Tag Archives: Acting

Amanda Seyfried: Being ‘Overweight’ Has Affected My Acting Career

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Want to know how hard it is to be an actress? Then just look at how slim Amanda Seyfried is and then read her tweet below.

The Mean Girls actress went on to say in an interview with Elle UK.: “I don’t have to look like a supermodel. I don’t have to have those abs, the camera doesn’t see that. But because we have all been designed to want these things, I’m a victim of this stuff, too. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t constantly aware of what I’m doing with my body.”

Amanda_Seyfried_2009

It is very disappointing that Hollywood, and the media in general, cannot get over their cookie cutter one-size-fits-all view of beauty. Amanda Seyfried is not ‘overweight’. I understand that you have to be in shape and healthy to act and the camera really does add 10 pounds, but the world would be a truly horrible world if we all looked the same. Hollywood: take note.

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. It has had 5 five star reviews. 

Russell Crowe: Female Actors Should Act Their Age. Meryl Streep Responds

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There has been some uproar after Russell Crowe said that female actors should act their age. Meryl Streep came out in support of him and The Guardian did a great quiz on actors and playing age.

Russell said in an interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly: “To be honest, I think you’ll find that the woman who is saying that [the roles have dried up] is the woman who at 40, 45, 48, still wants to play the ingenue, and can’t understand why she’s not being cast as the 21-year-old, Meryl Streep will give you 10,000 examples and arguments as to why that’s bullshit, so will Helen Mirren, or whoever it happens to be. If you are willing to live in your own skin, you can work as an actor. If you are trying to pretend that you’re still the young buck when you’re my age, it just doesn’t work. I have heard of an actress, part of her fee negotiation was getting the number of children she was supposed to have lessened. Can you believe this? This (character) was a woman with four children, and there were reasons why she had to have four children – mainly, she lived in a cold climate and there was nothing to do but fornicate all day – so quit arguing, just play the role!”

Russell_Crowe female actors should act their age

Unfortunately that is not right at all. While some women will not want to play older, I have met a few, the roles for women are usually terrible when under 40: girlfriend, stripper, ‘the girl‘, a whore or merely window-dressing. When a women is over 40 the roles do not realistically reflect women’s lives. We are usually the mother, grandmother, crone or witch.

Jezebel blogger Rebecca Rose had this to say: “ALERT: Hollywood movie actor person Russell Crowe is fed up with all the old ladies who dare to want to be cast as something other than old spinsters or whatnot. Quit complaining that you’re cast in a role where your character has ‘nothing to do but fornicate all day’ and make a bunch of babies. Stop demanding that film-makers try to expand the depth of your character beyond ‘broodmare’. Just play the role, OK? Funny how Crowe doesn’t bother to offer any opinion about the mind-boggling legacy of Hollywood men playing romantic leads to women 10, 20, 30, and sometimes 40 (!!!!!) years younger than them,” Rose added. “Because it’s clearly the sad old women daring to pretend they are outside their actual birth ages that are ruining Hollywood … Thanks Crowe for reminding us, yet again, that women are always held in contempt for doing anything remotely similar to what their male counterparts do without reproach.” Very good points. Men do not tend to ‘play their age’ and their on-screen wives are usually significantly younger than them.

 

Amy Gray wrote on Junkee.com,  “The ‘ingenue’ roles Crowe refers to are the only ones readily available for women; on the flip side, the majority of male characters in film and TV are aged between their 30s (27%) and 40s (31%). That could be because we’re more likely to want to watch lead characters based on their fuckability – and the older a woman gets, as any executive will tell you, the less faceable she becomes.” Crowe is 50 and also said “The point is, you do have to be prepared to accept that there are stages in life. So I can’t be the Gladiator forever,”

 

What do you think?

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. It has had 5 five star reviews. 

 

 

Sharon Horgan Interview for Catastrophe

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We love Sharon Horgan at Frost. Funny and endlessly talented, we can’t wait to catch her new show, Catastrophe. Find out more in the interview below.

Explain a bit about Catastrophe. What’s the concept of the series?

It’s an unromantic look at a romance, I think. It’s about a couple who meet on a one night stand, and end up spending this great week together, and that should be it. But she gets pregnant, and he decides to do what he thinks is the right thing and stuck around. And she’s happy for him to lend a hand, as she can’t really be on her own. So they have this speed-life version of a relationship, where everything starts going to shit from the moment they get together. But the way it differs from a normal relationship is that they don’t really know each other, they’re just getting to know each other while all this shit’s happening. Going to have a pregnancy scan and getting bad news is hardcore enough with someone you’ve been with for years. But having to do it with someone who’s almost a stranger to you… And as the series progresses, more and more catastrophic things happen to them. And they’re slowly falling in love while all this shit’s going down.

