total Film interview
Is there a more reliable actor than Mark Strong? We catch him to chat spies and supervillains.
YOU’VE GOT TO BRING YOUR A-GAME TO THE TABLE EVERY TIME, WHATEVER IT IS YOU’RE DOING – AND HOPE THAT EVERYBODY ELSE DOES THE SAME.
From Robin Hood to RocknRolla, from Kick-Ass to Kingsman, Mark Strong’s relentless rise has seen him morph from bit-parts to big-time player. Headlining gritty new show Deep State – and about to reboot his evil side in DC’s Shazam! – the ballsy British star is ready to show Hollywood how it’s done.
Anavy-clad Mark Strong pops his head around the library door of the Covent Garden Hotel. “Back in a minute,” he grins, his tan brogues spinning on their heels for a quick loo break. He’s on press duties for his new show Deep State, an eight-part espionage drama for Fox in which he plays Max Easton, a former Black Ops spy who gets dragged back into the world he left behind to avenge the death of his estranged son. Homeland meets The Night Manager? It’s got watercooler written all over it.
Bladder relieved, Strong returns to nestle in his armchair – his natty trilby, sunglasses and phone perched by its side. He’s off to Soho House straight after for a pre-Sundance screening of Stockholm, a new indie about a real-life bank robbery that he stars in with Ethan Hawke. Then it’s just a few days back home with his wife, producer Liza Marshall, and their two boys, before heading to America to start filming the DCEU movie Shazam!, playing the villainous Doctor Thaddeus Sivana.
Villains are something Strong excels at. Since his Bafta-nominated turn as gangster Harry Starks in 2004 TV drama The Long Firm, he’s twiddled his moustache in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (as Lord Blackwood), Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (as Prince’s John’s henchman, Sir Godfrey), Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass (as crimelord Frank D’Amico), and Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (as the insane spaceship captain Pinbacker).
Yet the truth is, Strong is far more diverse than this list suggests. Look at his head of the Jordanian Secret Service in Scott’s Body Of Lies or his Arabic mercenary in Syriana – casting that Strong attributes partly to his European heritage. Born in Islington, and educated at a British boarding school, his mother was Austrian and his father – who left the family soon after Strong’s birth – was Italian.
It’s more than just his Mediterranean looks, though. “When I started out, I wanted to play things that were as far removed from me as possible,” he explains. After a detour towards law at university, even spending a year in Munich learning German, he switched to acting, studying drama at Royal Holloway. It led to a decade in theatre, before he got swept into TV – initially in the seminal mid-’90s TV drama Our Friends In The North alongside Daniel Craig.
After The Long Firm got him noticed by Guy Ritchie, who cast him in Revolver, Strong was set, with Ritchie’s producer-turned-director Matthew Vaughn also casting him in Stardust, Kick-Ass and as the Scot-spy Merlin in the Kingsman films. There were flops – notably Green Lantern – but Strong is as durable as his name suggests. Better still, he’s been on call for serious drama too – Zero Dark Thirty, The Imitation Game and more.
Now 54, and moving into producing with his wife on the forthcoming show Temple, Strong has also proved his chops on stage – winning a Tony nod for his stunning turn in the recent Arthur Miller adaptation A View From The Bridge. What’s more, even with that distinct bald head of his, he’s not quite on the level of Tom Cruise instant recognition just yet. Give it time, though. Starring in Deep State and Shazam! might well fix that…
From Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Body Of Lies to Kingsman and now Deep State, you’ve done a lot of roles set in the world of espionage. Is that something that fascinates you?
I suppose naturally, that world lends itself to drama and it lends itself to conflicted characters. They’re all pretending. There’s something going on, on the surface, and there’s much more going on underneath. That seems to me to be that genre; the world of spies demands that.
Have you met many spies in your time?
I’ve never met anyone! I’ve never met any of them! There was a screening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at MI5. I wasn’t available that day, I don’t know why, but a couple of the guys went down there, and they all turned up to watch the film. I’d love to have been there – just to get a sense of who works for MI5.
How would you describe your Deep State character, Max Easton?
He joined MI5 and the Secret Service for the right reasons. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to protect his country, to be a hero. But then he was asked to do things that conflicted with his morality and he realised that wasn’t a world he could sustain, which is why he got out. And then he starts a new family. He’s a good guy with a good soul, but he’s drawn back in to do things he doesn’t want to do. He’s conflicted, that’s the point, and they’re the most interesting characters to play.
Would you say the show is a good mix of action and emotion?
