Wasn't dark because I'd given up.

I was writing and producing radio commercials, and I was extremely happy doing it.

Andi, I wasn't interested in acting anymore.

Then my agent, who I hadn't spoken to for months, rang and said, They want to see you for this merchant ivory film And I said, No, I can't be bothered.

And my brother, who's a banker, Very bossy, who happened to be at home sick that day I was living with him said, Don't be ridiculous.

You gotta go.

You need some money.

I'm sick of paying for you. 00:00:53.850 --> 00:01:0.350 So he made me sort of get dressed up, and I went on day were kind enough to like me. 00:01:0.450 --> 00:01:3.120 That was the first sort of propulsion into movies. 00:01:3.140 --> 00:01:4.740 I didn't know what to expect. 00:01:4.740 --> 00:01:6.250 It came out very well. 00:01:6.250 --> 00:01:9.730 People sometimes say to me, Why would we worried about paying a gay role. 00:01:9.740 --> 00:01:10.440 I wasn't.

It'll never, never sort of struck me that that was in any way difficult to a dangerous or controversial.

I remember the Venice Film Festival world premiere of the film I'm Sitting next to James will be on James Ivory and Ishmail Merchant in the front row of the sort of circle.

And at the end of the film, the audience really loved it and they stood up and they clapped for a long time.

And then the traditional Venice is that we, the filmmakers, stand up to accept the applause.

What I had for gotten is that my suit was much too tight and I done done it.

I'd undone my trousers quite early in the film, and I completely forgot to do them up.

So it did.

Look out that at the end of this gay film, I stand up, bow solemnly to everyone next to my co star with my trousers undone for weddings and funerals. 00:01:58.300 --> 00:02:0.320 I got the script and I thought, Well, there must be some mistake. 00:02:0.320 --> 00:02:5.050 My agent has sent me a good script, so I rang him up when I said, I think there's been a mistake you sent me a good script. 00:02:5.340 --> 00:02:7.310 They did that once before, actually with Jerry Maguire. 00:02:8.290 --> 00:02:10.410 And I said, I think is a mistake.

And they said Yes.

Sorry.

That is a mistake that was meant for Tom Cruise with four weddings.

It was meant for me.

And anyway, it was only an audition and I went along and, uh and I auditioned among the Muppets.

They were all around me.

And I remember thinking is going quite well.

Director looks like he likes me, but the writer really hates me.

That was Richard Curtis.

And he admits he did hate me.

He had a completely different conception of that part.

He'd written it in his own image.

He thought it was him.

Andi didn't think that it should be someone who he thought might get the girl.

He thought it should be more like him.

More kind of nerd.

Issue them glasses anyway.

He was He had his arm twisted.

You got the part?

The haircut became quite popular with some.

I always hated it.

A heck on the clothes.

The clothes are meant to be terrible from the haircuts men to be terrible. 00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:9.350 Shortly before we stopped shooting that film at one lunchtime, they said, Okay, everyone, all the crew into this room, we're going to show you some cut footage of what we shot so far was meant to be morale boosting on DDE.

It played Thio sepulchral silence.

Nothing's ever been worse except for owns, but Rohan's bit gotta laugh.

But the rest of it was just abominable on Dhe, well trudged back onto the set, broken men and women.

And we remained in that mood through finishing a film through editing it through the first look at it.

We just thought, Well, we're gonna have to go live in Peru.

And then they had this screening in Santa Monica in Los Angeles, and the audience loved it very on.

The speech back was very much written in convoluted syntax.

If I were to ask you, could you possibly ever see your way?

I mean, I'm not saying you would, but if you might, to forging in love with me, all that stuff, that's that's Richard writing that stuff.

And then Mike Newell, who directed a film, wanted even more messed up.

He said, It'll be a disaster if you look smooth, so, you know, mess up the lines and break them up and all that. 00:03:59.880 --> 00:04:0.550 So I did all that. 00:04:1.120 --> 00:04:6.790 And then when that farmers was a success, possibly subliminally, I let it bleed into other parts, which was a big mistake.

Sense and Sensibility.

Emma Thompson adapted Sense and Sensibility to go Ang Lee to direct it on Day offered me that part, and I saw the part of Edward Furrows and I said, He's a bit of a hesitant in love, Englishman.

I don't think I should do that again and they said, No, no, we know you could do it very differently So I said, All right then and then I did exactly the same Ang Lee was.