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Where did the idea come from? Why did you want to write this?

I guess because of my situation, and Rob’s situation, and the fact that you kind of want to write about what you know. I knew what sort of material he did with his stand up, he knew the kind if stuff I did, and we just figured this subject matter would suit our styles the best. And we both had a series of shitty things happen to us in our relationships or in our experiences as child rearers, and we felt like it would be nice to bring people a warts-and-all picture of a relationship. Still romantic, still a love story, but a real version of it.

Am I right in thinking that you and Rob met over Twitter?

Yeah, that’s right. I started following him because Graham Linehan had retweeted him a few times, and I found him extremely funny. And totally filthy. And then I noticed he was following me, and then he got in touch on a private message saying he liked what I did. I thought that was sweet, and when I was over in the States we decided to meet up – it’s always interesting,meeting people who kind of do what you do but in a different medium.And then we just kept meeting up, over the years, and eventually found the right thing to collaborate on. But that was kind of scary when we started writing – you never know whether these things are going to be a disaster or not. It can be really hard to write with someone, it’s very intimate and exposing. But the relationship worked immediately, it felt fun and easy.

How did that process work? Presumably you were separated by the Atlantic?

Yeah. For the Pilot, we talked a lot across the Atlantic, and then I was in America working again, and we grabbed what time we could. And then, for the second episode, Rob was over here for a while, and then we went back and forth over Skype. When Channel 4 said they wanted to do the full series, we wrote all the first drafts on Skype. We Skyped each other the whole time. But then we kind of realised that you need to be in a room, reading the script aloud, making changes as we’d go. So we did a lot of rewriting when I was over in LA. But now he’s moved here, he lives here now, which makes it much easier.

Did you find that you each tended to write more for your own characters?

I don’t think it did pan out like that. Maybe a little bit initially. What we did end up doing was rubbing our corners off a bit. If I’d write something that sounded a bit harsh, for either character, he’d give it a bit of California sweetness. And if he wrote something that I thought sounded too warm and American, I’d write a bit of Irish acerbic into it.

Judging from the trailer, your character isn’t going to have the most pleasant pregnancy. Is that partly based on your experiences? What were your pregnancies like?

I would say pretty tricky. But it wasn’t just mine that we based it on. We used mine and Rob’s wife’s experiences, we mixed it all in. Any shit that happened to me we multiplied by two, because we had another pregnancy to steal from as well. But you ask any woman who’s been through it. There won’t be too many rosy stories in there. I got knocked over by my dog and broke my knee. My pelvis parted, so I was on crutches for most of it. My second one, my ribs felt like they were splitting because My baby was so massive. A lot went wrong – the same with Rob’s wife – which is why we were able to throw that all in there. I know there are women out there who loved being pregnant, but that wasn’t my experience.

While you were filming, did you have to wear a bump that grew steadily bigger throughout the series?

Yes. I had three or four bumps over the series. It was good, because it genuinely felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially the really big one. It was really heavy, and it did make me relive it, because my back was fucked at the end of it, and I remember feeling exactly the same at the end of the pregnancy. But it worked – whenever I needed to be grumpy and fed up in character, I generally was.

The show’s got a great cast, including Ashley Jensen and the great Carrie Fisher. That must have felt so exciting, getting them on board.

Yeah, it was. It kind of felt like that for everyone who came on board. Every time we got the person we really wanted, we were pinching ourselves. Everyone in the cast is phenomenal, top of their game. But we did end up feeling “Shit, why weren’t they in it more?” with every supporting character. They’re all actors you want to see more of.

Carrie Fisher’s a legend, isn’t she? We were madly excited when she came down on set. We were all acting like dicks. We were running around like grinning weirdoes. I was going over her lines with her, lying on a bed by her side because she was a bit jet-lagged, and I felt like “Yeah, this is it. I’ve reached the heights now.” And Ashley is just incredibly funny, and great to be around. She’s a lovely,. Funny, warm presence all the time. Mark Bonnar, you can’t take your eyes off him. I can’t wait for people to see it, just for the supporting cast.

In the past, you’ve done a couple of factual programmes for Channel 4. Is that something that you’d like to do more of in the future?

No. I really loved that they asked me to do it, and allowed me to make documentaries on whatever I wanted. I hooked up with my friend, Chloe Thomas, and we went out and talked about the stuff that we were interested in, and our own experience. And at the time, that was motherhood, and mid-life crises, and marriage, so those were the three films we made. But it’s not really something I want to pursue any further than that for now. I said what I had to say. And it’s hard work! It’s tough, because you’ve got no script, and a lot of it is built in the edit, and a lot of it is down to chance. These are real people that you’re dealing with, you have to tread carefully. I had a great experience, and I’m glad I got to do them, but I think I’d rather just watch that sort of thing from now on.

