tf interview: STANLEY TUCCI
We enjoy a Big Night shining the Spotlight on the actor’s Lovely Bones.
Stanley Tucci shoots Total Film a quizzical look. The question is simple: does Tucci have a dark side? “Yes!” he grins. “Do you want to see it?” But 31 years since he made his debut as a “glorified extra” in Prizzi’s Honor, the chameleonic Tucci has arguably already shown it. That’s what a decade of playing hoods in TV shows like Wiseguy and Miami Vice and movies such as Men Of Respect and
Billy Bathgate (as Lucky Luciano) will do for you – the fate that befell Tucci in his early days.
Raised in New York, the son of a secretary and an art teacher, Tucci majored in acting at SUNY Purchase then quickly found himself pigeonholed by his Italian-American roots, surname and looks. This was true even in commercials, as shown in a mid-’80s Levis 501 spot (still on YouTube, he’ll be delighted to know) as he swaggers down the sidewalk in a white vest-top. Today, in a crisp white shirt and slacks, the 55-year-old looks exactly like the Tucci we’ve known on screen for the past 20-odd years: bald, brown-eyed, roguish twinkle.
Tucci’s career only morphed after his 1996 directorial debut feature, Big Night. He co-directed with fellow actor Campbell Scott, his friend from high-school whose mother, actress Colleen Dewhurst, once helped Tucci and Scott get their equity cards by squeezing them into a Broadway play she was starring in. Coinciding with his role as the billionaire philanderer Richard Cross in TV drama Murder One, it was Tucci’s turn as a wide-eyed immigrant restaurant manager in Big Night that changed everything. All of a sudden, he got what every actor craves: choice. He won Golden Globes for playing real-life figures in serious TV dramas like Winchell and Conspiracy. He did outright comedy, in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, The Daytrippers and his second movie as director, the Laurel and Hardy-inspired slapstick tale The Imposters. But it was as the new millennium began, and Tucci hit his 40s, that his reputation as an all-rounder really blossomed.
Nominated for a Tony for the 2002 Broadway revival of Terrence McNally’s Frankie And Johnny In The Clair De Lune, Tucci’s time with the big guns arrived: Mendes ( Road To Perdition), Spielberg ( The Terminal), Jackson ( The Lovely Bones, which gained him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor). He segued into franchises – The Hunger Games, Captain America and Transformers in an eye-blink. And throughout all, he continued directing – with his fifth movie, Final Portrait, with Geoffrey Rush, now in production.
From his recent lawyer in Spotlight to upcoming roles in Blue Angel, Beauty And The Beast and, firstly, pandemic thriller Patient Zero, Tucci has remained one of America’s most diverse performers – even if he no longer remains in America, now living in London with second wife Felicity, sister to Emily Blunt. Somehow he seems to have absorbed British humour in his short time here: a sandpaper-dry wit smooths over his every sentence – especially when he takes us to his dark side. It’s been a remarkable 12 months for you – with perhaps Spotlight the biggest highlight... I was thrilled to be involved. I was thrilled because I love Tom [ McCarthy] and I just think he’s such a good writer, director, actor – everything, everything. And I was always sad that I was never in any of his movies. So I was literally thrilled when I was asked.
Are you Catholic? I was raised Catholic. A totally lapsed Catholic. Even when I was going to church – I stopped going to church in high school – but even when I was going to church, you’re listening to it. And this is just me. I just didn’t believe it. I didn’t get it. It was abstract. It was dogmatic. Everything is black-and-white, and the world just isn’t that way. And how could one religion be right and another religion be wrong? It doesn’t make any sense!
Did you ever come back to religion in any way?
No. I’m not religious. I think it’s caused more
I can’t walk down the street since the hunger games. I can’t visit my kids’ school!
trouble than anything. You should be able to practise whatever religion you want to practise. Go ahead. Just don’t impose it upon me. Tom says Catholics have called the film, which deals with the unearthing of sexual abuse within the church, very fair... It is fair, because it just tells the story – here’s the story, this is what happened. How can that not be fair? To me it does exactly what the reporters did, which is: “Here’s the story, this is what happened, you make the judgement.” You don’t have to condemn them. They condemn themselves, simply by us knowing their actions.
Spotlight aside, you’ve been on something of a roll this past year…
I filmed Spotlight October/November 2014. Patient Zero was March into April; then I did a thing for ITV, a Peter Pan retelling [Peter & Wendy] where I play multiple characters, and then I did Beauty And The Beast for about five days. Are you in scenes with Emma Watson and Dan Stevens’ Beast? We’re all in the big ballroom thing. I was with Audra McDonald and Ewan McGregor and that was fun. What about zombie movie Patient Zero? You shot in glamorous Dagenham, right? Yes… I’d never been to Dagenham. That was a weird place [ where we shot]: an old pharmaceutical factory. It was a cool space. You could do a lot in the space. It was just a shame it was sitting there abandoned.
