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Casting big film stars is ‘really hard’, feels Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky has cast stars such as Natalie Portman, Russell Crowe, and Hugh Jackman in his ventures, but the Oscarnominated filmmaker hasn’t worked with them more than once. He says that sometimes it gets tricky to line up “big movie stars” in his films.
Less busy actors such as Mark Margolis and Jennifer Connelly have had the chance to re-team with Aronofsky, but that’s not the same with most of his lead actors.
Why doesn’t he repeat his lead actors in later films? “The problem with movie stars is that getting their schedules... to line up when you’re ready to go, is always really hard. Also, when you work with a big movie star, you have to have a role that they’re interested in... that makes sense for them,” Aronofsky says.
He’s now looking forward to finally working with superstar Brad Pitt, who had dropped out of Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain (then made with Hugh Jackman in the lead).
The news of Pitt and Aronofsky uniting for a film based on a book titled The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, came out in 2010. After a long gap, it’s being talked about again.
The Black Swan director says, “It’s been a very hard project to get the script right. We finally have a very good director (Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi of Ukraine) on it. Hopefully, we’ll figure out a way to make it.”
Aronofsky, on a visit to Mumbai for a film festival, also talks about working with actors, saying, “It’s about communication and trust. It also helps to have a decent track record with actors so that other actors say ‘Oh! He’s going to help me get to this place, so I can trust him.’ As far as young filmmakers out there [are concerened], it’s very much about spending time with actors, trying to figure out what they’re going to need to feel safe. What you try to do is create an environment where they can take risks. Your job as a director is to make them open up as much as possible and to not hold anything back.”