“I WAS NERVOUS GOING INTO IT”

Dane DeHaan is Valerian

When you realised that Cara Delevingne would be cast as Valerian’s companion, Laureline, what did you think?

I was excited. She impressed me all the way through. It’s not like I knew exactly what to expect from her as an actress. But she really made the job a pleasure. Every day that I saw her, she lit up and I was super-happy to see her. In that way, it was easy to establish the Valerian-Laureline dynamic.

There was a lot of blue-screen involved in the making of the film. Did you get to see sketches of the aliens before you started filming?

Yeah, there were mock-ups of the aliens, digital renderings, and there was always pre-viz of what we were shooting – renderings of the worlds. And also just Luc Beeson’s imagination. We weren’t in the dark the whole time. We had as many tools as possible.

This is really your first heroic lead in a big-budget movie. Were you nervous when you got the role?

I was just excited about it. Sure, I was nervous going into it, but Luc is so giddy about it and excited about the whole process, and he has been the whole time… so that just took so much pressure off me.

Has making Valerian And The City Of A

Thousand Planets with a director like Luc Besson given you a taste to do more big scale movies?

Well, I liked doing this, but I like making small stuff too. I think the goal is to challenge myself in different ways, and continue to do the big ones and the small ones and the medium ones. And just do the ones that appeal to me and feel like the right thing to do. James Mottram