Showing posts with label 30 minutes with. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 30 minutes with. Show all posts

Monday, July 23, 2018

30 MINUTES WITH Juno Temple / ‘Blackpool is like Reno, not flashy like Vegas, there’s a sense of Arcadian gambling’



Juno Temple

30 MINUTES WITH
Interview

Juno Temple: ‘Blackpool is like Reno, not flashy like Vegas, there’s a sense of Arcadian gambling’

The actor stars alongside Timothy Spall in Away, a new drama set in the seaside town. Did the Lancashire resort’s ‘magic’ help her get over HBO cancelling Vinyl?

 Rebecca Nicholson
Thu 25 May 2017

 Juno Temple: ‘I try to hold on to my English accent as much as humanly possible, but I do find that you can’t help but stretch into characteristics of what you’re surrounded by’. Photograph: Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty

Hello Juno. How are you feeling?
I’m good. I had tonsillitis.
Are you better?
I am now but I’ll be honest, it’s really difficult when you can’t do anything because you can’t swallow or talk. I had to go and see a doctor and get some antibiotics to keep going.
You’re calling from LA. Are you one of those people who flips between accents?
I’ve lived here on and off for about eight years. I find that I try to hold on to my English accent as much as humanly possible, but I do find that you can’t help but stretch into characteristics of what you’re surrounded by. So it’s the cellphone, and the freeway – things like that are inevitable. If I said motorway here, everybody would be like, “what?”

Juno Temple

Do you think English people are obsessed with other English people losing their accents? (1)
I get given shit for it every time I come home. My friends in America think my English accent is so English, but I come home and my friends are like, “you’re in England now …”
You said last year that you might leave the US if Trump got in, but you’re still there.
I’m still here. What made me reconsider is that also Brexit is a bloody nightmare.
Your aunt was the general secretary of the Communist party. (2) Has that filtered down into your own leanings?
I really don’t like talking about my family, it’s private. But you are always a product of what you grew up from. You can only really do things that come from your heart and what you believe in – that was engraved in me from a very young age.
You shot most of Away (3) in Blackpool. How long were you there?
About six weeks.
Do you know the best arcades? Could you show me the sights?
Absolutely, that I could do. For sure.
How do you talk about a place like Blackpool to your American friends?
It’s a bit like Reno, in the sense that it’s not flashy like Vegas, but there’s a sense of Arcadian gambling and that sort of thing going on. It also has as a copy of the Eiffel Tower that was a gift. It’s a very bizarre place and it’s kind of magic. And you’ve got this incredible seafront with these extraordinary sunsets, and some of those hotels on the seafront are beautiful buildings.
I’m not entirely sure Away is going to be much of a tourist board ad. (4)
No, I don’t think so. But if people are heading up north they should stop by.
Will you do more TV? (5)
Yeah, if I enjoy what I’m reading. I was so heartbroken when [Vinyl] ended. We were all very shocked – it was weird to have a TV show that was picked up after one episode, and then we worked hard for so many months, and then suddenly they just pulled the rug from under your feet and that sucked. So I’m a bit nervous to have my heart broken like that again.
Do you have any thoughts on what went on?
No, not really.
So how do you make sense of it?
I say it sucked! Some days I hate that it happened and some days I don’t think about it as much because I’m auditioning for other things. Doing more would have been really killer for that show. I loved my character, I thought she was a badass. I had the best time. Everybody got on and it was my first time experiencing that.
You’re 27, but your filmography is absolutely huge. Is anything you’re yet to do?
I’ve dipped my toes in a fair amount, but dipping your toes doesn’t mean you’ve taken a full dive. It would be fun to do a Judd Apatow comedy. It would be fun to do a biopic and really have to transform yourself into somebody the rest of the world knows. I’ve always wanted to play Marilyn Monroe, but Michelle Williams nailed that. (6)
What’s next?
I’m waiting for a couple of films to come out. I did a film that Woody Allen directed (7), which was an amazing experience.
Away is in cinemas and on DVD now

