Ben Mendel­sohn: ​‘The hard­est things to act are fuck­ing and fighting’

LWLies caught up with the won­der­ful­ly foul-mouthed Aussie char­ac­ter actor who chews the bru­tal­ist scenery in vio­lent Oedi­pal prison yarn, Starred Up. Mendel­sohn also talks of his work with Ter­ence Mal­ick, his con­cep­tion of The Method, and his worst ever audition.

LWLies: So you don’t like to watch your films, is that right? Have you seen Starred Up?

Mendel­sohn: No, as a gen­er­al rule of thumb, no. I stopped a while back.

That Jack O’Connell’s going to be quite the star.

I know he’s been a star here for a num­ber of years, in a kind of nascent form, but you can real­ly feel him spring­ing for­ward with this one. He’s doing that big old Angeli­na film, and that’s a huge stu­dio num­ber. They’re onto a good horse, they know what they’re doing.

It’s such a fear­less performance.

And that’s it. That’s the thing about what Jack’s done – he went for it. You get a sense with him that what­ev­er the work he’s doing, there’s this thing going on behind all those lad­dish tropes. It’s what makes him real­ly fuck­ing watch­able. He was real­ly brave. He went for it.

You’ve spo­ken a lot about the cre­ative input you had on The Place Beyond the Pines. Is that some­thing that hap­pens on a lot of films?

Nah, it’s dif­fer­ent hors­es for dif­fer­ent cours­es in terms of that. Most times all you’re doing is play­ing the fuck­ing mate­r­i­al any­way. You’re doing what­ev­er the scene needs. On some­thing like The Dark Knight Ris­es, you get there, you shoot and off you go. With Place Beyond the Pines, we start­ed it. We rehearsed, we had the time, we were kick­ing off. It’s not so much that I have any input, that was a case of Derek hav­ing writ­ten some­thing and gone, ​“I dun­no about whether I like what I wrote back then, maybe we’ll do this instead…” I don’t come up with a bunch of ideas, what I tend to try and do is pick some­thing out of what’s been giv­en to me. That’s what I think the job’s about. I don’t have a wealth of ideas, but I do try to keep an eye on what’s being talked about, that’s all.

Do you find what input you do have is tak­en more seri­ous­ly when you get to a cer­tain lev­el of success?

Yeah… ish… And again, it depends. What you’ve always got to boil it down to is that if you’re gonna go and do The Cher­ry Orchard, you’re not gonna fuck­ing change a word, because it’s not on you. You’re just gonna do it the best you can. You don’t fuck with what it is, you just try for the best. Between the lines of get­ting a job and try­ing to pay your bills and that place where you’ve got a few options you can choose between, it’s all the same job at the end of the day.

Are you still audi­tion­ing now?

Not real­ly, not for a lit­tle while. I mean with Bat­man, Chris Nolan hadn’t seen any­thing I’d done, so that was off a tape. Fuck­ing Andrew’s film, that fucking…

Killing Them Softly?

Fuck­ing thank you. That one I had to fuck­ing audi­tion for.

Real­ly? I thought you guys were mates?

Exact­ly. See, they still fuck­ing try it on… And I must say, the pre­lude to the act and the bits you’ve got­ta do after… The audi­tion­ing and the fuckin’… I dun­no, tra­di­tion­al­ly they’re things I don’t shine at…

What’s the worst audi­tion you can remember?

God. Look, the worst ones were always the Amer­i­can ones, where I would just go in and not do the scene at all, but I’d say to the per­son who was direct­ing that I was try­ing to send a mes­sage through… Like, lis­ten, not this one, but there’s anoth­er one you’re doing… Now if you want me for that one… You’d just end up with real­ly bemused cast­ing direc­tors who didn’t call you back in for any­thing else. I’ve had some fuck­ing shock­ers here years ago. I had one… Fuck… I can’t even remem­ber what it’s fuck­ing called… Waterworld?

With Kevin Costner?

No, not that one.

Water­land?

Is that by the guy that did Paris Trout? What­ev­er. I did one for him that was pret­ty fuck­ing unim­pres­sive. I mean, I didn’t think it was unim­pres­sive. He did though. What­ev­er… Have you seen Fiery Hawk?

No, I haven’t.

Okay, go on YouTube and watch Fiery Hawk. That’s the best audi­tion piece that I’ve ever seen. It’s a skit. That and Good Day Mr Kubrick. That was from when actors could first put them­selves on tape, back in 1982 or when­ev­er it was. That was for Full Met­al Jack­et. Take a look at both of those, go on your lit­tle YouTube thing, but par­tic­u­lar­ly Fiery Hawk. They fuck­ing nailed it. Gen­er­al­ly I tell younger actors… y’know… don’t.

So how do you approach character?

Here’s what I think’s hap­pened, if I may? I’m gonna give you my very brief, con­densed idea. Stanislavsky came along in reac­tion to peo­ple being par­tic­u­lar­ly stiff and for­malised, very blocky and what­ev­er. But then, it sort of had its high point and its low point at around about the same moment. In the ear­ly ​’80s. It comes to its full flour­ish­ing, then imme­di­ate­ly runs out of puff. I think it has its place as this lit­tle spe­cial secret, and of course that varies from actor to actor, but I do think that out­side of a very spe­cial­ist sphere it has any bear­ing whatsoever.

