My Roles

                                                          " If you're to do your work as an actor,
                                                             you've got to think seriously
                                                             about it, even if you're
                                                             in the lightest comedy or thriller. " /L.1/

1. My view on making roles."
2. Rochester by Charlotte Bronte
3. James Bond's Character
4. The Informant is the order of the day
5. Cleopatra... and My Caesar.

1. My view on making roles.

      "It's much easier for me to play different parts, or disguises. By disguise I mean playing a part that is a long way from myself. It gives me something to latch on to. When I think apart is like myself, I were got nothing to hold on to."/L.2/

      "But the most exciting thing is working with new people, you fight off against each other. When you know everyone you're not going to be surprised any more - or sparked off into action."/L.2/

2. Rochester by Charlotte Bronte

      "Jane Eyre" is a very special part of our English Literature� It's very good we talk about this novel now. I think, it was of great importance not only in the literature, but in the the field of women' emancipation. What a wonder, this book was written still in 1847 and written by a woman.
      Jane Eyre was portayed by wonderful actress Zelah Clarke� I think, Zelah could show the real inner greatness and the delicacy of feeling and thought, reflecting the real character of her heroine.

      As to my hero� This is strange, unusual man, an awkward bedfellow, who was hardened in heart. But with any doubts he had the delicacy of his sense of right and wrong. I think, he doesn't esteem his own class. This is amazing role for the actor and I'm proud, I have done it."/L.3/

3. James Bond's Character

      "All movies are hard work because you're trying to get them right and do your work well. Most movies - and certainly the Bonds - are simply hard physically because you're often working 14 to 15 hours a day on very long schedules."/L.4/

      "At the first go-of I was too young (for the part of Bond - V.G.). It would the professional self-annihilation to take the part from Sean Connery. Roger Moor created another character. It was another cup of tea: his Bond was more like the hero of comics who doesn't know where are the limits of his ability. I agreed to play Bond after two years passed since the moment of the last Moor's movie "View to Kill", because of both good conditions and script. Bond became the personage of realistic fantasy, which was created by Ian Fleming, the author of novels about the agent 007.
      I'd like to humanize this character and to give him a little bit more depth. I think, a real hero can't be ideal, firat of all he is a human. James Bond is not the superman. He consists of contradictions, he has good and bad features. He is courageous, but grim and is always ready to take any means to do his work. If he must chose between the good and evil, he will take a side of the good, but in the extremal conditions."/L.5/

      "I felt it would be wrong to pluck the character out of thin air, or to base him on any of my predecessors' interpretations"- Mr. Dalton says. "Instead, I went to the man who created him, and I was astonished. I'd read a couple of the books years ago and I thought I'd find them trivial now, but I thoroughly enjoyed every one. It's not just that they've a terrific sense of adventure and you get very involved. On those pages I discovered a Bond I'd never seen on the screen, a quite extraodinary man,a man I really wanted to play, a man of contradictions and opposites.
      He can be ruthless and determined, yet we're constanly shown what a serious, intelligent, thinking, feeling human being he is. He's a man of principle too, almost an idealist, but one who sees that he's living in a world without principle in which ideals are cheaply bought and sold. He's a man who wants human contact; the need for love seems to overflow from him. Yet he can't fall in love or marry or have children, because that would prevent him functioning in a world where the possibility of his death is ever-present.
      Above all, I realized that he hates to kill. He recalls that when he was young he thought it was all in the cause of righteousness,but now he perceives his assassinations as dirty murders. He kills himself by killing someone who's himself on the other side. Yet he carries on, always regreting it, always trying to shut it out of his mind. Altogether,it seemed to me that Bond was a complex man, with many more facets than I'd realized. Not a shining knight, but someone deeply unhappy with his job, suffering from confusion, ennui, moral revulsion and what Fleming calls accidie
      Yes, Bond is a hero, someone with tenacity and resilience and resolution, someone who can pull out extraodinary qualities in a crisis. But he's a real hero, not a superman but someone who feels fear, someone who's constantly described as having insides that twist and wrench with fear, someone who leaves you understanding exactly what it's like to be in a terrifying situation. Someone the reader can identify with.
      And of course he's fun, he has a lust for life. He gambles, he drives fast cars, he has casual sex or at least falls in love for a rather limited time. But that's because he lives on the edge of life and wants to live it to the full while he's still got it. To me that's perfectly human."/L.1/

