Growing up the son of a director has made me very aware of the various turns that a directing career can take. Sometimes your films turn out exactly as you want. Sometimes they don't. I spent a lot of my childhood on sets. I think as a joke, my fathe...
One of the best things - and something I'm grateful for every time I walk onto a film set - is my six and a half years on Dawson's Creek and the experience it afforded me in how to get comfortable with the camera.
What's nice about what we have is when you enter the set, the world of film, it becomes this real cocoon, very different from all the publicity. That's the fun part.
Action films can be like watching paint dry. You can just die in the trailer waiting for them to set up a shot, then you go out for a few minutes or an hour of endurance testing.
On 'Darjeeling,' I was on set every day and I acted as the second unit director and a producer on that film. I was there throughout the whole process. On 'Moonrise Kingdom,' I showed up for one day.
I was a huge movie watcher, but I really loved 'Kenan & Kel,' 'Rugrats,' 'Doug,' & 'Catdog.' I was also into drama films, though, and I really loved 'Poetic Justice' and 'Set it Off.'
What I realised is, watching some old home videos, I've always had a weird accent. It's because I spent a lot of time on film sets. But Australia will always be home... I sound like the Qantas ad, don't I?
There is rap music in all my films. In 'La Vie des Morts,' there is rap music too. It's because I'm French, and when it appeared in 1978, it was so new, it set off my musical imagination.
It was very much about performances, the whole ensemble thing was just great - everybody working together. Sometimes it didn't feel like a film set. It wasn't technically driven, it was very, very enjoyable.
It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.
I was on the set of 'Braveheart' and my mate says to me, 'Do you think this film will be any good?' And I really meant this, too, I told him 'Let me put it this way - It won't win any awards.' Cut to: five Oscars.
'Attack The Block' is an alien invasion film set in South London. It's about a group of kids who are some petty thugs, who have to find the hero in themselves, when they attack.
When on the set of a film, you have to play natural for entire scenes in a very unnatural environment. You have to express emotions and interact with other actors and also use your voice.
In most films - especially in regards to the protagonist - really from the get-go they set up some scenario that endears that character to the audience. Or imbues him with some nobility or heroism or something.
I get terrified the first day I'm on a film set. I get nervous walking down a red carpet. I find making speeches the most terrifying thing in the world.
Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.
In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film.
A film set is really delicate and people treat you very very well if you're an actor because they want you to be as comfortable as possible for you to do your work, but it really is just one in a team of many and usually 150 people.
I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becom...
I didn't set out to make this kind of picture. It just came my way. But its been going on for me for 16 years now and its wonderful for an actor to work consistently. There seems to be an insatiable audience for this type of film.
Having to go back and forth between school and filming would sometimes be frustrating because I loved school. It was my chance to be around other people my age. But when you're leaving school to go to a set that's filled with kids your age, then it's...