What’s end­ed up hap­pen­ing is that peo­ple feel like they’ve got­ta, in some way, touch the idol of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, which leads to the kind of shoe moment you’re talk­ing about. It’s become some­thing that’s there to be con­sumed along with the film itself, it’s like one of the spe­cial extras on the DVD. I think it’s start­ed to over­whelm it. Any par­tic­u­lar actor has got their bits and pieces and the way they do stuff, but the prob­lem with going on too much about char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and this, that and the oth­er is, you look at any actor and you’re always gonna see sim­i­lar­i­ties in the way we do things. The way we move, the way our faces move, that nev­er changes, but there is a very def­i­nite end. I can under­stand some­one talk­ing about it in a dra­ma class, but I do think it gets overwrought.

So what’s your thing then?

My thing is about the rela­tion­ships between the humans gen­er­al­ly. Most of my ener­gy is spent try­ing to get com­fort­able on the set, try­ing to make it a less hos­tile envi­ron­ment, and then just try­ing to have some­thing that actu­al­ly hap­pens. Some sort of exchange. You can feel it, it’s like a wave, but that’s the exhaust­ing part of it too. It’s access­ing feel­ings and all that shit, that’s the hard work.

So do you find those feel­ings easy to turn on and off?

The main thing is you just want to try and get com­fort­able with the oth­er peo­ple. The hard­est things to do in terms of that are fuck­ing and fight­ing, both of those require both par­tic­i­pants to feel like they know what’s going to hap­pen. The hard­est work was with Scoot [McNairy, on Killing Them Soft­ly]. We spent a long time doing all that, get­ting to the point of famil­iar­i­ty where we could fuck­ing hate each other.

What about with Jack on Starred Up?

Well, that was more about know­ing what we had to do, and keep­ing a dis­tance. There was one thing I did do, which I thought was a good idea, which hap­pened towards the end of the film. That last scene we have togeth­er. It was a dif­fi­cult day, a shit day. We were way behind. So I went some­where that day, because they were fuck­ing around with the vibe on set. I think you’ve got to try and pro­tect the space, that’s what I think, and that changes from actor to actor, what that’s about. For me, it’s usu­al­ly at it’s best when everyone’s hav­ing that easy-going feel­ing. That’s how I like it.

You said, talk­ing about Ani­mal King­dom, that you could be quite chal­leng­ing some­times. What did you mean by that?

David and I had known each oth­er before that film. That was a very par­tic­u­lar… that was when I think I first start­ed to feel that there was a space that I could and should take up. That was a lot to do with James [Frecheville] because he hadn’t done any­thing before, and it’s only me steal­ing tricks from oth­er peo­ple that I’d seen and I thought it would be a good idea. That came from doing The New World where Q’Orianka and Col­in were kept apart to try and get some kind of exchange going on between them that wasn’t forced. That was all, I just tried to do that with James on that. He’s actu­al­ly, con­trary to what the film feels like, he’s a very… he comes across as a very con­fi­dent young man, and I didn’t want him… I just didn’t want him in my space.

Speak­ing of The New World, what was your first meet­ing with Mal­ick like?

That was… it was essen­tial­ly just at a din­ner table, through Andrew Dominik. They’d been talk­ing about doing some­thing for a while, so it was just a din­ner. It was a real­ly shit­ty work peri­od, there’d been noth­ing hap­pen­ing, and he offered me a job. But I think I played more of a crew func­tion on that film.

What’s he like?

Oh, he’s fuck­ing great. He’s not like any­one else, and he’s very much a one-off in terms of a direc­tor. It’s very unusu­al to meet some­one who… Ter­ry comes at it from out­side the typ­i­cal crew­ing expe­ri­ence, and peo­ple who don’t come up and through a crew can have very dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions and a very dif­fer­ent way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing to the machine of the crew, and those who come up through it. Terry’s not like any­one else and he’s also very pri­vate, and that’s not some­thing I think that any­one with any regard for him is gonna want to tramp on too much… Look, I’ve been pret­ty fortunate.

Can you talk about How to Catch a Mon­ster at all?

Yep. I can say that I have no idea where it’s at. I can tell you that we went out into the wilds of Detroit and that work­ing with Benoit, the DoP, and Ryan… Look, touch wood. I think we got something.

Who do you play?

He’s Dave. Dave is a sort of a banker-cum-vaude­ville-entre­pre­neur. Not vaude­ville, more Grand Guig­nol. It’s very much a film about the preda­tor mov­ing into the fam­i­ly and socio-eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment. The wolves, as it were, that are com­ing in to tear it apart. It could be beau­ti­ful. Who knows? Who knows until we see it?

Any idea where it’s at?

No idea. No idea. They’ve got their own thing going on. Ryan’s some­where in the world cut­ting away, but that’s all I know.