Filmworker

So I'm always caught in that dichotomy,

is the journey the most thrilling part of it?

Or is it, I say end result. I don't think you ever get to an end result.

You get to a result as close as you can get in the time that you need to get it.

And I think if you have a lot of curiosity,

you-you kind of never feel like you've completed any journey,

because you're always changing trains.

And you're always, without knowing it, on some other destination.

It's a conundrum.

I thought about Leon as a moth that was attracted to the flame

that causes the moth to burn its own wings off.

Stanley Kubrick was an incredibly bright light.

His seductiveness was strong enough for Leon to be burned by Stanley's light.

I'd seen 2001 just after I left drama school.

And I just thought it was the greatest movie I'd ever seen.

Then I went to see to A Clockwork Orange, because it was Stanley Kubrick.

Whoo-hoo!

When I was watching the performances,

like Malcolm McDowell,

it was so big, so bold.

And I thought, this is as close as you get to a theatrical kind of performance on film.

And it makes sense.

And how wonderful for an actor

to be able to come on and give that whole, broad feeling.

I turned to the person I was actually watching it with,

and I said, "I want to work for that man".

That's exactly what I said.

"I want to work for that man".

I was lucky, because I never didn't work.

I was doing theater, television, prestige costume dramas, BBC.

I shocked you, didn't I?

I was doing one-off plays, a couple of movies.

There were cop dramas.

Why should they want to? I live on the outskirts of town, middle of suburbia.

I think I did every single one of them that was being done at the time.

Not gonna bring her back to life again are you, you interfering bastards?

Were you, on the night in question, anywhere near that warehouse?

No, no, no!

I was doing sitcoms.

I was in London when everything was changing.

I felt I could be, and do, and behave the way I wanted to.

It was a huge release for me.

- Thy will be done, on Earth as it is... -Amen

May I come with you?

One of my agents had actually heard that Stanley Kubrick was doing a new production.

And he organized an audition for me,

and it was a film called Barry Lyndon.

So Stanley had the text sent to you.

And on the front of mine, when it came,

it had a little note which had what I later understood to be Stanley's handwriting.

Which was, "Learn these lines".

And when someone like Stanley Kubrick tells you to learn your lines,

you learn your lines.

A phone call came through, and my agent told me,

"You've got the role in Stanley Kubrick's picture".

Well, my head was somewhere out there.

Thanks, oh great ones.

I got a telephone call, who said "You should be at the White Hart Hotel at 6:00,

because Stanley wants to meet you".

And I was standing in that hotel foyer,

and suddenly, there was this little tap on my shoulder.

I turned round, and he said, "Hi, Leon. I'm Stanley".

And we shook hands.

And I have to tell you something.

When you shook hands with Stanley,

it was warm and gentle.

Just, like, a buzz went through you.

On the first shooting day, I was a little surprised at myself

at how nervous I actually felt about what was going to happen.

He was given a long tube.

And he said, "Put an 18 on".

Now I didn't know what that meant.

But then he put it up to his eye, and said, "Okay, Leon, action.

And do it the way you think you're gonna do it.

I don't want any of this kind of saving it for the take".

And so we kicked off.

He was wandering around. He was looking through this tube.

He was getting up close. He was standing far back,

standing on a stepladder, down on his knee.

And then he'd change lenses and go through the whole process again.

And each time I'd have to start from the beginning

and keep saying it and keep saying it and keep saying it.

And then just about we were going to start shooting it,

he actually said, "Let's do something else".

Completely disorientated me.

I thought, "Oh, my God".

He was going to change the scene he was going to shoot.

When I walk in with Bryan, my little stepbrother,

and he's wearing my shoes, we did it over and over and over again.

And once we'd kind of found the pulse, the emotional beat of the whole thing...

-Madam! -...he just let everything go.

There was never a cut.

I have borne as long as mortal could endure

the ill treatment of the insolent Irish upstart whom you've taken into your bed.

It is not only the lowness of his birth

and the general brutality of his manners which disgusts me.

We just kept doing complete takes with the whole speech.

His brutal and ungentlemanlike behavior,

his open infidelity, his shameless robberies

and swindling of my property and yours.

