Interviews: Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Danny Boyle

Another website I write for, The Cinema Source, has lately come out with a number of interviews from actors and directors that are soon to be Oscar-nominated. So, yes, since they are relevant to this site, I figured I'd do a little cross-promotion and highlight them here.

Sean Penn on playing Harvey Milk:

"It was clear, at least, in terms of, for a lack of a better term, character choice that the most exciting version of Harvey Milk to me is Harvey Milk. If you see that documentary, he’s an electric, warm guy. So you just reach and reach and reach. You never assume you’re going to get all the way there, but you figure that with the help of a director and a screenwriter and all the things that a movie is, that you can get the spirit of it out there the best you can." Full Interview

Kate Winslet on playing a former Nazi in The Reader:

"The thing for me about playing Hannah that was the hardest aside from all of the obvious things—the dialect and the aging and the illiteracy of her—the hardest thing was really hanging on to my own instincts about who she was because with something like this, everyone had an opinion. She meant something different for everyone...You don’t have to forgive it, you don’t have to sympathize, you just have to understand why those things happen to that person and why they behave in the way that they do." Full Interview

Danny Boyle on directing Slumdog Millionaire:

"With Slumdog Millionaire, my agent only said it was a movie about Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and I thought, doesn't sound great. I only read it because I knew the screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy, who wrote The Full Monty. And about 15 or 20 pages in you know that you're going to be able to make an amazing film out of it. I was one page into this and I was certain I would make it. It's like with Trainspotting. I read the first line of that book -- 'The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling' -- and I thought, I have to make this movie." Full Interview

And Boyle on getting nominated for an Oscar in particular:

"It's amazing to have the platform to let people know about the film. We're in that award season slot now so people are going to talk about it. Otherwise we never thought about that. The idea that we would get a nomination was not in our minds at all. It's fantastic to even consider it. It would be great to have one, but it isn't why we made the film."

I also recently interviewed Marisa Tomei and Darren Aronofsky from The Wrestler, so I'll let you know when those features go up.

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Recent Entries:
· African-American Film Critics Go with The Dark Knight
· Interviews: Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Danny Boyle
· Ebert's Not Done with Lists

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