In your body of work, what are you most proud of? And where does Catastrophe sit within that?

I’m still very proud of Pulling. It was the first sitcom I ever made, and it was a situation where someone took a leap of faith, and let us have a go. So we ended up making something that we really liked, and had enormous fun doing, with the people that we wanted to do it with. And Catastrophe, for me, feels very similar. I felt with Pulling that I couldn’t have made it at any other time, and I think with Catastrophe, I couldn’t have made it even three or four years ago. It feels like the perfect thing for this moment, for the stories that I have to tell. It’s the same thing, just being given proper creative scope by Channel 4 to make the show that we wanted to make. I guess we’ll have to wait and see now what people think, but it was an enormous pleasure. I felt as emotional at the end of filming as I did at the end of Pulling, just the feeling that I’d really, really enjoyed it and I was very lucky.

Catastrophe starts on Monday 19th January at 10pm on Channel 4

 

 

Sienna Miller: ‘Having a Baby Saved My Career’

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SiennaSienna Miller, Outhouse , NecklaceWhile some people say having a child ruins your career Sienna Miller has told the Observer magazine that having a child improved hers. A combination of showing up for meetings with executives underprepared and an affair with married actor Balthazar Getty in 2008, which was reported in the tabloids in excruciating detail, all affected her career.  “Quite chaotic,” is how Miller sums up her 20s. 

Studio decision-makers read papers and care about how actors come across to the public. The article says: ‘The thinking among certain casting agents, Miller once said, is that “People don’t want to see films with people they don’t approve of in them.” She took a break from screen work, performing in plays in London and New York.”

She was the heroine of hackgate and then hooked up with actor Tom Sturridge. In 2012 the couple had a daughter, Marlowe.

“And I think having a baby really changed everything, if I’m honest, I think that’s where it began.” Miller says. “The stakes are higher. You have someone that you want to be proud of you eventually.” And on the other hand she says: “You’re aware of your own mortality. For me, as soon as I had a baby I had a vision of my life – and what was left of it.”

Miller also says that executives and casting directors think differently of her now “I’m sure that factors. People who read the negative things [about me], the people who need persuading, are probably ignorant enough to assume, ‘Well she’s got a kid so she’s serious now.’ Which, of course, isn’t the case. I’m still whoever I was. Maybe more mature, but the same. So amongst that ignorant, ridiculous area of my industry, I’m sure opinions of me have changed because I’m a mother now.”

 

What do you think? Do you agree with Sienna Miller?

 

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon.

 

 

Interview With Game of Thrones Star Maisie Williams

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Most of us know Maisie Williams from her excellent turn as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones but she is also in excellent new Channel 4 show Cyberbully. Here she is interviewed about her new role.

Interview With Game of Thrones Star Maisie Williams

At 17, Maisie Williams has probably achieved more, seen more than most of us will in a lifetime, yet the star of Game of Thrones remains a remarkably modest, unaffected, eloquent young woman. Here, she discusses her new project, Cyberbully, a remarkable one-off drama for Channel 4 about the dangers lurking on the internet.

Cyber Bully airs on Thursday 15 January at 9pm on Channel 4.

Your new project is Cyberbully. You play Casey. What’s her story?
Casey begins as a young teenager who’s struggling to express herself, and the only way she feels safe is to do that anonymously through the internet. She finds that, using a fake name, she can post honestly about things that annoy her, things that make her laugh, things that make her happy and sad. That’s the way she gets teen angst out of her system, I guess. When we meet her, she’s battling with sharing her best friend with her best friend’s boyfriend, which is a common issue for a lot of teenagers. We see that first-hand in the first few minutes. As the story picks up, she realises that, through hacking and whatever, people can take anything that you’ve written, anything you’ve recorded, pictures you’ve taken, anything like that, and they can turn it into something you never meant it to be. Really, anyone with the power of their computer taken away from them and used against them, even the nicest and most genuine of people can be portrayed as something they’re not, which is something extremely current at the moment. It’s something we’ve seen a lot of, with phone hacking, computer hacking, iCloud hacking, in the news recently. That’s something that really attracted me to the project.

Explain a little more about that. Why were you attracted to this role?
I feel like Cyberbully is a really honest representation of interactions between teens and their parents, and each other. A lot of the time things aren’t always at they seem. Teens get it hard for being grumpy and being rude, and this shows the other side to that, and actually what could be going on behind closed doors, I guess. In a pretty extreme way. She battles with anxiety, and that comes into its own story arc during the hour. We never leave her, we never cut away to anything else, we only see her in her bedroom, and other characters are only referred to through shadows or video clips or pictures and Skype calls. Apart from that it’s just her, in a room – that’s something that’s very different to other things I’ve done.

The fact that it’s really just you, on your own, on screen for the whole time – has that made it quite an intense experience filming it?
Yeah, of course. It’s been one of the most intense two weeks of my life. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s come with its difficulties. For the first week I was quite ill, so that didn’t help at all. But it’s been really exciting, and I’m so glad to have done it. As a young actor, you’re constantly looking for things that are going to push you out of you comfort zone, and show different emotions. With this, I feel like it’s got everything all in one. Such a range of emotions. That’s something you really look for. There’s not very many good, honest teenage roles written, without them being just a platform for the lead character. Teenagers are written pretty poorly, and this was such a good representation of a normal teen, who doesn’t have some extreme family issue or mental issue, or is a drug dealer or something. She’s just a normal girl who gets her life completely changed.

Have you been acting against a blank screen, or have you been interacting with stuff that’s happening on the screen?
We’ve got a full package, which, when you load looks like your home screen and your Facebook page and whatever, but isn’t. That’s really been helpful, actually being able to type, and being able to send messages and minimise browsers and all sorts, all within this one package. It’s been really, really great, and was something that, for our director Ben, was really a must. To really be reacting to a computer screen that’s actually using these words and photos.

Have you even met the other people who have acted in this [appearing on skype calls and in videos etc]?
We had a big rehearsal about a week before we started shooting, which was very beneficial, and we did a big run-through of the whole four acts. That was great, to meet everyone, but apart from that, during shooting I haven’t seen anyone. It’s been intense for that reason, but also necessary.

The story is pretty frightening, in terms of how much a person can hack into and destroy someone’s life. Is everything that happens genuinely possible?
Yeah, of course. There is no one story that Cyberbully is based upon, but everything included is very much possible, or has happened to various different people.

Has it made you think about internet security and what you do online?
Yeah, definitely. From the age of 12 I’ve been on the internet, on Twitter and Facebook and things like that, and I’ve had a very different experience of it from most teens of my age. But I can very much see the difficulties it presents, and the difficulties it has caused some of my friends and things like that. I think people always assume that it’s going to happen to someone else. It may not all play out the way it does in Cyberbully, but just because someone isn’t there hacking you and talking to you and manipulating your screen doesn’t mean they’re not there looking at you. In America, for example, everyone always puts a sticker over their webcam, little things like that, which really makes you stop and think. It’s something we’re all very new to. In the grand scheme of things the internet is still so young, and we know nothing about it. So it’s something we need to all think about. You think something’s safe just because it has a password on it, but that’s not always the case.

You mention being on Facebook and Twitter and stuff. With your profile, does that mean you’ve experienced negativity and trolling?
Yeah, of course. Trolling is the biggest thing that anyone faces, and it’s easy to dismiss, but it does hurt. As much as we like to say we don’t care, of course we do. People laugh at me when I try to stop people from behaving like that. Just in my followers, not on the internet in general. But I don’t want that. I don’t want Twitter to be that sort of place. People laugh at that, saying “If you’re trying to teach manners on the internet, you’ve got another thing [sic] coming.”

69 per cent of young people say they’ve experienced some form of Cyberbullying. That’s an extraordinary statistic, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. Everyone I know is on Facebook, and if they’re not it’s because they’ve had a negative experience with it. That’s just awful. People turn a blind eye to stuff like that until someone’s gets really fucked up and goes too far.

One of the things that struck me about the script is that Casey has inadvertently done a bit of cyberbullying herself. Is that part of the problem, that people just don’t really realise the damage they may be doing to others?
Exactly! You don’t even realise that what you’re saying really does hurt people. And it kind of spirals out of control. “Oh, she’s saying it, so I can say it too.” That’s what was so interesting about it. It’s not all that straightforward. There’s not just an honest victim and an honest predator. We all say things that we regret, and especially on the internet. That was an eye-opener for me. You need to ask yourself “Would I ever say that to somebody in person? Would I be happy for my mum to see that I’d just written that?” Just because you’re hiding behind a fake name doesn’t mean you’re not talking to real people.

Your first ever professional acting role was as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, a lead in one if the biggest dramas ever on TV. How has your life changed in the last few years?
Completely! But it’s like I’ve never known anything else, really. I was a child, and then I started doing Game of Thrones, and now all of a sudden I’m growing up, I’m nearly 18 and I’m nearly officially an adult. It’s been a brilliant experience for me, I couldn’t really have asked for a better opportunity. So many kids of my age are struggling to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives, or what subjects they’re going to take, or what they’re going to do at Uni. I’ve been so lucky to have been given the opportunity to do something I love for the rest of my life.

Do you get recognised a lot? What’s that experience like?
I get recognised a lot, and it’s usually very lovely. People are always really nice, and it’s the price that you pay for doing this job. It’s still awfully strange. People forget that they don’t know you. Sometimes people get a bit – particularly when its parties or festivals and people are a bit drunk – it gets very intense, and people forget that you’re actually a person, and they’re not allowed to just grab you and pull you by your arm and grab your t-shirt. They’re never trying to be nasty, but sometimes that’s really overwhelming. Sometimes that’s not okay. But usually it’s a very, very positive experience. I’ve got more used to it.

How have you kept up with studies? Are you going to continue with studying, or carry on with acting full time?
We tried to juggle school and film, but it was very difficult. My school weren’t very supportive of it all. So we decided to drop that and do home tutoring, which went well for a few years. It came round to my GCSEs and I landed a role in an Irish movie called Gold, and I ended up not doing the exams and doing the film instead. So to this day I haven’t got any GCSEs, because I haven’t stopped, and that was a conscious decision. We decided that I was going to do acting, and school will come later. I’m still very happy with that decision. At the moment it’s going so well, I’m getting to do so many fantastic roles, I’d rather just stay doing this. That doesn’t mean in the future I’m not going to go back. I’d love to be treated normally as other kids, and not have horrible things written about me because I didn’t do this exam or haven’t got that qualification. But at the moment it’s the decision that we made, and it feels like the right one.

What one message would you want young viewers to take away from the drama?
Some people on the internet are never going to be satisfied with any reasoning. The answer is just to close your computer and walk away, because it doesn’t matter. Don’t try reasoning with the trolls or the bullies, don’t engage with them, just walk away. You can’t win, so just walk away, and find people who really care about you.

Le Fear II: Le Sequel Review By Jason Croot

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After reading BFI advice on writing a review of your own film I thought why not!

Le Fear II- Le Sequel Review By Jason Croot

Le Fear II: Le Sequel is a 90 minute 100% improvised feature film about the making of a film. Based in London U.K it follows the journey of hapless 22 times film director Carlos Revalos [Kyri Saphirs] who is about to embark on his biggest movie yet Le Fear II: Le Sequel a film noir horror love story. Carlos’s journey starts with a meeting with the shrewd movie executive Dirk Heinz [Andrew Tiernan] who agrees to back Carlos’s film as long as Revalos puts up some of his own cash as collateral, one other condition is that Carlos intertwines his movie with Nollywood  [Nigeria] the fastest growing film industry in the world. Dirks Secretary Helga [Shona McWilliams]does the paperwork and the deal is done commence the movie.

Le Fear II: Le Sequel Review , Catherine Balavage. actress, Scottish actress, actor, British, actor, Scottish, Jason Croot

The world’s worst director Carlos Revalos meets the world’s worst film producer Efi womonbogo [Seye Adelekan] the clash of the titans or rather the clash of the tits, because these guys each are as clueless as the other about filmmaking. Efi has his entourage, Africa special effects [Roxy Sternberg], Femu [Schee Bell] the runner and Witch Dr Charles [Sean Earl McPherson] none of which really have a clue what to do. Carlos has his film crew Jacques the French cinema photographer, [Hadien Mekki], Jessie [Leila Reid], the production assistant Chafarafa the Script Supervisor [Jay Croot] Berwyn [Catherine Balavage] the stunt coordinator and Queenie [Victoria Hopkins] the Makeup artist. Hollywood meets Nollywood this is where the fun begins, and Conflict time! Everything Carlos wants, romance, film noir and horror is not delivered by Efi who has a different take on it with his motley crew. Africa the vibrant special effects girl, who apparently worked on big movies, Efi Tells Carlos “Avatar and Pride and plagiarist”. Africa brings Carlos nothing but cheap sci-fi effects which she believes is the best thing since sliced bread. That’s the problem with the Nollywood guys they believe their shit is good shit, and Carlos the man who has his own money on the line £500000, is in deep lumber. Bring on the Piece de résistance the actors within the film. We have the fiery French actress Racquel [Denise Moreno] and the green drama school first time film actor Oliver[Jack W. Carter] they cause poor Revalos’s pain to deepen not only is he combating of a motley crew from Nollywood he has disgruntled actors to please now can it get any worse? YES. The film set is not a beautiful purposed built location but a make shift set the input of Efi, “I wanted to make a film noir not a camping film” Jacques tells Carlos. The plot thickens and Carlos calls Dirk to sort out this rabble “Dirks going to have your arse” Carlos tells Efi who replies “My ass is he gay?” Dirk arrives and puts Carlos straight, the movie continues we now bring in two other actors within the movie these hired by Efi Vanessa [Vampire] Eleanor James Dr Strange [Julian Lamoral Roberts] Bmovie actor, Vanessa drives Berwyn the stunt coordinator barmy and proceeds to act more like a L’Oreal shampoo advert than scare people. We also have a student filmmaker Mickey [Warren Taylor] who is filming behind the scenes of the film within the film.