And as I cannot personally chastise this low-bred ruffian,

and as I cannot bear to witness his treatment of you,

and loathe his horrible society as if it were the plague,

I have decided to leave my home and never return.

And that's really where I got the message.

This is what filmmaking is about.

As opposed to just shooting a film, this was filmmaking.

And I leap up out of my chair,

and I hit him as hard as I can in the back.

And knock him to the ground, and try to-to throttle him.

And I hit him and...

And Stanley said, "You're not hitting him hard enough".

I'm looking at Leon, you know

"Oh, Leon".

But we did it 30 times.

And—And I know I hurt him. I know I hurt him.

I didn't want to.

But this was Stanley. "Again, again".

We broke for lunch.

He said, "Leon, don't go anywhere. I want to talk to you".

And I thought, "Oh, my God. This is it".

He's gonna say, "You tried hard, but it's not quite what I'm looking for".

Because we had three George the Thirds.

And the first two were kind of fired.

If you didn't know your lines, uh, suddenly you weren't in the picture anymore.

And a new one, actor was brought in.

This happened a couple of times.

You didn't make friends. You didn't know if they were gonna last.

He said, "Leon, let's sit down". We sat down.

He said, "Leon, let's sit down". We sat down.

And then he said, "I really like what you're doing.

And I like the fact that when we break to set up new lighting,

that you're actually walking around, going through your text.

And so I decided I was going to write a whole bunch of scenes for you

and keep you here till the end of the movie".

I almost passed out.

Can you imagine? Ay, can you imagine?

Although I'd worked on films,

you were always just there as an actor.

So you never really understood anything that was going on into the making of that film.

I started to sort of look around and just see all the resources.

And you see people moving these banks of brutes, like ten yards further in,

ten yards further back.

Angling them differently.

The costumes were being made and hand-sewn

in the way that they would have been made in the 18th century

and people talking about fine details.

And you see Stanley and heard Stanley talking to the art director.

So many people walking around. And everyone had something to do.

And they were doing something to get something on a strip of film

to make that single moment work.

I thought, it's so amazing

that one man's idea should spawn all this.

This goes into making a movie.

And that intrigued me so much.

The raw egg.

But when you shoot with Stanley, you better have a dozen raw eggs.

But do you know what they gave me for lunch before that?

-No, stop it. -It was...

-Scrambled. -It was semi-raw chicken.

And tomatoes or tomatoes.

And it was all mashed together. I was so vomitous.

But the moment I got on the set,

-and it was like nothing. -Yeah.

And then, Stanley said, "Give him a raw egg". A raw egg. Give him a--

But you know what he saw in you?

He saw a way out of the movie. He saw an ending.

-Yeah, yeah. -Some-Somebody has to get Barry Lyndon.

Somebody has to get him. Who can it be?

It was in July we shot the last scene.

It was sad to know that these were going to be the last couple of days of shooting.

I kind of thought, "Oh, well, this is going to be quite tough, actually".

I said to Stanley that I'm beginning to get quite interested

in your whole sort of technical side of it.

And everything that has to go into the making of the movie.

And I'd be quite interested to work in that area.

And he said to me, "If you really are serious about it, Leon,

do something about it and let me know"

And he gave me a Christmas gift, a beautiful art book.

It says, "Dear Leon, thank you for your great talent, energy and kindness.

Sincerely, Stanley".

It almost brought tears to my eyes.

It was so touching. A Treasury of Master Drawings.

- Barry Lyndon. -And then Barry Lyndon came out.

And I started getting invites to a lot of parties.

And there was somebody who contacted me and wanted to be my press agent.

And the more of these parties I went to,

the more people I met who just thought it was the most fantastic film they'd ever seen.

Wow! A Stanley Kubrick film?

Bloody hell!

This guy is going places, you know I couldn't believe it.

Things were kind of happening in parallel in a positive way.

And I was offered a season at the Royal Shakespeare Company,

which, when I had early thoughts of being an actor, I would have given anything to be a part of.

And I had offers for the National Theatre too.

But what I had understood for myself was the first chance I got,

the next movie that I was going to get to work on,

I would ask if I could work in the cutting room.

I'd make tea, anything. I don't care. I didn't care.

There was a Swedish-Irish co-production of Frankenstein.