redmayne’s story of meeting Stephen Hawking, who he plays in The Theory of Everything:
It was actually quite far in. From the second Felicity Jones and I were cast, we’d been wanting to meet Jane [Hawking] and Stephen. But Stephen’s incredibly busy solving some quite hard-core problems out there. (Laughter.) It made it complicated, and then there was the fear: What if when I meet him I realize I got it all wrong? And of course you want approval. And so I went in to meet him, and he now just uses this [single] muscle beneath his cheek, and when he moves this muscle, [his computerized voice program] stops on one letter. So when you spend time with him, there are these long, long pauses. I was horrifically nervous, and I hate silence. And so basically I spent 45 minutes spewing out information about him, to him. It was really chronically disastrous.
This and the entire 50-minute roundtable are here for you to watch below:
Previous Roundtables:
