Joel Edgerton - 'Train Dreams' [LIVE]

30:47And if you can, move towards the material that you instinctively care about or love or find rich or interesting rather than second guess yourself from the outside. I think someone recently was talking about a conductor having to turn their back on an audience in order to do their thing. I feel like if you trust yourself, and I remember people trying to talk me out of going back to Australia to do this little film. And I was like, no, this is one of the best scripts I've ever read and he's a friend of mine and I'm not just doing it because he's a friend. And that film became more impactful here than any of the other things I've done.

31:27The other thing I'll say is that perception is everything. I remember being very deflated by the lackluster performance of Kinky Boots because all my life, the first time I ever got a film, I was like, all right, here we go. My film career started and then no one saw the film. It was a tiny Australian film. And when Kinky Boots came along, you know, if it did like a full Monty, you know the movie, The Full Monty made like a hundred million dollars. Kinky Boots was a lovely film. I love the film, but it didn't set the box office on fire. Talking of perception, I think if that film had made a hundred million dollars, I would be rom-com guy.

32:06You know, I feel like, you know, look, my spirit animal's Robert Pattinson. Sorry to digress, but it relates. You know, when we did the Rover, David's like, I want to cast Rob Pattinson. And everyone's like, oh, the vampire. I feel like Rob had to give 12 unbelievable performances before people stopped referring to him as the vampire and realized just how versatile he was. So his perception was built by this thing that you knew him of rather than judging him by each performance, you know, and allowing him to be the new thing that he was in the last film. So I think if Kinky Boots had been a smash hit, I would have had to try and remind people that I'm not just, I'm not even a rom-com guy.

32:54I'm like felt very, I feel uncomfortable in that scenario. I love the film but I hate the idea that I'm supposed to try and make people laugh or whatever. So I was very happy that Animal Kingdom became indelible because it felt more of a comfortable zone for me to be in if that makes sense. Oh, totally. And was it in any way connected to that film's, it doesn't sound like it would have been, but connected to you doing that film or the response to that film that you were cast in Warrior or was that a totally independent thing? No, I was rehearsing a film called The Waiting City, which was shot in Calcutta, another Australian film, when I got a chance to go meet Gavin and I asked the director, I was like, I just got to go to Malibu from Venice to meet Gavin and I'll be back in like an hour and a half, two hours.

33:41Gavin was living at the very top end of Malibu. So it took me an hour just to drive there. Did a work session with him, came back. So I was rehearsing a different film. And just, you know, for people who haven't seen it, they, first of all, must. But Brendan Conlon, one of two brothers who grew up with an abusive father, played by Nick Dalte, who wind up in MMA fighting together, basically. And just another one where I think, in this case, didn't necessarily get the audience that it deserved, but the people who saw it, as we saw from the response when we mentioned it, are, you know, huge impression.

34:20So you and Tom Hardy take us back to, I mean, just even the work to appear to be a convincing MMA fighter. I mean, you're a strong guy, but that's serious stuff, right? I mean, that was a lot of training, a lot of prep to just the physical side of it. Yeah, I realized along the way there are some things you fake and some things you can't. There are certain things you go, okay, well, I could quickly learn this in the morning and for this scene I could mix a cocktail, for example. MMA fighting doesn't fit into that category, especially when your shirt's off for a large part of the film. We trained for three months.

34:57That film taught me just how not to underestimate myself because I remember thinking, I'm 33 years old. Like, am I too old for this? had really underestimated myself had the most amazing experience gavin o 'connor is excellent because his whole mantra at the time i remember was that every scene rather than look at four scenes in the movie and say these are the big important scenes gavin saw every single moment of the film with equal importance every scene to earn its right in to be in the film should be treated as the most important piece of the film and had such a wonderful experience yes was very disappointed that no one really saw it when it came out but that film more than any other film i've been in is the thing that gets passed along stands the test of time and uh i was saying to scott backstage a guy came up to me at the airport the other day and he said uh my brother he basically had watched the film and and it motivated him to call his brother who he had in a strange relationship with and now they have now they're close again and i've heard that story in various forms about reparation of family motivated by watching warrior dozens of times and while it was not in the grand scheme of things that widely seen we do know that it was seen in the business because while you and tom i think were as deserving as anybody of being recognized for nolte did get nominated so that means the the the industry the industry saw it um and he's amazing in it those Same with Tom cradling him and the whole, yeah.

36:29No, that's great. I want to go home actually and watch it tonight. So, okay. So just a variety of stuff. I mean, in 2012 alone, first there's, I believe for Disney, The Odd Life of Timothy Green. This is like a very different sort of thing than we might have seen you do before. But in that same year, playing SEAL team leader in Catherine Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, which nominated for Best Picture Oscar, a landmark. I mean, she's coming off of The Hurt Locker for which she became the first woman ever to win the Best Director Oscar. This is a big deal just to be part of that film. Can you talk about your experience with her and with it?

37:09As we'll note, she is also along with you on the circuit at the moment because she's got House of Dynamite, her one. Yeah, and it's excellent. And Bigelow is just extraordinary. A lot of what I do when I go to work as an actor is I get to learn about being a director. And so I'm really curious about how other directors approach things. Catherine's great wisdom that I learned from her was she said, I just hire the best people and I stay out of their way. She really deputizes people well and trusts and collaborates well. The funny thing about Zero Dark Thirty, So last night Baz Luhrmann hosted a cocktail thing for me and I love him so much.

37:52When I went to, I really auditioned hardcore for Baz to get the role in Tom Buchanan, Gatsby, playing Tom Buchanan. And I was supposed to be going to do a movie with Catherine about the failed attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains. And Baz asked me to be in Gatsby. And I was like, wow, but I think they might conflict with each other and went home to Australia and I was sitting down with someone and talking about my A-class problem, about the conundrum of, and a text message came on, remember the blueberry? They had a blueberry, this person. And then a message came through saying, hey, this person goes, oh, they just killed Osama bin Laden.

38:37And I was like, and they solved my problem.

38:44So I got to go and do Gatsby and then Mark Boll miraculously went and did his investigative work to tell the story of what had now happened. Pretty quickly because Zero Dark Thirty came out before Gatsby. Yeah. So Zero Dark Thirty in 2012 and then I remember this opening night at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Very big deal for the great Gatsby. I mean, it was unfortunately pouring rain that night, but it was you guys. you don't get a much bigger stage than that and so you and Baz and Leo and Carey Mulligan right I'm just gonna pick these up for you yeah no it's just it's unbelievable it's a incredible no I'm just saying the movie in the movie not about who's there but you know that I think and and that I think that night was maybe the fanciest I had ever felt yeah you know like being in a movie like that going to the can film festival being you know like that was literally the fanciest thing i'd ever probably still even actually looking back yeah and that movie working with baz my impression from other people is that he works just in a totally different way than anybody else just the visuals thanks to his wife are uh the production design and costume design are i mean are just yes him are off the wall and especially in that movie what was what was it like I guess in a way it's almost like I was just talking with somebody about being in a Wes Anderson movie where I feel like actors are almost used differently, not better or worse, but just differently in those filmmakers' mise en scene or whatever.

40:21You're a piece of the puzzle, the unique visual way in which it's told. Can you talk about just logistically working with Baz, what that's actually like? Wild. Baz is like a circus ringleader in everything he does. Full submersion. And while he directs, he dresses almost like he's a character in the film. So during Elvis, I know, because I went and visited him, he had rings on every finger and he had a hairstyle that was sort of akin to like Elvis in the 80s. And he just becomes a part of the world of the movie. One of the things that, I mean, as I said, I never really learned about film at drama school, but as I started to dip my toe into the world of movies, The one thing no one ever really teaches you is about filling the space or understanding the brief.

41:11Because each film is its own animal. I don't know how to describe it, but I'll use Gatsby as an example. I realized like this is a big opulent world and that I had to turn myself up to 11. Because my inclination is to train dreams, completely different animal. Loving was a completely different animal. is to understand what machine you're walking into, how fast it's going to move, how many takes you're going to get. But beyond that, how big is this world and how big do I need to be or small in order to belong in that world properly? And Gatsby, very early on, I realized I need to turn the dial a little bit.

41:58And I was nervous about doing it, but I'm happy that I did it. And it was everything, the costumes, everything. And it's like now I feel like I'm still not, I feel like I'm always a student, but one of the things I think about with every film is like, how do I belong in this machine? What animal is this? Back with Michaud for The Rover in 2014, and then also that year, 2014, is a project with a guy who I don't know that there's anyone else quite like him. I think he's now well into his 80s and was already, you know, not a kid when he did this with you in 2014. But Ridley Scott with Exodus, Gods and Kings, it's you, Christian Bale, and he, I think the first day you were thrown right into the deep end on that one.

42:45But just I wonder, you know, you're talking about learning from your directors. What did you learn from Ridley Scott, Sir Ridley Scott? I'm just going to quickly say one more thing about Baz. Baz is a master. but one of the things that Baz does incredibly well again like Catherine is an incredible collaborator and he values every single member of his crew so much that he will tell them every single day I saw Baz be handed a prop on Gatsby and he got he got given the prop and it was a last minute thing and he was like look at this thank you looked at the person the props person he said thank you very much and then he called the whole crew and he's like hey everyone look look at this, look what Scott's made, this is going to make the scene so much better, thank you so much, and then everyone went back to work.

43:31And he would do that constantly, that everybody felt like they were helping him make his movie and he was so full of gratitude. Ridley Scott.

43:47Ridley has a brain that works like nobody else's I've ever seen. As a visual storyteller, there's nobody like him. His ability to kind of hold the grand scale and the intimate at the same time while kind of coordinating as many as eight to ten cameras. And can you imagine, I mean, could you imagine walking onto the set of a battlefield with 1 ,500 extras and just basically going, hmm. And he does this thing where he's like scratching his palms and he's like, I'm going to put a camera in. And he's like pointing out where to put the cameras. I don't know if he's ever nervous or he's like has anxiety about it.

44:31Never see it. Like the most confident filmmaker I've ever worked with. He just knows. And look at the worlds he's building every single time. But just so not to gloss over, the thing with having a zillion cameras, which I know he's done for years and continues to. He did it on Gladiator 2 recently. like there's these schools of thought right there's the david fincher do do a million takes and we'll find it eventually and then but ridley i seems to think that hopefully you know it's not gonna it may not get better after a certain number of scenes so let's capture it is that right i think each director has their own methodology i what i really love with filmmakers is when there's a specificity you know there's an intentionality behind uh shooting so i i think that the best thing an actor can have sometimes is one camera and know specifically what you're working towards which frame but then at the same time i've been on projects where i'm happy to not know where the camera is because i don't want to over analyze monitor myself from the outside as if i'm like all right if this is the frame i'm going to overthink what shapes i'm going to pull or whatever that if you don't know where the cameras are, which quite often happened on Train Dreams with the fire scenes, I couldn't even see Adolfo.

45:53And there's a freedom to that too because then you're just being in the scene and you're not worried about how it might look. You know what I mean? I remember on Gatsby I learned a great lesson because Baz was happy to show people the monitors. And I remember going home each night kind of cutting the movie in my head but more than anything being really down on myself about my performance because I'd seen it I'd go home at night going ah you know and Kerry Mulligan would be over in the corner with headphones on just sort of like blocking it all out and I'm like I think I need to do what she's doing it's like not play in that world of looking at myself trust and this is now my big thing is I believe you put your hands your yourself in the hands of a really good director trust them that they know what they're getting from you is what they want and that they'll tell you if they're not and don't think about it and just be inside the performance when your director is also an actor or been an actor it doesn't happen i guess that often but it did did happen for instance with scott cooper with black mass who i've heard it too many times for it to be a coincidence that actors really like working with scott and i wonder if you think it has anything to do with that and and before you answer i'll just remind people that in black mass you're opposite johnny depp you're playing an fbi agent in boston who who enters a moral gray area yeah giving it away very moral gray area scott's a wonderful director he also works with masanobu cinematographer who shot warrior who makes all of these worlds that scott creates so excellent Scott is an actor's director, but one thing he does very well, because I think one trap for an actor becoming a director, like I feel like I need to pay attention to more when I'm directing is I'm so interested in actors.

47:48I'm so interested in the story that I'm not paying attention to the fact that it is also cinema, the visual aspects of it. Scott's very good at understanding his scale and architecture while also being fastidious and really interested in actors' performances. So he's sort of operating on that big cinematic scale, but also really getting into the psychology of things. I had a fantastic time doing Black Mass. It was like a ripper of an experience. I don't know if you guys use that word. A ripping experience, yeah. Okay, so a director who you've worked with multiple times, which is certainly you've done that as we've established with Michaud.

48:31Maybe there are others, but certainly Jeff Nichols. Jeff Nichols, in the same year you did Midnight Special as this cop who doesn't quite grasp what he's onto, and also Loving as Richard Loving, half of the interracial couple that fought the Virginia laws that prevented interracial marriage. Talk to me about how you came to be in one year a two-time Jeff Nichols collaborator. Well, they sort of happened, I think they happened a year apart and then they were released in a shorter space of time. Jeff came to meet me at a cafe in Santa Fe where I was working and I was so curious. I didn't even know what he looked like, but I'd seen Mud and I'd seen Shotgun Stories.

49:23I guess I was expecting some like cool hipster redneck type dude walking in because he was just Jeff just lives. He's raised in Arkansas and he's like shoots the South so well. Anyway, in walk this very studious looking collegiate looking dude. And we have this amazing conversation. It took very no convincing for me to be in Midnight Special. and it was through the process of that that he told me about the story of Richard and Mildred and showed me a picture of Richard and he said, I think you've got this guy's head, you know. And then again, I mean, and I think Jeff's one of the most special directors I've ever worked with.

50:10He's someone I know that I describe it that his screenplays are very special and it's like he hasn't just kind of blitzed it. it's like he's written everything and then looked at every single word from every angle and polished it and put it back in its place it's everything is so carefully laid out that his screenplays are a pleasure to read and he's a pleasure to work with and he shoots the same way everything is again intentional and he knows what he wants to achieve and he sets out doing it very well and i mean there's definitely some sort of a connective thread i think between richard loving and Train Dreams, your character there.

50:51Very much. Very men of few words, but a lot going on inside. And that was just a great performance. And opposite Ruth Nega, she got an Oscar nomination. You should have gotten one. It's still to come. But okay, Red Sparrow, big studio movie, 2018. There's also that year, a more indie Boy Erased with Lucas Hedges and you. you're the the kind of top dog at a gay conversion operation now this is something we should note you also wrote produced and directed we should say also your country men nicole kidman and russell crowe are in there why for if you're gonna for the project where you're gonna go that all in on it where you're in every capacity why was that the story you wanted to tell so i'd made one movie before which was The Gift in 2015.

51:45Oh thank you. And I read this book Boy Raised Memoir by Garrett Conley. Because I was curious I've always been fascinated by anything that I would put adjacent to or in the world of cult cult-like worlds. And I believed in my own view of the world that conversion therapy has a cult-like aspect to it. I was curious in a kind of weird way to read this memoir and I became so emotionally invested in the injustice. So one of the things that keeps bringing me back to stories along with paradigms of good and bad behavior is one thing but another one is injustice. Somehow even though I haven't experienced much of it in my own life, it's something in me that when I read stories about people being treated unfairly it's a theme that resonates with me and Boy Raised just got its hooks into me and even though I am a cis white male I you know like a you know I'm not gay I'm not sorry cis straight male I'm not I've never been to a conversion therapy thing I was raised Catholic not Christian something about that story made me want to meet garrett and say look as i did this year with a movie called the plague it's like i read it and i was like i want to help you get this thing made into a movie and initially it was like how do i help get the right people and then within two or three months i'd written my version of the screenplay and then garrett was very happy and our relationship was very good and then i was like i think russell crowe could play your dad like should we sort of ask him if he would do it russell said yes.

53:25Nicole said yes. Lucas Hedges said yes. And we, before we knew it, we had a movie ready to go. Back with Michaud for The King in 2019. And then for what must have been a huge amount of time, given the size of the final product, I don't think you'd ever done a limited series prior to the Underground Railroad, or maybe you had, but certainly not of that size. And this is Barry Jenkins looking at just Colson Whitehead's interpretation of what that must have been like for a woman fleeing Cora, fleeing this horrible situation she was in. I wonder, you apparently really lobbied Barry Jenkins to do this.

54:12And then actually, I guess, I think I remember you saying you then had like second thoughts after lobbying him to, what were those driven by? You know, we're on this sort of pushing train dreams into the world and it can sometimes feel like, you know, it's a campaigning, the word campaigning. And a lot of it can feel quite icky and complicated. For me, it takes me away from my family. But I love train dreams. I really want the world to see it and it seems to be pushing it into the world. We did the same for Loving. and one of the benefits I realised of the campaigning swirl is you keep bumping into these people that you really admire.

54:50You see old friends and whatever, but there are filmmakers and actors that I've gotten to meet along these sort of roads that I'm like, this makes it worthwhile. I had many conversations with Barry during our campaigning for Loving and he was out there on the road with Moonlight. And partly because of that interaction, I think, when it came to doing Underground Railroad, But we just had an easy way of reaching out to each other. He wasn't just giving me the job because we knew each other. I'm sure Barry could ask whoever he wanted. But I was really drawn to play that character, partly because my natural inclination is to play characters like Richard Loving and Robert in Train Dreams.

55:32But I know there's other stuff inside of me. And I believe that one of the things I've always loved to do is try and be people I'm not. play i call it playing dress-ups you know it's like how do you tune your own personality or rhythms to pull the trick for the audience that you have someone that thinks a different way that has different intentions and motivations and to me there was such a darkness and also a vulnerability to the character of ridgeway that i was like i want to get under the hood of like why do people become that way and we're obviously seeing it very much and are today in america and and australia and all over the world people with these ideas that they've learned along the way that are so vehemently kind of like pungently horrible and yet there was still at some point a child it was like that to me was a really interesting challenge to create a human being out of that man not to try and make us like him but just to put him on screen and then then i started to feel really icky about it just on a day-to-day level it wasn't nice dragging two saw around you know get upset thinking about it but the act of doing certain things you don't realize the effect they can have on you and so like i'm very happy i did the job but like it's it's going to some pretty awful places and i remember michael fassbender said to me because he knew i was going to do it and he'd obviously 12 years a slave.

57:01He said, oh, you're about to do that. He's like, good luck. In a very sincere way. He's like, good luck. And to further complicate it and complicate the story for viewers, your Ridgway sidekick is this 9 or 10-year-old boy who's obviously confused in a lot of ways. Chase. Chase Dillon. Chase W. Dillon. He's going to be president of America at one point. He was incredible. Yeah. And look, I take big responsibility working with young people, with their parents, and it's a big thing for a young person to have that much attention. He's extraordinary. He's like a 50-year-old man in a child's body at the time.

57:43But he's also a witness to this stuff. You see, it affects me. Weirdly, I looked at Chase one day. You realise everything I say in this scene, I don't believe that as a person, but this is. And he's like, I get it. just saying it yeah in the time since then you've been even amidst the pandemic very busy there was 13 lives for and with Ron Howard very powerful and just obviously based on that true story back to the world of Star Wars with Obi-Wan Kenobi and I did this stranger in uh Sydney that was a pandemic shoot that too yes which was um that was a very special one but those two films stranger and uh 13 lives were like a whole new world for me because my wife became pregnant during stranger and i know that i'd never be able to make that movie now and then my children were born during 13 lives and now i'm a whole different person yeah like a whole different person what's the biggest difference my i mean look you know on a on a logistic level it affects the way i look at work and where i go and for how long and all that stuff but it's you know who somebody said to me last night and i agreed is that everything changes as a result of becoming a parent there's just so many things and i know like for example with train dreams i don't think that performance for me was uh i don't know what it would have been like if i if i if i didn't have two young kids that that had now become the subject of my greatest fears and my greatest loves you know boys in the boat with cluny yeah uh cluny yeah anything you want to say about i love george he doesn't love george clooney it is have you ever had a q a with george clooney he does the best q a he's funny he's charming i was on my mom kept saying to me he's like when am i gonna get to meet george clooney she's in australia and then one day she called me and i don't know how he's i mean so charming he remembered my mother's name after one or two conversations i'd had with him my mom called and she was on the couch with her hair all like this and she's watching tv in australia at like seven o 'clock at night and i was like hey mom and i gave my phone to george it's like oh george hi she'll never forgive me for it that's great i should have done my hair he's a great dude yeah yeah great dude well brings us to 2025 where they're first of all the plague which you've been again a multi-hyphenate on involved in numerous ways and And it's gaining followers by the day.

1:00:37I think I was just even in the craftsmanship of it. Critics' Choice Awards were shortlisting it for all sorts of below-the-line things. And anyway, really interesting movie. And then, of course, Trained Dreams, which premiered at Sundance. And this is a year after the same filmmakers, Clint Bentley and Greg Quedar, had made Sing Sing, for which they were nominated at the Oscars for the screenplay. They take turns, I guess. They write together and then they take turns directing. So Greg did Sing Sing, Clint did this. Really interesting dynamic with them and the way they work with actors. And I'd love for you to talk about just, first of all, even before you knew or had anything to do with them, just the material for Train Dreams based on a novella, right?

1:01:24You heard about it years ago? Yeah. When we'd wrapped shooting Boy Erased, I'd been gifted the novella. you know i find it quite unique when someone gives you a book because i feel like they know that it's going to resonate with you and it i read it immediately and for anyone who hasn't read train dreams you could i'm a slow reader and i read it for the fourth time the other day in three and a half hours um it's 115 pages long but it encapsulates 80 years of a person's life and i tried to get my hands on the rights to it you know and they were taken and i'm glad they were because otherwise I wouldn't have made the movie with Clint I would have maybe tried to do my own version of it I really honestly think it would never have been as good I think Clint and Greg are just so excellent whatever they do together however they do it it's it's extraordinary I think his adaptation was very special and then I you know weirdly when he circled around to come and see me then I had become a dad and and it was like the chance for me to play Robert at that point in my life was like the perfect serendipitous thing and that idea of what we talked about with loving where you're communicating a lot but not through words whether in this case the way he carries himself and the load that he's you know literally and metaphorically carrying uh throughout this just like what was your key to unlocking him and how to play a guy like that where he really i mean i i'd like to tally up the number of words that he says out loud not a not a ton right it's but yet you feel so much from of what he's going through i felt like more than any other time in my life that a that a character and myself bore a lot of resemblance to each other relationship wise being in love and fears around parent parenthood and and luckily not the deeper darker stuff but it's it's there if you're a parent i'm sure just the the worst places you can take your mind to.

1:03:28I realized that the path of least resistance was a chance for me to do what I wasn't. What I normally do with Gatsby or with Black Mass to find a way of generating other things out of myself is actually to stop that and just let myself be myself to a certain degree and carry an axe and have an accent and all that stuff. But on an emotional level, make myself available in ways that i normally try and adorn in other ways and so robert is very much a lot of me albeit that i'm a little bit more emotional than robert and just trying to make sure that i stayed true to the stoic nature of a man who has a lot of feelings a lot to say but doesn't know how sometimes to express him or is afraid to show his emotions 29 days you guys that's you made this movie in 29 days and you were the one constant everybody else was sort of in terms of the cast coming in and out right so we're talking about felicity jones yeah carrie condon yeah william h macy yeah i mean it's a pretty john dale yeah we could go it's uh what's that like though had you ever had anything like that where you know it's almost like you know who's who's coming in today like that?