Juno Temple

Footnotes

1) See the “Joss Stone at the Brits 2007” fiasco.
2) Nina Temple was the General Secretary of the Communist party of Great Britain until its dissolution in 1991. Her father is the documentary maker Julien Temple.
3) Temple plays Ria, a troubled young woman who flees her pimp boyfriend in London to start a new life in Blackpool, where she befriends Timothy Spall’s Joseph, who is suicidal and largely mute.
4) It is likely to be referred to as “gritty”.
5) Temple played Jamie, an assistant at a record label, in the first and only season of Martin Scorsese’s much-hyped HBO 70s music industry drama. It was renewed for a second season but was unceremoniously scrapped after a poor reception from viewers.
6) In 2011’s My Week with Marilyn, though Temple did get to play her in episode of Drunk History in 2016.
7) Wonder Wheel, a 1950s drama set in New York, co-starring Kate Winslet, Justin Timberlake and Jim Belushi.
THE GUARDIAN



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30 MINUTES WITH / Linda Ronstadt: 'I don’t like any of my albums'



30 MINUTES WITH

Linda Ronstadt: 'I don’t like any of my albums'


The country music legend has won 11 Grammys, made 28 studio albums and worked with everyone from Paul Simon to Frank Zappa. She says listening to any of it now is horrifying

 Laura Barton
Thu 28 Sep 2017

Hi, Linda. It has been 40 years since the release of your hugely successful album Simple Dreams (1). Do you have happy memories of it?
Well, I don’t ever listen to my stuff once I’ve finished it, and I don’t really know what’s on it. I’m not saying it’s a bad record, I’m just saying I can’t remember it. When I listen to all my old stuff, I tend to be horrified.
What do you feel is horrifying about your old stuff?
I feel as if I really started learning how to sing in around 1980. I sang in an operetta on Broadway (2) and I sang American standards – the material just allowed me to extend my range.


So you don’t have a favourite out of the 28 studio albums you have recorded?
I don’t like any of them, but there are moments on some records that I like. The one with Nelson Riddle; the Trio records (3) I did with Dolly Parton andEmmylou Harris. I made a record with Ann Savoy, the Cajun singer, after I got Parkinson’s disease, and I could barely sing. I had to whisper everything, but that was a really successful record for us – artistically successful (4).
You were diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2012. How has it felt to have the thing that defined you taken away?
Singing was certainly a part of my identity, but it was never the whole thing. It was something I did, but I always felt defined more by where I was from, who my parents were, who my family were and how I interacted with them. Being a successful singer was only a fraction of it.


‘I could call up Emmylou Harris and we would sing together over the phone.’ Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Ronstadt in 1987.
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 ‘I could call up Emmylou Harris and we would sing together over the phone.’ Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Ronstadt in 1987. Photograph: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images

So you don’t miss it too much?
I miss harmony singing more than anything. I especially miss when everybody in my family sings and plays music – when we got together, it was the main thing that bound us. And a lot of my friendships have music at the core – I could call up Emmylou Harris and we would sing together over the phone. Now we visit for hours and we have a lot to talk about – kids, gardens, pets, families and what’s going on in our lives. But music took up such a huge part of that, it’s sort of a gaping hole, you know?
Which contemporary singers do you rate?
I listen to a lot of opera and classical music and to some traditional music, but mainstream stuff does manage to somehow float through the ether into my ears. I like Sia – she’s got a really original and unusual singing style. I’ve never heard anybody sing like that. Very heartfelt, I think, very sincere. And she’s a clever writer, too.
You’re best known in the UK for your 1989 duet with Aaron Neville, Don’t Know Much. What is it you liked about his voice?
I always loved Aaron’s singing. He has a certain singing style related to French baroque opera, which got imported into the American South in the 18th century. His falsetto is very evocative of that, and that – the Creole tradition – was interesting to me.