Le Fear II- Le Sequel

The night scenes have to be the most classic and funniest ones we have Witch doctors, Lesbian Vampires, Alien Explosions and a very angry actress “SUSHI DE MERDE Carlos you are a piece of shit little man! I’m going back to Paris right now” Carlos now one actress short of a picnic or rather of making his worst movie, and now without a location when disgruntled land owner Tom Dickinson[Ian Cullen] arrives and kicks them off “my land what are you doing in my land are you filming one of those pornographic films?” Efi replies “I swear on my father’s grave and my mother’s goat”

Le Fear II: Le Sequel will go down in history if Carlos can manage to complete it won’t be the classic he longed for but his worst yet. Bring on a new actress Racquel replacement Lucy Lou [Aiko Horiuchi] a Japanese actress brought in by Efi she joins the madness. “Can we use it?” Carlos asks Jacques about the new location, “Yes but I don’t want my name on that movie” Jacques replies “At this stage fuck your name” Carlos tells him the film gets more crazier and continues to deliver humour right until the end.

Summary Comedy is complex some people laugh at Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers and Porridge all classic British Comedies others won’t get the humour of those classics! some will love Flight of the conchords and Curb your enthusiasm and others won’t, you can’t make everyone laugh no matter how good the comedy is, Le Fear II: Le Sequel has already made a few people smile and laugh and we hope to continue to do so, I’m not going to say we created the best film within film the world but we have made a film that me and the producers are very proud of we are proud of the cast and how hard they worked to create the humour the crew and how hard they worked to get the camera lighting and sound to be as good as it is the editor who has done a great job and the musicians who have supplied us with a great soundtrack.

 

I will leave you with some other funny lines from the film Le Fear II: Le Sequel

Cast Lines

Carlos Revalos [Kyri Saphiris]

“They Buy a bloody blow up doll, stick some sparklers up its arse, and call it special effects of a high budget production”

Dirk Heinz [Andrew Tiernan]

“You’ve got a fucking film to make, so pull it out of the bag”

Lucy Lou [Aiko Horiuchi]

“My English is very little”

Jacques [Hadrien Mekki]

“You’re just crazy fucking English people who want to drink tea; I just want to make a good film”

Racquel [Denise Moreno]

“If we die what happens? Because I don’t feel I’m going to come out this film alive”

Africa [Roxy Sternberg]

“It’s beyond Hollywood, Nollywood, Woody Allen my gosh we have it”

Dr Strange [Julian Lamoral Roberts]

“If Crossed I get cross if cross I need Blood”

Jessie [Leila Reid]

“Can you teach Carlos to keep the fire inside of him”

Vanessa [Eleanor James]

“I’m a professional actress I have been in god knows how many movies”

Queenie [Victoria Hopkins]

“Do you like it wet? I bet you do I bet you like it real moist Don’t you?”

Berwyn [Catherine Balavage]

“Oh I’m swishing my hair like I’m in a 1970’s fucking porn film”

Witch Dr. Charles [Sean McPherson]

“Ring Nigerian now £5, no problem”

 

Twitter https://twitter.com/Lefear2lesequel @lefear2lesequel

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IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1982759/

 

[Editorial note: Frost Magazine founder and owner Catherine Balavage played Berwyn in Le Fear, Le Sequel]

 

 

 

Jon Hamm Interview For Black Mirror Christmas Special

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Black Mirror : White Christmas is on C4 at 9pm on 16th December. 

For a generation of Mad Men fans, actor Jon Hamm will forever be known as Don Draper. But this Christmas, they will see him in a new role – starring in a feature-length special of Charlie Brooker’s gloriously dark comedy drama Black Mirror. Here, Jon reveals his love for both Black Mirror and cricket, and recalls a life when he had just $150 dollars to his name.

 

You’re in the feature-length Black Mirror Christmas special. You must get offered so many roles – what was it about this relatively modest British drama that made you want to do it?

Well, let me disabuse you of the notion that I get offered so many roles. The jobs that are out there are scarce, and as with almost every actor, it can be hard to get good stuff. I had been a fan of Black Mirror, and Charlie Brooker, because I have a strange predilection for offbeat British things, and this was no exception. It came about in this very odd way, with me asking my agent if I could meet Mr Brooker. I didn’t know he was even working on a third series or a Christmas special or anything, it was simply that I really liked his work and really wanted to meet the guy.