1:04:42Well, like I'm normally number two or three or four on the call sheet happily. And every now and then I, you know, I'm number one on the call sheet and I don't have an ego about any of that stuff. And quite often when I am number one on the call sheet, it feels like it's the right time. And I don't have an expectation that it should be every time. I'm number five on the call sheet of my family. So that's always humbling. I take it as a big responsibility i mean you know take the work very seriously and also take the responsibility of the culture of the set very seriously as in you know just they're simple things like just be on time be available to people be a good person because i don't believe that you can't be a good person in order to do good work i think those things sometimes get very confused focus when you need to and do all the things you need for the film and the film needs to be the most important thing but having the chance to be number one and then have like i had this section with felicity that was like two weeks of pure joy of getting to work with her and i've wanted to for for years finally it happened then i get to go into the woods with with william mc macy who i just had to put my fan-ishness aside you know because he's a big important actor for me in my life in terms of watching him and john deal and then i get you know then i get this beautiful little island of of scenes with carrie condon who i worked with back in 2003 on a movie that we did with heath and orlando bloom in australia called ned kelly carrie's always excellent never not less than excellent and i i just it was like an embarrassment of riches for me and and and that makes any actor a better actor i know there's actors in this room if you get to i mean it'd be like tennis you want to play tennis with someone that's better than you and it makes you better you know so all of these scenes with all these people were so so great there are so many scenes that to me, even months after I first saw it, are very fresh in my mind and very powerful.

1:06:56The tower scene with Carrie and you, the scene where you break down with Nathaniel Arkand. But I wonder for you, what was the scene that going into it or knowing that it was going to be coming up or whatever gave you the most, maybe pause is the wrong word, but just that you knew this was going to be a challenge and talk about tackling whatever that one was. You know, I was talking before about being like a different person after having kids. I feel like pre that I'd be looking at some of those scenes that you're talking about, particularly around expressing emotion with this feeling like, oh, I've got to do that scene tomorrow or next week and what's going to happen?

1:07:39Am I going to be able to do it service? And I realized that in order to do trained dreams, I had to think about stuff that I don't, you know, really want to think about. And the challenge was more about, you know, not getting carried away with that. Because Robert is someone that, you know, the first thing he does after expressing his grief for the first time is to say that he's sorry, he says, I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me, and puts a lid on it. I feel like in many ways I was going to work, I'm not looking forward to this, but I'm not worried about showing emotion i'm worried about showing too much emotion and it's all wrapped up and stuck inside of me from like stuff and it's pure paranoia of anxieties around becoming a dad for the first time like i've already gone through loss even though i haven't thank god but it's weird some things you can't get rid of and that's why it was sort of imperative for me that i do train dreams because it was a safe place to kind of put that out there but it wasn't pleasurable in those instances you know last question for me and then if it's okay we'll close with a few from the audience and it's for you on your way but talk about in the same way that you obviously found the doing of it very moving the impact that this film has had on audiences from sundance through all the other festivals, through now being out to everywhere except, I think, Russia and China, or excuse me, Russia and North Korea on Netflix.

1:09:16I mean, the whole world is catching up with this movie now, and people are very affected by it. And I wonder, in addition to that in the industry, at this point, I think we're up to Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and Spirit Award nominations for you, and I think we're just getting started. Very well deserved. just what has the response to the movie and to your performance specifically meant to you i'm i'm really glad that it's resonating with people i'm really glad that it's on for example like afi's sort of top 10 movies list i i you know the idea that these i remember when the strike came along and it got in the way of us making the film and we had to wait six months and it's like my instinct is always i need money to feed kids and travel us around the world and But it's never the first thing I think about when it comes to work.