You also sing with Paul Simon on Under African Skies, and the song’s opening lyrics (5) were inspired by you, too.
I was in Tucson visiting my dad. Paul called and said he was writing a song for us to sing together, and could I give him some kind of a geographic point, something that was around Tucson? I loved this mission that was built in the early 1700s. It’s a beautiful little building, built by pagans, and on the Indian reservation. It was kind of my spiritual home, so I told him about that.
Do you still consider Tucson home?
I had a house in Tucson for 10 years, but I sold it and moved to San Francisco because of politics and global warming, which the current Cheeto-in-Chief(6) will not admit is happening. It became so unbearably hot in Tucson, and I think cities that depend on air conditioning just won’t be sustainable in the future.
What do you think will happen under Donald Trump?

It’s a genuine national emergency. What he wants is to be in control of the media, and he has an acute instinct for the lowest common denominator – he knows how to go really low. So if we don’t wake up, he could turn us into a dictatorship. I’ve read a lot on the history of Hitler, and people keep drawing comparisons … they’re so staggering – it’s step by step by step. He’s isolating us, he’s taking us out [of contact] with South America, Mexico, Canada … if we get attacked from outside, who’s going to come to our rescue if we’ve isolated ourselves from our neighbours?
You also spoke out against George W Bush (7).
I don’t have the power to bring these people down! But I thought he prosecuted an unjust war for a lie, and it added to the further destabilisation of the Middle East. We still wrestle with that problem. He and his dad were the cause of that. Then we had Obama for eight years, and we got lazy.


Pinterest
Don’t Know Much

How do you like San Francisco?
It’s impossible for anyone starting out to live here. The rents are so high (8). My son moved out for two years and then he moved back in. He works for Apple, at the Genius Bar, which doesn’t make him a genius, but makes him very good at solving your tech problems.
What apps do you have on your iPhone?
I have one for learning Spanish and one for ordering food, and that’s it.
Is it true that your grandfather invented the rubber ice-cube tray?
He did – and the electric stove, the electric toaster and the electric milking machine. He invented a lot of stuff. He was brilliant and he was always working on something. He was so successful that he was judged to be third behind Thomas Edison in the number of useful patents (9) he had developed.
Is it also true that you once duetted with Frank Zappa for an advert for Remington razors?
Yes. Frank wrote it. It was so musically complicated that I don’t know if they liked it. It was kind of like Bambi and Deep Throat on the same bill; it was not a likely pairing.
Simple Dreams: Expanded Edition by Linda Ronstadt is out now on Rhino


Footnotes

(1) Simple Dreams went triple platinum and knocked Rumours off the top of the album charts after 29 weeks. In your face, Stevie Nicks.
(2) She played Mabel Stanley in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, opposite Kevin Kline.
(3) Trio was released in 1987 and won a Grammy. Trio II was released in 1994 and also won a Grammy. Ronstadt has a lot of Grammys.
(4) Adieu False Heart, recorded as the ZoZo Sisters, and released in 2006, was a commercial failure, reaching 146 in the US album charts. It was still nominated for a Grammy.
(5) “In early memory, mission music was ringing round my nursery door.”
(6) Ronstadt is not a fan of Donald Trump.
(7) After speaking out on stage against the Iraq War in 2004, Ronstadt was evicted from the Aladdin theatre in Las Vegas.
(8) One-bedroom apartments in San Francisco rent for an average of $3,402 (£2,545) a month.
(9) Lloyd Groff Copeman had more than 700 patents to his name.