I think that’s fair. The whole attempt was to marry that world of the conspiracy thriller, of action that we know and recognise – the world of Homeland if you like – with ‘How does it affect the real people involved?’ It opens the window on
their emotions, on their moral, ethical choices, and how they are with one another and how that affects them.
The violence is quite shocking. The fingernail-pulling sequence is particularly nasty…
Matthew [Parkhill, Deep State’s creator] and I are big fans of Syriana. There’s a scene in that where I pull out George Clooney’s fingernails. We love that film. It’s a conscious nod to it. There was a scene that was written that was similar and we just decided… we love that film so [the show] occupies the same sort of world as Syriana. There are other moments too. That was our Bible – that world, the world of Syriana.
You were in the scene when Clooney injured his back, right?
Yeah, yeah… and I met him years later. I thought I was responsible. He was tied to a chair, the camera was on the floor and he fell sideways into the shot onto the floor, and that’s when he did his back. And I was punching him! I met him years later and said, “I’m really sorry. I know you did your back [in].” He said, “It was nothing to do with you, I’ve never blamed you. It was my choice to do it.” And it was. He wanted it as authentic as possible. So he’s only got himself to blame!
You’ve never injured yourself on set?
No, touch wood! I have done some pretty outrageous, outlandish action things. I remember once on Oliver Twist, in the pouring rain on a night shoot, I had to climb a wall… It was a false wall and a piece of it literally just came away in my hands. [Roman] Polanski, who was directing, was absolutely furious. I grabbed this turret, and fell about 10 feet onto my back. But I was younger then and much more bouncy, so I was fine!
You didn’t start acting until university. What were your interests in school?
Sport. A lot of basketball, I swam for my county, I played a lot of rugby. So that was my thing at school. I was in one play for a gag because my friend was in it, but even then I didn’t really get the bug or didn’t want to be an actor. It was just this epiphany I had later on.
I’d grown up without a family really. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I don’t have anybody to emulate or teach anything to. I didn’t have a father telling me how it should be, because he wasn’t around. So I grew up looking out. Boarding school as well, from six to 18. So I was constantly evaluating what people were like. I think that naturally bled into – I’m sure psychologically if I look back – why I liked the idea of creating character.
I pretty much spent all of my young life trying to identify what made people tick and who I trusted, why they behaved like that. I had to literally piece together behaviour, because I wasn’t coming from a family environment.
When you were at university, you intended to be a lawyer. What switched you to acting?
It was the knowledge that the law wasn’t for me. I wasn’t enjoying it, it was too dry, I didn’t get it, and I didn’t want to spend my time doing it. At the time I was doing that, I got in with a bunch of people doing
I SPENT ALL OF MY YOUNG LIFE TRYING TO IDENTIFY WHAT MADE PEOPLE TICK
theatre workshops. And it was much more physical, and it was about inventing character and play. I just thought, “That’s way more interesting.” I got the bug, as simple as that. I got the bug to do acting. Of course everyone thought I was insane, that it was a ridiculous choice to make, but I couldn’t give it up – even though I spent 10 years in the theatre earning no money at all, but that’s all I wanted to do. I came out of drama school in ’87, and Our Friends In The North was mid-’90s, so up until that point I’d mainly been doing theatre – at the National, RSC – playing different characters.
Our Friends In The North had an incredible cast, including Daniel Craig and Christopher Eccleston. Did it feel like you were all destined to be stars?
Well, Chris had done Let Him Have It. The rest of us were all up and coming, which is probably why we were on the casting lists in the first place. I had no idea when we were making it what sort of thing it was. I wasn’t aware of the business enough to evaluate it – what’s it going to do for us? I was just really happy, having done a lot of theatre, to be involved in a show that took a year to film, and to be able to age from 20 to 50. I thought it was a really great acting job. Dan and I became firm friends, and I had a great time doing it. It was a bit like doing a play on film because of the time span.
Given your history with spy dramas, he’s never managed to get you in a Bond film, then?
[laughs] Well, y’know… I’m not sure how fondly Barbara Broccoli would take it if he literally picked up the phone and went, “Listen, Mark’s in! He’s playing the baddie!”
The Long Firm was the show that got you noticed by Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn. How did that play out?
