On ‘Made In Chelsea’ there are cameras in my face and some days I think, ‘I can’t go to filming today,’ but I just have to dry my tears and pull myself together.
The first television show I did was a production called ‘The Pacific,’ which was this huge HBO series with an insane budget and 300 extras and a crew of 150. We were filming out in the middle of the wilderness in my hometown. I was so green. I didn’t understand anything that was happening.
We just started filming ‘Stray Dog’ really close to the finishing of ‘Winter’s Bone,’ down in Southern Missouri.
I was filming in Roscrea in Co Tipperary. I had great fun watching monks in the monastery there making bread. They even offered me a job as their main baker. One of them said I would make a good monk, but I told him there was a slight problem because I was married.
Whenever I am not filming and not required to travel with work, I spend all my downtime in Scotland.
I’m used to doing U.K. indie films, like, six weeks of filming, tops.
A local newspaper where we were filming in Boston called me the Justin Bieber of Canada. I don’t think they realized Justin Bieber is from Canada. I hope someday I can just be the Liam James of Canada.
Look, people have been filming fights since the beginning of time.
College is something I’ve always said I wanted to do, but you’re going there to get a piece of paper that says you can get a job, but if I’m already working steadily and doing good work, it makes you question your priorities. Right now, I’m in my own film college: filming a TV show.
I kind of always think my work is unfilmable, and when I meet people who are interested in filming it, I’m always stunned.
When I went back home to Seattle after filming ‘Dune’ in Mexico, I thought, ‘Did this really happen?’
Doing the Muppet Show you forget about conventional filming.
I’m a sucker for doing something fun. If somebody wants to pay me to learn how to fly a plane or be a better golfer, that certainly would be a plus – or if it’s filming in Tahiti.
When filming videos you spend hours getting ready and hours waiting around.
I love filming in London. In New York, every street is familiar because you have seen it in a movie. They mythologise their own city. You’re forever trying to get down streets that have been blocked off because of shooting. In London, they don’t put up with it; they’re grumpy.
I did ‘The Grey,’ and it was very intense and emotional because we’re in the wilderness, and it was always 30 degrees. You kind of lose your sense of reality in the fact that you’re filming a movie.
Filming with Laura Prepon, Taylor Schilling, Natasha Lyonne, it just blew my mind.
Certainly in the theatre, you never have to get up before 10 A.M., and when filming, though you do have to get up terribly early, you usually get to lie down a lot during the working day. I thought my semi-bedridden existence was a choice. But now I think that actually, in fact, I must always have been depressed.
When I was filming, I imagined that Legolas was a meditative character who was very thoughtful and had a certain amount of depth to him. I started working on trying to find this focus that Legolas has, which wasn’t really like me.
Scorsese has very defined ideas about how to shoot a scene, and he’s an editor himself – we cut together. It means he’s constantly thinking about my problems while he’s filming.
There was never any career plan. When ‘Red Dwarf’ started I thought we were doing a curious little sitcom on BBC2, I didn’t think I was becoming an actor. I didn’t see that 21 years later I’d still be talking about it, let alone filming a new one. For me everything’s always been an accident.
‘Bloodlight and Bami’ is all verite. The director Sophie Fiennes began filming Ms. Jones in the mid-2000s and simply observes her on stage and off. She follows her home to Jamaica, where the diva mellows, almost unconsciously, into a daughter, sister, and parishioner.
Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little – of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.
New Mexico was such a strange place; it was like filming on Mars.
Filming typically takes a bit away from the climbing experience, since you have to stop all the time and shoot.
If you’re writing, it means getting up and writing all day, and if you’re filming, it’s getting up and filming all day. I get up, go to my computer, write, turn it off, and go to bed. That is a Clarkson day.
I’d just got back from filming my role as Flo in ‘Kidnap & Ransom’ when I got the news that Channel 4 had re-commissioned ‘Fresh Meat,’ so I think it was the first Christmas I could actually relax knowing that I had three months’ work sorted. As an actor, that’s always a good feeling.
When I was 14 years old, I went on location to film ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ for five months, and my high school was not happy. My job meant an increased workload for teachers, and they were not equipped to handle a ‘non-traditional’ student. So, during filming, they kicked me out.
I had no interest in filming. I sometimes went to the studios with my dad, but it was slow-going; it was boring to watch. I always ended up in the rehearsal hall watching the dancing. That’s what I liked to do.
I saw ‘Brokeback Mountain’ in a packed house in Chelsea, New York, when I was filming a Bollywood film there. Chelsea, being a predominately gay neighbourhood, had the most euphoric reaction. I saw couples holding hands and crying at the end. It was the most heartening viewing I have ever been to.
In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for ‘Scientific American Frontiers.’
In an average week I’ll be testing recipes, doing a voice-over, filming and writing. I cram everything in Monday to Friday because I refuse to give up the weekend.
Ideally, it’s great to gain inspiration from the script, but when filming starts, characters and their journeys can change.
Whilst filming ‘Jurassic Park,’ I watched a hurricane approaching the beach in Hawaii. My co-worker Laura Dern and I thought we might die, but we managed to laugh about it later.
Filming is long – you get very tired, and your skin breaks out and you get lumps and bumps. It’s easier if you’re allowed to have bags under your eyes.
Ninety per cent of the times, filming is a cakewalk. You start it, shoot it and release it without any major hassles. Then comes along one film that gets stuck or faces unusual problems.
I rent houses in LA when I’m filming. I find the isolation there terrifying. There’s nowhere to go, there’s nowhere to be with people. I’m not a beach bunny.
That period, doing ‘Angels in America’ in ’94 and then filming with ‘Basquiat’ in ’95, those were gateway years for me as an artist. Two gateways, one into the film industry and one into the world of theater, each formative to me in different, equally essential ways.
Within the process of filming, unexpected situations occur.
Diet Coke is the only way I get through filming because I get so tired.
I used to enjoy the spotlight. If I had a day off from filming, I didn’t know what to do. Now I enjoy my family time so much, there is this sense of, if it all went away, and I was just a mom, I would love my life.
We spent four days filming in a helicopter. I had never seen London from that viewpoint – you get a sense of how big it is and how easy it is to get lost. There was one day when we couldn’t find Brick Lane: we spent 25 minutes looking and then realised it was directly below us.
Sometimes when you film, you can be in a bit of a bubble, and then suddenly when you finish filming, it’s taken out of your hands – it’s not yours anymore, and we all love it so much that we feel quite protective of it.
I can only go places because I know that I can go away from them, if that makes sense. I like the gypsy lifestyle that filming affords.
After studying the subject for years, watching countless YouTube videos of Scientology handlers filming critics and journalists, it felt amazing to be on the receiving end myself: I felt like I’d been blooded.
It’s nice that I can do what I want with my hair when I’m not filming.
When I was filming in Budapest for ITV’s ‘Titanic,’ I realised I’d never been to the ballet before so decided to see a production of ‘Giselle.’ I went on my own. As it was my first ballet, it was a very bizarre and interesting experience but very enjoyable.
It’s so hard to put your journey apart from the story line, when you’ve lived through it yourself or know what’s a spoiler and what’s not, especially when I wasn’t a fan of ‘The Witcher’ before I started filming.
Days are long when you’re filming, so I catch up on sleep during breaks to avoid looking tired.
The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There’s a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.
Some of the most fun I’ve ever had has been filming ‘Bert the Conqueror.’ As a stand-up comedian, I love putting this humorous spin on travel, and I get the added bonus of using all these wild adventures in my act.
It’s not just about filming, you go to awards and interviews too. I enjoy all of it, even learning my lines!