 

So how had you encountered Black Mirror before?

Oddly enough, here in the States there is a channel on Direct TV called The Audience Network. They have some original programming and some stuff that they purchase from other sources. And Black Mirror was one of those acquisitions. My friend Bill Hader, of Saturday Night Live fame, told me I had to watch this show. So I watched it, and I thought it was really, really good. And that’s how it all came together. So I got a meeting with Charlie, and about three days later I flew back to LA, and a couple of days after that I got an email from him, and he said he’d really enjoyed our meeting and he had this character who was meant to be English but didn’t necessarily have to be, and why didn’t we have a go at putting me in this thing? And I said “Why not indeed?” It was a totally serendipitous situation. He couldn’t be a nicer guy, for someone who writes such dark stuff, and it’s a project that I thought was so interesting and unlike anything else I’d come across. And I love working over in the UK. It’s something that I’ve done for the last four years in a row, whether it’s been Todd Margaret or Young Doctors’ Notebook. It’s been lovely. I consider myself very fortunate to have been given these opportunities to come over there.

 

What can you tell us about the story?

Very little. Charlie’s written a very specific story that unfolds at its own pace, and you don’t want to spoil anything for anybody. But I think what I can say, for those people that are fans of the show, is that it delivers on the central, dystopian, Twilight-zoney unsettling situation that Black Mirror has delivered in the past. There’s always a deeply unsettling aspect to Black Mirror, and we definitely deliver on that. It’s not a mistake that they were able to get actors like Rafe Spall and Oona Chaplin to be a part of this. They are quite wonderful in this. It’s an excellent way to waste an hour-and-a-half over Christmas and not talk to your family.

 

Did you enjoy the shoot, and working with Oona and Rafe?

I did, I loved it. I didn’t work a tremendous amount with Oona, as will be made clear when people see the show. But I did work with Rafe, and I hung out with Rafe and his wife and had dinner. It was great. I’d only seen him on stage in New York, in Betrayal, with Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig. He was wonderful in it. I got a chance to meet him after the show and say as much, but that was the only time I’d met him. So it was great to get a chance to actually work with him and meet him and his lovely family.

 

Can you tell, when you’re shooting something, how good it’s going to be? If so, what are your expectations for Black Mirror?

You can only hope. There are so many steps between here and there, it’s a situation where you hope something will be good, and if it’s not, you start pointing fingers! You can believe in the material – no-one sets out to make a terrible TV show, and yet we have quite a few of them out there – so everyone sets off with the best of intentions. But sometimes things happen. There are a lot of moving parts to a television show, especially one that’s very ambitious. That’s why I was so blown away when I first watched Black Mirror. I found it so ambitious, it was trying to achieve so much, and it succeeds. When we shot the pilot of Mad Men, I thought “Well, this is a very good pilot. Let’s hope that everybody that gets their hands on it between here and it going on air doesn’t mess it up.” And thankfully they didn’t.

 

Speaking of Mad Men, what are the roles that have meant the most to you over the years? I assume Don Draper looms fairly large in that?

Yeah, that’s the career-defining role for me, as it stands. But I can look back at every part I’ve ever played and think it was meaningful in some way, shape or form. It sounds cheesy, but I think every part that an actor takes has the opportunity to make them a better actor. Don Draper was certainly that for me, because it was about showing up and being prepared and being aware and being good in a lot of aspects. It was a very challenging role. At times it was funny, at times it was heartbreaking, at times it was violent, at times it was pathetic. I got to show a lot of colours. But I can also look at something as silly and as seemingly throwaway as the character in Bridesmaids, whose name I believe was Ted, and it came with its own set of challenges. Working in comedy isn’t exactly in my comfort zone, especially when you work with somebody as ridiculously talented as Kristen Wiig and the director Paul Feig. You’re terrified you won’t be able to pull your own weight. There’s a movie that Jen [Westfeldt , Hamm’s longtime partner and actress and screenwriter] wrote and directed and starred in, Friends with Kids, where you’re playing with people that are outside their comfort zones. It’s all a challenge, and it’s all something that you can look at and ay “I hope I got better because of it.”

 

How has your life changed in the last seven years? [Since the advent of Mad Men].

Oddly, not that much. It’s a strange thing, celebrity and fame and all that nonsense, it can be a millstone around your neck, but only if you let it. It’s only as powerful and as meaningful as you make it in your life. I’ve never really assigned that much meaning to it, so therefore it’s never really affected me. I mean, it’s weird when you’re walking down the street and people stop and point, or try to take your picture surreptitiously in a restaurant, which is never as surreptitious as you think it is. Nobody checks their email with a phone pointed directly at someone else. I appreciate that people appreciate my work, and I hope that it’s because of the work and it’s not because of some other dumb thing that doesn’t mean anything.