Well, Guy saw The Long Firm and he liked that character and he just wanted to get me in Revolver. That’s what happens. Once I’d worked with Guy, Matthew was probably intrigued and he decided I was right for a part in Stardust. I don’t want to speak for them, but they started working with a lot of non-actors in their first films. When they started to encounter actors who’d trained, they realised we could bring stuff to the table and also it made the whole process a lot easier – you get better results. It’s as simple as that. Whatever it is I was doing they liked… and we got on as friends as well. That always makes it easier. I’ve often had that happen. Ridley [Scott] cast me in Body Of Lies and then Robin Hood; Danny Boyle – I’d worked with on TV, he then cast me on Sunshine. I’m just talking to John McDonagh [who I worked with on The Guard] about a film he might do in 2019. So I do have quite a good record of working with people again.
Which of the Ritchie/Vaughn films have you most enjoyed?
Revolver was great because it was a brilliant character – Sorter, the geeky guy in glasses who stutters but never misses! It was a great construct, that character. And then RocknRolla was great because I was knocking around with Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, Gerry Butler, Thandie Newton, that crowd. We all had a lot of fun together, making that. It was a cheeky film and it came out really well, I thought. And then to make the leap up with him, from that smaller indie world to the juggernaut that was Sherlock Holmes was fascinating for me. It was great that he took me with him and gave me a shot at a big studio picture. So that trajectory I’ve had with Guy was amazing. But then I started getting calls from Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher, who were Matthew’s friends, going, ‘He’s thinking of you for his new film Stardust.’ But he didn’t ring me for ages. Eventually I went in and met him and Stardust came out really well. I think it’s an incredibly underrated movie. Then to take me onto Kick-Ass, to play a completely different part – from the Prince of Stormhold to Frank D’Amico, the coke dealer mafia guy, was wonderful.
That’s what you want as an actor, to play different parts. We nearly did X-Men: First Class together; I speak German and the part [Sebastian Shaw] that Kevin Bacon played, Matthew was up for me doing that but the studio baulked and said, “He’s played too many bad guys recently,” which I probably had at the time.
Is that something you’ve since become conscious of?
Well, I’d had a run of Frank D’Amico, Godfrey in Robin Hood and Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, so in the space of a year there was three bad guys, so I totally get it.
I DO HAVE QUITE A GOOD RECORD OF WORKING WITH PEOPLE AGAIN
I haven’t done it for a while, but Shazam! I’m going back to playing one.
Indeed. You’re playing Sivana, “an evil bastard”, I think you’ve said!
Yes, I just said that in passing but now that’s the headline!
Green Lantern was your earlier DC movie, which flopped. Is this a chance for you to have another go in the comicbook universe?
Definitely. I was definitely conscious of that. Green Lantern’s Sinestro was meant to go evil in the second one. The final frame of the first film is him trying on the yellow ring and his whole costume going yellow and that was when he went evil. So I was really looking forward to that. The film didn’t do as well as they expected… so it never got made. So I was definitely conscious that Sivana is almost like the next stage that I wasn’t able to take. I went back from the read-through [on Shazam!] and there’s Geoff Johns and Adam Schlagman, guys who run DC. It was great to see them again. Now I get the chance to really turn nasty!
How do you deal with failures like Green Lantern?
It’s always really disappointing. I used to be a lot more affected by it when I was younger. Before you have a sense of how long you can have a career for, each disappointment was really intense. Now I realise it’s incredibly difficult to make a movie. There are so many elements that go into making it successful – any one of them can scupper it, and you have no idea what that is. You can make a brilliant movie and the marketing doesn’t deliver. I felt Stardust suffered from that – great movie but it wasn’t marketed or delivered in the right way. It could’ve been a massive hit. Nowadays, it’s much easier… it’s the work I’m into.
What was it like working with Robert De Niro on Stardust? Terrifying?
Totally. I was like, “Oh my God, it’s De Niro” and he did that face [squints a very good De Niro impression] and shook my hand. Walking into that room, when he has a little love-heart that he’s painted on his face, with a big dress on and dancing to the can-can, that was quite a surreal moment. It’s not how I imagined ever working with Robert De Niro.
Hollywood really began to take notice of you, notably in Kathryn Bigelow’s Bin Laden drama Zero Dark Thirty…
I remember the opportunity came up and the minute I knew it was Kathryn Bigelow,
I said, “I’m in.” They said, “Don’t you want to know what the part is?” I said, “No.” I knew what the subject matter was, but I just wanted to work with her. They said, “We’ve got this part in mind but we need you to come over and talk about it.” I flew to LA and when I got there they gave me the speech that I do in Zero Dark Thirty, when I basically come in and scream at everybody that they’re not doing well enough. They gave me that and said, “You’ve got 10 minutes.” I took that 10 minutes, and I went and walked by her pool in the LA hills and I learnt it. I went in and hit them with both barrels. They were quite stunned. I don’t think they were expecting that.