THE GUARDIAN



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Sunday, July 22, 2018

30 MINUTES WITH Noomi Rapace / ‘Amy Winehouse was like an angel when I wasn’t in a good place’








30 MINUTES WITH

Interview

Noomi Rapace: ‘Amy Winehouse was like an angel when I wasn’t in a good place’


The Swedish star of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo explains how she plans to do justice to the late singer, plus the logistics of that self-caesarian scene in Prometheus

Jake Nevins
Thu 31 Aug 2017





Noomi Rapace Unlocked
 Swede inspiration … Noomi Rapace arriving for the Baftas at London’s Royal Albert Hall, 2017. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Hi Noomi. In Unlocked, you play a tough-as-nails spy tasked with preventing a terrorist attack. But the role was initially written for a man, wasn’t it?
Yeah, they kind of rewrote the script for me. I wanted her to be a real woman with a personality, more than some badass agent who’s fighting bad guys. I wanted you to see cracks in her.
It shows. There is no discernible difference between the character and a male version of her.
Since I started working, I didn’t want to be defined by my sex or body. Why would I? It’s very medieval. When I have a costume fitting or makeup session, it’s like: “No, I don’t want to have full makeup in the end of the film if I’ve been trying to survive for 72 hours.” I’ve been fucked up; of course I wouldn’t look perfect, I’d be a mess! And all these voices around me are saying: “No, we think you look a little bit too rough.”


You made a promise to yourself, early in your career, not to pick roles based on vanity (1).
I didn’t have a choice. Being an actress is a world of possibilities. If I corner myself by saying I need to look a certain way, I lose that freedom. I saw this film I did when I was 22 and I was like: “Holy ...” I hated what I looked like. And then I said: “Noomi, if you’re going to be an actress, it can’t be about what you look like. It needs to be about what’s going on inside of you.”








Noomi Rapace
Pinterest
 Noomi Rapace. Photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage

What movie was that?
A horrible Swedish film I did when I was 20 called Capricciosa. I learned a great lesson on that. The script I signed up for was about a girl whose mom killed herself. She was dancing to reconnect with her mom, who used to be a dancer. It was deep and layered; there was a reason why she was dancing. But then he removed all that and I became this sexy girl who was, as the director said, “sunlight coming into the room”. I realised I don’t want to be an actress if it’s like this. I had a conversation with Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones. She read an article about me where I said “fuck vanity” and then she decided to cut her hair. She said she wanted to be like Noomi. That made me so happy. Because I’m like: “OK, maybe I can create some waves that will inspire young actresses to not be so obsessed with the way they look.”
You’ve played many different nationalities: Swedish, Russian, British, Danish. As a foreign actor in Hollywood, do you find yourself cast as the token non-American?
Since I was a kid, I moved around a lot. I’m used to adapting to different cultures and cities and countries. People don’t know much about me, so I can become different things, change my body, change my face. I was sitting at dinner and people were talking about the scene inPrometheus when I do the caesarean on myself (2). After 10 minutes I was like: “That’s not how it was done.” And there was a guy who said: “Well, how would you know?” I was like: “Well, I was there. That’s me in the scene.” He was like: “What?” We’d been at dinner for two hours and he had no idea that I was the actress they were talking about.

Before our time is up I have to ask: are you still doing the Amy Winehouse biopic (3)?
If I do it, all the components need to be right. That’s not a movie I can compromise with. She’s been a big part of my life; at crucial moments, she was like an angel when I wasn’t in a good place. I have a painting in my house that’s four metres long that this Swedish artist did for me. It has ravens and the lyrics of Back to Black. When I left Sweden after my divorce (4), that was what I brought with me. So the film needs to be close to my heart and done the right way. And if not, it won’t be me doing it. It’s too precious to gamble with.
Unlocked is in cinemas and on demand in the US from 1 Sep, and on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK now


Footnotes
1) In a 2014 interview with the Telegraph, Rapace said vanity was the “enemy of acting”.
2) The scene alone tipped the film from being a PG-13 to an R.
3) The film is set to be directed by Kirsten Sheridan, daughter of Jim Sheridan and co-writer of In America.
4) Rapace and Swedish actor Ola Rapace divorced in 2011




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