Patel, Spencer talk on power of movies

Hope and positive energy

LOS ANGELES, Dec 3, (RTRS): Dev Patel and Octavia Spencer sat down for a chat for Variety’s “Actors on Actors.” For more, tune in when “Actors on Actors” debuts its fifth season on PBS SoCal on Jan 3.

Dev Patel: Every time I do an interview, everyone’s talking about, “How do you avoid being typecast?” And it makes me cringe. You’ve done such an amazing job of navigating and breathing life into so many roles. How do you do it?

Octavia Spencer: I’ve got to tell you, it isn’t easy. Because, as you know, there aren’t that many great roles that are going to come your way.

Patel: And it’s a feeding frenzy when there are, right? There’s blood in the water!

Spencer: Honey, you can’t even get to the trough! I’m a specific type. And the archetypes that they really want to see are: a woman of zaftig stature with the cute little Cheshire Cat grin as the nurturer, or there’s the “sassy” whatever. Right after I did “The Help,” it was barely in the can, and I was all excited about the possibilities that were to come. But 90% of the roles I was offered were: “We have this wonderful role as a maid!” And I’m thinking, “Here’s the thing: I just played the best maid role written! I don’t have a problem playing a maid again, but it has to top this one.” Not one of them did. So for me, it was about just looking in different places, exploring different directors who were great talents. Just sitting it out, waiting for those.

Patel: I can so relate to that. Straight after “Slumdog Millionaire” — this was my first film, and I was just a kid who didn’t understand the craft. Afterward, I remember doing the red carpet, and I kept seeing Dustin Hoffman. And he would go like this to me.

He’s like, “You’re gonna go here, you’re gonna go there — it’s peaks and valleys.” Straight after that, I looked around for some substantial follow-up, and there wasn’t any. No one knew how to package this big, floppy-eared, gangly Indian dude.

When I see people like you winning Oscars, that’s breaking through the ceiling in such a big way for so many people. We were talking about the American election. I’m a British dude, so I don’t have much to say. But as a global citizen, I was traveling to Napa Valley to do this film festival for “Lion,” and I called up my publicist and I was like, “What are we doing? This doesn’t matter. I can feel a sense of depression in the air — why are we going there trying to promote this film?”

And I went there and looked at the audience: When everyone is sitting in this dark room looking at this screen, there’s no color or race or gender. They were all unanimously moved by this piece of humanity. And I realized, that’s why art’s important. That’s why films like “Hidden Figures” and “Lion” are really important. Because they’re anthems of diversity, they’re anthems of love, and anthems of perseverance.

Spencer: Absolutely. Honey, you hit it on the head for me. I just wrapped a movie in Toronto, and was barely in town for two days before the election. We were on night shoots, so my sleep is all turned around, and everything is just off. And I felt that: After the results came in, half of our country is fine, and the other half is not, and I’m a part of the not.

I kept thinking, “What are we doing?” And last night it dawned on me when I was thinking about the story of Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, the character that I play in “Hidden Figures”: They had it tougher than we do. They had no agency whatsoever, but they persevered. There was de facto segregation, sexism, racism, and in spite of all that, they took us to space and back.

And there were no pats on the back, no milliondollar paychecks, or all the different things that come with accolades these days for people. And I thought, “Those women could withstand all of that and be unsung heroes.” I saw my castmates from “The Help” last night — Viola Davis and Emma Stone — and it just lifted my spirits. I realized that we have to put this type of positive energy and hope in these stories out into the world. Playing a real person, it’s a responsibility now more than ever. The impact of it felt really at my core this week.

Patel

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spotlight.

Ali appeared alongside Greta Gerwig during Season 5 of Variety and PBS’ Emmy Award-winning series “Actors on Actors.” Though Ali has now appeared in high-profile film and TV projects, he didn’t begin acting seriously until he enrolled in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts’ graduate acting program.

“It’s so funny — for whatever reason, I’ve always been told, ‘oh, you have presence!’” says Ali. “I don’t even know what that means, but I’ve been told that.”

Because of this so-called “presence,” Ali found himself playing roles almost three times his age during his studies. Though playing a wide array of character roles allowed him to realize his strengths and weaknesses, he doesn’t want to be a one-trick pony.

“I found myself sort of becoming a character actor, though I don’t know if that would be my natural makeup,” the “Moonlight” actor revealed. “But compared to who I was within a class of 18 actors, and then just trying to survive as an actor getting out of school ... As that starts breaking down, you’re like ‘I gotta make this part work.’”

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Having children turned Hugh Grant from “a nasty 50-year old,” into a “delightful” person, according to the actor. The British thesp, now 56, has four children, the latest born in December 2015.

During his one-on-one interview with Colin Farrell for Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” Grant discussed his mercurial enthusiasm for acting and his changing views of the profession as he got older.

“I have gusts of incredible enthusiasm, usually once I’ve signed up out of sheer panic, because if I’m bad, everyone is going to laugh at me. So I try bloody hard, go to enormous trouble to try and be as good as I can,” Grant said.

With experience, Grant admitted that he became an almost tyrannical figure behind the camera.

“A Barbra Streisand in trousers I was, just awful, everything down to how the poster looks in South Korea.”

Farrell also recognized that his opinion of acting has changed over the years.