I think it was his first non Taiwanese film he didn't haven't mastered yet.

The art of how to talk to British insensitive British actors.

I remember doing my first scene with Emma, and I thought we were marvelous on.

We went up to Ang afterwards, sitting there at the Monitor, he said, Would you think what you think?

And he went very boring and that was very disheartening. 00:04:59.820 --> 00:05:4.290 And he famously said to Kate Winslet at the end of her first day of shooting, You will get better. 00:05:4.520 --> 00:05:5.200 So he was. 00:05:5.450 --> 00:05:13.800 He was scary but very charming thing till the Goodwill from Four Weddings was dissipating fast on.

Richard wrote this other film and it was based on us, something he actually happened to.

A friend of his who was a kind of very unfamous bloke living in Notting Hill, who happened to Ford in love with an extremely extremely world famous person who are not allowed to mention and she with him.

So.

But it was based on that.

Such an obvious idea for a film.

I can't believe it's never been made before.

Andi just It just seemed like it was gonna be dynamite.

And then they managed to persuade, you know, then biggest star in the world, Julia Roberts to do it.

And then we managed to not screw it up too badly, and it was obviously a megahit of that moment because it's really properly romantic, and that's the key to his films.

They're called dramatic comedies, and he actually is funny. 00:05:59.840 --> 00:06:5.910 The jokes are good, but what's special is that they are genuinely romantic because he's a romantic quarrel. 00:06:5.910 --> 00:06:6.240 Richard. 00:06:6.240 --> 00:06:8.640 It was always in love and being rejected. 00:06:8.800 --> 00:06:12.460 All that's really rather than fake.

That's kind of Hollywood romance.

Bridget Jones's Diary You know, Daniel Cleaver is quite sort of West London smooth, upper middle class home or why they came to me.

Maybe she thought I was right for a way through those fluffy films for Wedding Is Not Help.

It amused Richard and his gang, his wife, everyone that people thought I was that nice, fluffy character because they knew that I wasn't.

I was much closer to, for instance, Daniel Cleaver.

So I think it was fun for them to them slot me into a roller closer.

The Roomie about a Boy.

It's a novel by Nick Hornby and a really good one. 00:07:0.510 --> 00:07:0.890 Possibly. 00:07:0.890 --> 00:07:2.110 It's slightly basic himself. 00:07:2.110 --> 00:07:9.350 Maybe, but I've been tracking it for ages, and it was being made by different company, and that director didn't want me. 00:07:9.960 --> 00:07:16.450 And then it got shifted over to the Whites brothers, and I met them on.

We all got on really well, and they were.

They were making it, actually, with De Niro's company on Dhe, and I enjoyed that aspect of it.

I loved I loved hanging out with Bob.

We're going nightclubbing with him.

I felt very cool doing that.

The boy in about a boy needed to be someone nerdy, a loser, someone who's gonna get bullied.

And we found neck.

And he he was a great actor, but he was too good looking, so we gave him a shit haircut.

Terrible clothes.

But I see now the dishes triumphed.

He's a massive star.

Will in about the boys, North London.

He's more is more demotic, trendy.

Cool.

You know the clothes.

I had them work.

We're cool for that period.

It was a great part and transforming for me and what I've now realised, because you might not hear it or see it, but because I'm doing an accent in there and really, it's doing a performance that's much further away from me.

It was very releasing, and I'm much better when I'm doing that.

That's what to come home to me in the last five years.

Get away from yourself and actually better when you're when you're being someone else.

Moving night, them talking like them.

It takes care of the self consciousness problem.

Love, actually.

Well, the prime minister is really again written rather like Richard Curtis himself.

And so when I read this.

I thought this is gonna be a huge hit, but I don't really want to be that same character again.

I'll get crucified.

So I said to Richard, You know, you can't just be that guy from Notting.

Hear them from four Weddings is quite different.

Much tougher and harder.

Right?

Tougher, Harder.

Yes, yes, he is.

And then I just did exactly the same characters. 00:09:0.260 --> 00:09:5.040 Not, you know, the dancing scene was a terrible cloud hanging over the whole production for me. 00:09:5.040 --> 00:09:11.690 And you know, it's hard enough to dance if you're English and middle aged, even with six points inside you.

But by yourself.

So stone cold, sober at seven in the morning from a film crew to freak out, I was going to be misery.

Not only that, but I thought the scene had the capacity for being the most excruciating scene of ah, committed to celluloid, and there are plenty of people who still think it is.

