"I went to Russia in 1990 to make this wonderful film, The Assassin of the Tsar, and it was still very closed, even though it was glasnost and Gorbachev was in power. I was driving with my wife to the next location to Vladimir, which is an old capital of Russia, and we went past these missile silos. I turned to my wife and said: If we'd have been doing this a year ago, we'd have been shot for seeing this."
"It's been suggested by conspiracy theorists that Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landings. Are you disappointed that he cast Neil Armstrong instead of you? No. I'd be better off playing Louis Armstrong! It's been put about that he directed the moon landings, which well, we now live in a world of fake news. It's so incredible, the bullshit. The AI on YouTube is mindboggling, isn't it? I suppose it could have been anyone in that spacesuit. One of my favourite Kubrick movies is 2001."
"How did you get Rupert Murdoch's Aussie accent right when you played him in 2019's Bombshell? By listening to the gentleman many times. It's interesting because he's an Aussie via London landing up in New York, so he's got a bit of everything. I don't usually copy somebody, but I had to on this. They even gave me the same great jowls as him."
The actor admits he would be a poor spy because he loves to gossip. He recalls traveling to Russia in 1990 to film The Assassin of the Tsar and notes that the country remained closed despite glasnost and Gorbachev. While driving to Vladimir he passed missile silos and joked that a year earlier they would have been shot for seeing them. He dismisses Kubrick moon-landing conspiracies, laments fake news and AI-manipulated video, praises 2001 as poetic, observes Kubrick's control over actors, names Malcolm Gladwell as a favorite Malcolm, and describes preparing Rupert Murdoch's accent by close listening and mimicry.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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