      "I very much admired what Roger did.His skill at light comedy and self-send-up fitted completely with the style of the films as they became after Sean Connery left them.But they were fantasies, extravaganzas. They had left Ian Fleming a long way behind with their special effects and gimmickry and cool one-liners. I mean, you can't really play Bond seriously if you're about to leap into a mini jet airplane that comes out of the back end of a horse, which is what I recall happening in "Octopussy"."/L.1/

      "In his novels Fleming describes women as insistent, independent, a forceful sort of person with distinct inclination to initiative and responsibility for their destiny. He wanted to create a real woman, who hides herself under the veil of heroine. I think, first heroines in Bond movies interdepended on the actress or the theme in a greater or lesser degree. Very often they were only the decorative element. But now the "goddess" of Bond would lead the plot and give the movie an additional value."/L.5/

      "I'm moved and and please that people like my version of Bond. It's been 10 years since I did The Living Daylights and eight since License to Kill. There's a new Bond (Pierce Brosnan) now and people still associate me with the role. That's the power of film and particularly of the Bond franchise."/L.6/

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4. The Informant is the order of the day

      "One of the great things about some of the cable networks, particularly Showtime, is that they are are making a lot of movies the studios wouldn't make. They're making controversial movies, they're making movies about current political topics, politically sensitive issues, which I think is a great thing. This movie, The Informant, is a Northern Irish movie, set in Belfast, about how the security forces and the IRA manipulate a terrorist that has been caught and his family - wife and child - children.
      Well, you know, I've lived with it, J.C. You know, every day on the news in Britain someone's been killed, bombed, blown up, so, you know, in the present round of these peace negotiations, I think about twelve people have been killed. You know, it's got to stop. And the more people get to understand the nature of the problem - and the intractability of it - you know, maybe there's a better chance. It's very thrilling to work on a piece of work that is current and topical. And I'm not saying a movie is going to make a difference to the world, but at least it gives you and I and other people at least a chance to get a slightly different viewpoint on a situation we often only read about briefly in the paper, or on little clips on TV.

      About my hero... Well, you know, it lays like real life. You know, if you're a bigot, if you support one point of view, I guess he's a good guy. If you're kinda reasonable, like most the rest of us are, you'd have to say he's kinda bent. And if you're on the other side, he's a real bad guy, deserves to be killed. "/L.12/


     

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5. Cleopatra... and My Caesar

      "Julius Caesar was a completely surprising man. You can't never think of a modern example. Modern men aren't like that anymore.
      Caesar was not only a ruthless politician and a smooth adjudicator but a military genius."/L.8/

      "I would not admire someone, who wanted to dominate the world. You admire that tenacity, that ruthlessness, that ambition, that political skill - from the distance. It was important to remind the audience that he did have quite a searing ambition to be almost a god� [in a scene] by Sphinx when he talked about not wanting to be remembered in crumbling stone, he said, that he was going to shape the world for history to come." /L.9/
      "I had one of the most exciting first days on 'Cleopatra' that I've had on any movie ever. They built ancient Alexandria in the desert. It started with a....fabulous 300ft barge built in the desert sand, then swept through market places, and squares and streets, through bronze gates 70, 80 feet high right up to 'Cleopatra's' Palace and then they said ok now can you ride a chariot? we're going to do your enterance, so Caesar entered Alexandria with a 1000 men it was like being transformed back."/L.11/

      And� "I actually had to learn to drive a chariot and I quickly discovered that the main thing is just to hold on for dear life!" /L.10/
      "Well by the time I got to the other end I could.
      Everything was being made as we worked, you would walk around this huge area... and see people fashioning banners and you know swords and papyrus rafts. Your really aware that you are in a mysterious and exotic, and tangible real world and that's great!
     � I mean my initial costume was wearing the armour so all I felt was god this is heavy why didn't they make that out of fibre glass? But the truth is I am glad they didn't because...surrounded by that set wearing those costumes in that armour...you can't help but transform, you do transform. I mean even wearing what you might think of is silly, you know we are all wondering around...
      Skirts and sandals� You know I'm walking around in a skirt but after a few minutes in the heat you realise this tunic is the most comfortable, the most easy, the most lovely thing in the world to wear. I mean you if we should all be wearing them anywhere we go that is hot in the world there terrifically comfortable and easy, and oddly... male.

      I guess love and... seduction have always been fascinating, power, politics ummm ambition, ruthlessness, have also been, always are fascinating, and here you have all those elements centering on a, a woman who actually did seduce, a young woman, who seduced the two most powerful men in the world.
      I actually want people to love it, and go along with it and learn something from it and be excited by it and have fun." /L.11/

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