Did the role require you to get in shape? I’m always in shape! Yeah, I like the physicality of it. I like physical stuff so that was part of it. I did the same workout I’ve done for 36 years! I used to lift more weights. Now I do very light weights, a lot of my own body weight, and some yoga – stuff like that. I gotta do it. I like to eat too much! Is diversity something you always strive for in your roles? I love it. To me that’s the whole point of it. I don’t want to keep doing the same thing all the time. To me it was a really fun year – to be able to do Patient Zero which was really weird and dark and to work with Stefan [ Ruzowitzky], who I think is a great director. Then go do the ITV thing and play Captain Hook – which is the only role that any actor ever wants to play, let’s face it. I was Hook and Mister Darling, and the surgeon, Dr. Wylie, who operates on the girl because it’s contemporary and goes into her fantasy. Do you enjoy playing more flamboyant characters, like Caesar Flickerman in The Hunger Games? I love it, I love it… It’s great to do that stuff and then to do something like Spotlight or to go and do a movie like I’m about to do which is Blue
Angel, which Richard Levine is directing. We’re shooting in New York, based on a book by Francine Prose about a college professor and his sort of liaison he has with a young girl and what happens, dealing with the fallout from the institution’s point of view. It’s a really interesting script. Do you enjoy the genre/blockbuster world when you dip into it? Yeah… They’re not movies I used to watch. But they’re more prevalent now and they’re interesting. Look at The Hunger Games – it’s a really quite moving, beautiful, tragic story but the scope of the thing, visually, is stunning.
Have you been pursued by teenage fans since The Hunger Games?
Yeah, it is weird! I can’t go visit my kids’ school!
Is that true? They go crazy. With The Devil Wears Prada, Hunger Games and now Transformers… Oh my god, I can’t walk down the street! London is better, Italy is really tough and New York, forget about it. In Rome I couldn’t walk down the street. I’ve made so many movies at this point, I’ve just inundated and flooded the market with sheer volume [ starts to laugh]… It’s quantity not quality!
Would you consider another Marvel movie? Oh my God, I would do it in a second. Again, Captain America was one of the best experiences and I also made great friends. Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper, Chris Evans, who I adore. It was so much fun.
What about Star Wars – would you be keen for Episode VIII, maybe? They haven’t asked. Don’t they know? I’m a lucky charm!
Has your career always been this eclectic? It’s totally random. At first, when I started out in the business, because you’re dark or Italian, you’re always cast as the bad guy. This is the 1980s…
Was this in Prizzi’s Honor, which you featured in? Yeah, but I wasn’t even in it. I was like an extra in it. I was supposed to have one line but they cut it out.
That’s outrageous! Didn’t they realise who you were? If they only knew! So, it was a lot of that sort of Mafioso bad guy, sleazy guy, because you’re dark. It’s that simple… And that was irritating. But if you could be funny, then you could be funny and sleazy… That was one of the reasons I started making my own films, too. I wanted to tell stories, and I wanted to do more than just wait around for somebody to give me a job. And I was always interested when I was on set or in a play, in the thing as a whole. To watch. And I learnt a great deal from watching directors and cinematographers and the whole thing coming together.
So what changed things for you? TV stuff changed things for me. Murder One really changed things for me because people saw me in a different way. And the one thing I asked [ creator] Stephen Bochco, who is so great… I said: “The only thing, can I just ask, if he is the killer” – which I never knew – “can he not be Italian and no connection to the Mafia?” And he said, “Of course, no problem.” I think that made a big difference because he was just a person without an Italian surname, and that made a big difference.
Was that the first gay character you played? Was the character gay in that? I don’t know. It was ambiguous. We never knew. And I’ll tell you, we never knew. You never knew what you were doing, any day, on that show. But I think he had been sexually promiscuous but maybe he was bisexual. It was never specific. He was dying of AIDS but a reason was never given. How important are your Italian roots? It’s everything to me. I was raised in an Italian-American household. I lived in Florence when I was young for a year. I go back to Italy as much as possible. I’ve worked there a number of times and I love it. Obviously Italian food is the upmost. I’ve never worked with any contemporary Italian directors, but I’m a huge fan of Rossellini, Pasolini, Fellini… Any ‘ini’!