Comedy isn’t something you’ve done much of, but you did work with Sacha Baron Cohen on Grimsby. Was that a baptism by fire?
It was a rollercoaster ride. I loved it as much as I found it frustrating. There’s a lot of improvisation, which is not something I’d done. When it’s going well, that’s great. When it’s not going so well, you just feel really bad and question everything. But he was really supportive – let’s just go with the flow. We went for it. We would splurge – I think we shot 4,000 feet of film; hundreds of hours of footage. And only 90 minutes made it into the final movie. It was exhausting. I remember saying to him, “I can’t guarantee if what comes out of my mouth is going to be any good.” He said, “Don’t worry, 95 per cent of what we do on any given day won’t make it in.” I remember thinking, “Wow, what kind of incentive is that!”
With all the recent revelations about sexual misconduct in Hollywood, what is your take on it all?
It’s a good time. Society only evolves like this. We’re obviously just shedding the skin of a particularly outdated patriarchal way of viewing women, and my evaluation of it is – with two young boys growing up [in my family], if they can learn from this how to treat women and what’s acceptable and what isn’t, then it’s a good thing. It’s society moving on. It’s getting rid of behaviour that is just now unacceptable. It’s probably always been unacceptable but society for some reason has overlooked it, and now it’s not overlooking it. It’s good, it can only be a good thing.
You mentioned Polanski and Oliver Twist earlier. Do you feel in any way conflicted about doing that film, given his history?
No. At the time, the issue hadn’t raised its head. I didn’t go into every job examining
the sexual proclivity of every director that I work with to work out whether they’re a predator or not. That’s not on the checklist of things you’re looking at when you work with somebody. I probably wouldn’t now. I don’t think it would be seemly to now because of what we know and what’s happening. You have to make a choice now, which side you’re on, and if you do that, then you choose a side. And I would like to choose the side that is moving forward.
Talking of moving forward, you’re also coming up in Stockholm. What can you tell us about that?
That’s based on the bank robbery in ’73 that gave rise to Stockholm Syndrome. Ethan Hawke and I are the kidnappers. Robert Budreau directed it. That was another improvised ‘let’s just do it and see what happens’ piece. It all takes place in the bank where the robbery happens. That was really interesting to do.
How is the rest of 2018 shaping up?
After Shazam!, in the summer I’m going to do a series called Temple for Sky Atlantic [based on the Norwegian show Valkyrien] that I’m producing with my wife. I’m a coproducer. I get to be the lead in it as well. It’s not about murder and detectives. It’s about someone who is trying to save his wife who is dying and he has to enter an unholy alliance with a younger guy in order to achieve what he needs. It’s basically: How far would you go to save the one you love? He has to get up to some stuff he doesn’t want to do, much like Deep State – another conflicted character trying to do right by his family but being forced into situations that are unsavoury.
Will you do more producing?
I don’t see why not. It’s been fascinating peeking behind the curtain, which actors don’t normally get the opportunity to do. Like sitting in on the writer’s room and seeing it come into shape. And also understanding distribution and contracts.
Do you have much opportunity to do that on Shazam! or is most of it already mapped out?
That’s a studio picture. They’ve been thinking about it for a long time, they’ve put a lot of money and effort into what they have got. There’s not a lot of call for improvisation. Although Zachary Levi, who plays the lead, is a very funny guy, and I’ve no doubt he will play with that part and make it interesting. I think DC have realised that they’ve got their canon of films that are dark and they’ve now found one that’s pretty funny! There are some really funny moments in it.
What’s the best thing you’ve learned about acting over all these years?
You’ve got to bring your A-game to the table every time, whatever it is you’re doing – and hope that everybody else does the same, and that everything manages to combine into becoming something that is great storytelling. That’s ultimately what we’re in the business of. People are living their lives, running around, paying bills, coping with Facebook and their boss at work… that’s day-to-day life. We’ve got to be doing something to give people something else. I see that’s what my job is: telling stories to allow people to escape, think about the world in a different way, think about morality and ethics, how we should behave. If I can do that through the medium of – without sounding too pretentious – acting in films and theatre and TV, then I think that’s probably a good thing. I’ll continue to do it as well I can. Occasionally you get these huge successes… but it doesn’t matter if you don’t.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE NOW, WHICH SIDE YOU’RE ON
DEEP STATE STARTS ON 5 APRIL ON FOX.