1:10:10So I care about story first and this was a story I'm like, I know this is going to be a small movie. Potentially it comes out at Sundance and it goes out on a few screens and whatever. The life of this film has been massive compared to the scale of the production, the amount of money and whatever, but the care and love that was put into it. It's so nice to see that it's sort of chugging along. I use that pun heavily because it's not a mystery it's a it's a nice surprise but it's not a mystery and the reason I say it's not a mystery is because it's full of stuff that we can all relate to it's full of like the foolishness of a new relationship of fears around whether you whether or not you're a good parent and then grief and loss which sadly all of us are going to go through at some point in our long, hopefully long lives.

1:11:01And it's the celebration of the majesty of ordinariness, which we don't often see at the cinema. We're just seeing people do the big things, you know, run countries, win wars and so on and fly around. So it's nice to see that audiences are pulling things out of it, reflecting their own experience in it. So it's not a mystery, but it's a nice surprise that it's doing well. Okay. this question comes from Andrew Sykes you are the living embodiment of the career I am working for you keep your head down and let the work speak for itself what advice would you give to someone that wants to make their mark in the way that you have yeah thank you I always said I wanted to be Gene Hackman and the reason I say is because I just admired the graft of the guy the the work that it wasn't about glamour.

1:11:56It just seemed like every time I, you know, in any movie I ever watched of him, it was like he obviously just got involved with interesting things. That's easy to say, you know, because when I first started, I would just take whatever work I could get. You can't always just suddenly land on your feet and everything that's top shelf. but just to trust yourself and to focus on work in a way that leaves all the other frivolous stuff behind and collaborate with like-minded people. And while you're doing it, be good to everyone around you because that goodness will also come back to you. It shouldn't be the motivator for being good, but you'd be surprised and stick to other like-minded people.

1:12:42Tony C asks, what music do you listen to to help you relax and also to perhaps get into character. Oh, that's interesting. I used to listen to music to, you know, for like things, for example, if I need to zone out what was going on on the crew and get into like a really focused place, particularly I think you see it with actors when they need to do things that are emotional. I do that less now. But like Niels Fram, I always found really like got in somewhere inside my heart. I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing his last name right. Neil's from, is that right? Have a listen. Spotify. And Neil's wherever you are, you owe me some money.

1:13:25Lastly, from Sam H., and I'm going to paraphrase a little bit here, but is there a commonality? I mean, we've talked about such a wide variety of projects that you've done and the ways that you've come to them, but when you're reading a script and deciding if you're interested or not, do you find that there are common commonalities a thread that runs through the things that you respond to i feel like there's a thing and again like you know i hate to give the impression that i've always had the ability to be like hmm am i gonna which one of these am i gonna do i guess in the early stage i was looking about how do i turn this into something indelible good strong not be flashy for the sake of like this all started with me discussing my motivation for being an actor as in like look at me i don't believe an actor should look at a role as a chance to go look at me especially if you derail the thing if the role requires you to go big go big but not for the sake of like making the movie about yourself but like how do i turn this into something special for me it was always about if i'm playing a morally centered character how do i not make them too pure how do i rough them up a little bit or if it was a bad guy it's like how do I humanize them in some way to find the light in the darkness or the dark in the in the light just for the dimensional aspect of a character but now it's an instinctual thing is I read something and I'm looking at it holistically about the story itself why it should be in the world what's the purpose of it in general what's the central idea but then selfishly as a character what is it that I get to do and one of the things I like to do is push myself into new places and look for something that maybe I haven't done before find a way to learn something and challenge myself but it's sort of undefinable sometimes I read something I don't know why I can tell this is great but it's not pulling me in well whatever you're doing it's working so uh keep it up and thank you so much for coming and doing this all right Joel Edgerton thank you everybody

1:15:43thanks for listening to awards chatter we really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app and to follow us on twitter and instagram where our handle is at awards chatter on those platforms we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.

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