 

Do you think the fact that you didn’t become this famous until you were in your mid-30s was in many ways, a good thing?

Yes, is the short answer. I don’t even understand how young people operate today in a world dominated by social media. How do people manage anything? It’s so overwhelming. People wake up in the morning, and the first thing they do is check their Instagram account, their Twitter account, their Facebook account, their Vine account, their Tinder account. You do that, and then I guess you make coffee. I have enough problems managing all of my Words with Friends games. I can’t imagine maintaining this online virtual existence. That’s one of the things Charlie is digging into in this world of Black Mirror – you see what happens when social media goes sideways.

 

Is it true that you moved to LA in 1995 with just $150? What was it like living hand-to-mouth?

Well, it didn’t kill me, so I suppose it made me stronger. It seems apocryphal at this point, but it is in fact true. That’s what I had. Fortunately, I was 25 years old, and your capacity to deal with difficulty is considerably higher. You have a higher tolerance. You don’t mind sleeping on a broken futon, or sharing a house with five other broke idiots. That’s just what you do when you move to a new city to make it as an actor. There’s no version of it where you just jump to the head of the class. It just doesn’t happen. So you pay your dues. And, that isn’t the worst thing in the world. You learn a lot about yourself, and about the business, from paying your dues. And where you go from there is often to do with luck. It’s a massive component of it. I’ve been lucky. And I’ve also put the work in that enabled me to be lucky at the right time.

 

Your first ever role was as Winnie the Pooh in first grade. Where does that rank on your list of performances?

Well, as I said, every role helps you be a better actor!

 

You were able to really ‘become the bear’?

Oh yeah. My mother sewed the costume, which was essentially a really comfortable pair of pyjamas. And I strapped a pillow around my stomach, with a belt, and that was my Winnie the Pooh. Oddly enough, there is some Super-8 recorded footage of this out there in the ether, but I don’t think anyone’s ever going to see it!

 

Is it also true that you are that great rarity, an American who likes cricket?

Yeah. I’m not sure I’m a fully-fledged fan, because I haven’t spent the time on it, but at one point, when I was over shooting A Young Doctor’s Notebook, it was during the Ashes. And this somehow became really exciting to me. We’d finish shooting pretty early, because Dan [Daniel Radcliffe] was doing The Cripple of Inishmaan on stage in the West End. So we’d wrap by 5:30pm, and I’d go home and watch the highlights, which is, I found, an excellent way to watch cricket. So I really got into it. And England were playing very well, I think they trounced Australia. And then I went off and did Million Dollar Arm, and was in India when the IPL was happening, and every night there was cricket on TV in primetime. It was very easily digestible, the two-hour version, and fast-paced and very exciting. Watching it in India, where people are mad for cricket, was great fun as well. You’d go to the bar, and people would just be losing their minds.

 

The Black Mirror Christmas special, ‘White Christmas’, starring Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall and Oona Chaplin airs on Channel 4 on 16th December at 9pm. 

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon.

 

 

Imitation Game Film Review

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iimitationgameCast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, Mark Strong

I was very excited about seeing this film. The cracking of the enigma code is one of Britain’s greatest accomplishments, saving millions of lives and ending a war. Alan Turing is one of the most underrated and greatest Britons that ever lived. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Cumberbatch does an excellent job of portraying the man who essentially invented the computer. He could have just done another Sherlock-type performance but his performance is astounding, believable and as good as expected from an actor who is fast becoming one of our true greats. It is just subtle enough. The script is great, the entire film just works very well. Strong performances are given from the rest of the cast too and Keira Knightley’s performance gives Joan Clarke, a woman who did great work and contributed to history when too many were never given the chance, the credit she deserves.

Whilst I watched this film, myself and the rest of the audience were engaged and laughed many times. But the overwhelming feeling at the end was of injustice. The injustice of homosexuality ever being illegal, the injustice of one of our greatest, who helped stop a war and saved tens of millions of lives. is hard to take. Forced to take pills that chemically castrated him. Turing ended his life when he was only 41 after being forced to take these pills or face prison. His ‘crime’ was his sexuality and being caught with a young man. No one helped him or stopped the appalling behaviour. It wasn’t until 2013 that he was posthumously pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II. This film is a must watch. It tells an essential part of our history, but it also says far too much about the brutality of injustice and hate.

Based on the real life story of Alan Turing, who is credited with cracking the German Enigma code, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team at Britain’s top-secret code-breaking centre, Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II. Turing, whose contributions and genius significantly shortened the war, saving thousands of lives, was the eventual victim of an unenlightened British Establishment, but his work and legacy live on.

The Imitation Game is out now.