You’ve played many nationalities now... Yeah, yeah, but it’s different now... Italians are viewed differently now. In what way have things changed? Has the whole Mafiosi image disappeared? No, we still imagine a lot of them are Mafiosi, when in fact the exact opposite is true. But it’s very entertaining. [ Tucci’s Spotlight co-star] Mark Ruffalo is the perfect example, really, if you think about it. He looks what we would consider Italian and he has an Italian surname, but Mark plays everything. It didn’t used to be that way. And he doesn’t just play urban people or uneducated, which was always the role of the Italian. You’ll see people have Italian surnames now in movies and they’re the teacher or they’re the doctor. You did go back to that gangster world in Sam Mendes’ Road To Perdition, shortly before you worked with Steven Spielberg on The Terminal. How much did you learn from those guys? You always learn something from somebody, and they’re both incredible directors. Sam is really wonderful – a wonderful guy and a hell of a director. His eye is stunning. And Steven’s mind is so agile; he is cinema. He only thinks in terms of cinema. I’ve never seen anybody think so quickly or be so fragile in understanding the workings of cinema. It was pretty amazing to be on that set. He’d make this stuff up as you went along. I don’t know how he did it. After working with those guys, you got an Oscar nomination for playing a killer in Peter Jackson’s The
Lovely Bones. How was that? I knew it would be painful, and I can’t read books or see movies in which children are harmed. I never wanted to play a serial killer. But this wasn’t really a serial killer movie. Pete [ Jackson] – there’s something poetic and magical about the way he constructed it, which is not an easy thing to do. You touched earlier on The Devil Wears Prada. How did the fashion world react to your character, the art director at a high-fashion magazine? Somebody in the fashion world said to me, “I really liked what you did but you were still too nice!” Now that’s scary.
Had you had much contact with that industry? A little bit. Only because when you’re a little bit famous, people give you clothes and ask you to fashion shows and all that stuff – and that’s nice. I wish they had done it when I couldn’t afford the clothes. You now live in London. What attracted you to move there? My wife, she’s British. I love it. I’ve been there a couple of years.
there’s something magical about the way peter jackson constructed the lovely bones
Has it changed your work pattern in any way? I think the options are greater. There’s so much stuff shooting in London, so much stuff shooting in Europe. Not as many movies are being made in LA. Look at how many of the huge movies are being shot in London. Beauty And The Beast, Star
Wars… We shot the first Captain America there. It’s like a film mecca. It’s incredible how much stuff is going on, the studios that are being built, good tax breaks, incredible infrastructure, great crews, everyone speaks the same language. Plus you can bring actors over from Europe and they’re not flying people thousands of miles.
Did you prefer making indies to blockbusters? I happen to love some big stupid blockbuster movies. They’re fun – there’s room for everything. There is something to be said for a healthy mix of both of them. As soon as we can get to a point where movies are not so expensive to market… If we can go backwards in that regard, it would be a really, really great thing. I think that’s the thing that’s killing independent film. You’re about to direct again, with Final Portrait, about the Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti. What got you into that subject? I love Giacometti, I’m so interested in him, I’ve always been interested in Giacometti for 20-something years. My dad was an art teacher and so I was brought up in a world of art, and learning about art. And Giacometti really just struck a chord with me. And this is based on a book called The Giacometti Portrait by James Lord, who was his friend and biographer. I got the rights to it about 13 years ago from James, wrote the script about 10 years ago. It’s a short shoot. Five weeks. I almost was going to do it in four, but I couldn’t do it. We’re building Giacometti’s studio, and we’ll do some locations, cheat some locations in London for Paris, and probably go to Paris just for a few days. How has the industry changed since you last directed on 2007’s Blind Date? Oh my God, it’s much harder to get money now. It used to be easier. People were willing to take chances, there were smaller distributors; it’s changed distinctly. It’s very sad. We made Big
Night, 15 years ago, for $4.3m, and I’ll make the Giacometti movie for a little more than that. And we’ve got big stars. Big Night, Minnie Driver was the biggest star we had.
Shortly after Big Night, you made The Impostors and Joe Gould’s Secret – but since then you’ve made only one film in 15 years. What happened? I stopped directing after Joe Gould’s Secret. I was very disappointed in the way it was distributed and plus [ with late wife Kate, who died in 2009] I had three children in that span of seven years. So it was too hard to do that – raise three children and work as an actor, which is how I make my money. Because you don’t make money directing.
What happened with Joe Gould’s Secret? They dumped it. The company just dumped it. It was made by another company and then they took over that company as it was about to be distributed. They brought in their own movies. This was of no interest to them! It was horrible, horrible. And I didn’t known how upset I was about it until a while afterwards. I was initially upset, but then you’re just so fucking tired from doing the press, so you think, ‘OK, we’ll let it go.’ But it was only about six months afterwards that I realised how upsetting it was, because you spend so much time working on it. Someone had sent me the script, and I took months to rewrite the script and you make it for not a lot of money – and there were these incredible performances, particularly by Ian Holm. It was an amazing performance. See it just for that performance – it was beautiful. And then the thing gets dumped because of some business decision, and it kills you. So I was very put off.
What keeps you going in situations like that? You just have to tell these stories. You just feel like you have to tell stories. I stopped for seven years; I thought, ‘I can’t do this. I need to wait until I want to do this again.’ Acting I can do. But directing and writing, it takes so much out of you. And you have to really want to tell those stories, regardless of what those stories are. But you have to keep plugging away at it and hope you find some lunatic who will give you the money.
Is there anything you still want to do in your career? Oh my God, yes. Poirot! Come on! It’s a great role. They’re beautifully written books and it’s such an interesting role. David Suchet did it so brilliantly, but the great thing about this role is that it can be interpreted again and again and again. TF
Spotlight is out now. Patient Zero opens on 2 September. Beauty And The Beast opens in 2017.