MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
The Gentlemen star reveals his on-set memories. Alright, alright, alright…
The Texan star on his onset routines and rituals.
What’s the first thing you do when you get to your trailer?
I show up and get a cup of tea, and you’ve got to [get to] hair and make-up. Then you go do your day’s work.
Any on-set superstitions?
I like to get on set early. I actually don’t like to leave the set. When they’re setting up lighting and stuff, and the cameraman… I’m actually doing stuff. I’m working my way around, and I have to check with them. I’m going, “Let me know if I’m in your way.” I start doing what my character would do. I’m going to go where my character would go, when I get on set.
Is there anything you always take with you on set?
No, I just get everything else out of the way, besides what my character needs in that scene. And then I start looking.
What for?
“What else is around here? Oh, you know what would be interesting? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s got the candies, but he’s actually a smoker. He’s trying to quit smoking, so he put candies in the ashtray. Maybe he’s going to have a smoke here now. I’ll use the ashtray, or I’ll put the candies in it. And then in the scene, I’ll take the candies out, and you’ll see ashes at the bottom.” You know, something. You look around, and you go, “What can I use?”
Do you ever take a phone with you?
No. I don’t want to… I don’t like checking out, once I check in. Unless it’s music that I have, or a certain singer. But I’d rather have my system, with the Jambox, actually playing it, rather than me with earphones.
What do you remember about your first on-set experience on Dazed
And Confused?
[Pause] I can tell you, I wasn’t… I didn’t know who I was. I had the instincts for it. I learned acting the right way on the first movie I ever did. I had a director who invited me back. I had an entire cast of real actors who invited me into scenes, who handed me lines in the middle of scenes, who were pulling me into scenes, just because I’d been invited the other night. All of a sudden, they wrote me into the script, and I ended up working for three-and-a-half weeks. So I learned the right way to do it.
What’s been your worst on-set experience?
I’m not good at recall like that. I mean, the days that are the worst are when I’ve injured myself. You know? I blew out my knee in Reign Of Fire. I tweaked my back, actually, in White Boy Rick, in the scene when I’m taking Bel [Powley] out. I pulled something in my back. It was getting me up for eight months after that.
And how about the best on-set experience?
The fun-est was probably knocking out 27 pages of Rustin Cohle, the monologue, in less than two days [on True Detective]. Maybe it was one day. To knock all that out? Because it was so many words. To knock it all out in one sitting, was like, “Yeah!”
When you work with young actors - Timothée Chalamet on Interstellar, for example - do you anticipate how their careers might turn out?
I anticipated a certain confidence and an actual ability, a reverence for the craft. At the same time, really fluid and confident, and able to flow, able to improvise within the context of the character. But an original thinker. He was already thinking about his future and choices, and disseminating between what was expected of him, and what he was appreciative about, and what he actually thought he might do. He was just heading off to school that time. MM
ETA | 27 APRIL / THE GENTLEMEN IS OUT ON BLU-RAY, DVD AND DIGITAL HD THIS MONTH.
‘I LEARNED ACTING THE RIGHT WAY ON THE FIRST MOVIE I EVER DID’