But equally there wants people who seem to love it.

Cloud at this.

No, no one could.

It's kind of slightly about reincarnation, as I recall.

Or all my people are vile out of the blue, the very cool, which, as keeps will wanted me to play five or six parts in this extraordinary, the biggest, the most expensive independent film ever made.

I went to meet them to see if it was some kind of joke on me, and it didn't seem to be And I like them a lot. 00:09:59.730 --> 00:10:0.940 So I did it. 00:10:0.940 --> 00:10:5.810 And, you know, it seemed irresistible to player cannibal from the 23rd century. 00:10:6.100 --> 00:10:9.510 And then I I thought, Well, I'm bound to be good at that because that's so fascinating. 00:10:9.670 --> 00:10:15.760 And then I don't really think about it too much until I was suddenly on a mountain top in Germany, would like teeth and make up on my tattoos.

And I thought, I have no idea how to do this.

I had one of the White House gates saying, Come on, man, You look at him like you want.

You want to fucking eat him.

I don't have that face.

Give me a funny line.

I could do that.

Not sure I was very good as the Cannibal was quite good in some of the other parts.

And I think all actors like to be evil.

I think because it's it smells true.

I've got this horrible feeling 9 57 That we are evil and that our veneer of civilization and niceness is very, very thin.

So when you're allowed to be your true evil self just smells right.

Feels right.

It's fun to play in.

Florence Foster Jenkins.

I am half good, half bad. 00:10:56.010 --> 00:11:3.690 I'm a marvelously supportive husband and sort of manager to Meryl Street, increasingly deranged amateur singer. 00:11:4.240 --> 00:11:8.750 But you're supposed to think, I think people did think, What's his real motive? 00:11:8.750 --> 00:11:9.790 Does he really love her? 00:11:9.800 --> 00:11:12.080 Or is he in it for himself on dhe?

Hopefully, people you think both simultaneously.

I certainly thought he was both, which I think is also very human.

We can be loving, unselfish and deeply narcissistic and selfish simultaneously.

And that was that was what he wants.

Barrels, a very good singer in real life, and probably that's why she was able to be bad so well.

So she would sing badly.

And when she first demonstrated that one of the read throughs, you know, I just thought, Well, that's genius and it was incredibly funny, really makes you laugh.

But like all funny things, as you repeat them, you laugh a bit less.

This is to be expected.

Jeanne.

She knew that.

And so sometimes if I was on camera watching her and she was off camera, she just dial it up.

Double it toe screwed me out.

Make me laugh.

It was very good of them. 00:11:59.800 --> 00:12:2.600 Back to, like play actors or people in show business. 00:12:2.610 --> 00:12:4.030 They think it'll be fascinating. 00:12:4.040 --> 00:12:6.260 Actually, the world hates actors quite rightly. 00:12:7.120 --> 00:12:10.520 The key to that character, funnily enough, is the same key.

Thio.

The next film I did Paddington to narcissism.

They're all narcissists.

Don't like it get off of these parts.

But anyway, that's incredibly human that really were just obsessed with looking out for ourselves.

And it was certainly the key to two Bayfield in Florence Foster Jenkins.

He was a crap actor, the real Bayfield, or at least very moderate, very mediocre, on yet dazzled by the live night.

It is the limelight limelight, and he had this.

Therefore, the same disease has poor Florence Foster Jenkins, who was the world's worst singer.

I just wanted to be on stage.

Can be you or everyone looking at it.

Do you meet these people? 00:12:46.650 --> 00:13:9.800 They are very common in life anyway, So that was definitely the curse of Phoenix Buchanan, Paddington to two poor king, who wrote and directed it likes to tell this story that he wrote a part of him washed up narcissistic old actor called it Hugh and sent it to me first. 00:13:9.860 --> 00:13:11.640 They did actually change the name and they said it to me.

Perhaps that attack, but nevertheless, the letter that came with the scripted say, we've written this narcissistic monster of a washed up actor and we thought of you.

It was very difficult to get past that letter.

But then it wasn't funny script.

And I thought I could do that part.

That film Paddington, you know, isn't there when you're shooting it, Obviously, because he's created in the computer afterwards.

Did you have a choice?

A choice?

Every time I was doing a scene with the bear, I could have stick with the bear's head on the end, which was actually a very sinister thing.

I didn't even like looking at it.

It looked like a kind of warning to bears.

Don't come into this area.