MARK RYLANCE

On boats , backst ory and the ’Berg.

We hear you drove the boat, the Moonstone, every day. Did you have any previous experience or did you just fancy having a go?

It’s my character’s boat, so I just fancied having a go at it. I said, “It’d be much easier for [ me] to be actually driving the boat and listening and doing what I need to do with the other characters.” Sometimes that was impossible because we were next to, you know, the only existing destroyer left in the world, and they weren’t going to let some actor bang into it in a little wooden boat.

Was it intense filming in the confines of the boat for six weeks?

Yeah, it was, actually. It was full of people and equipment. It was very hot, some days. It was hard sometimes to believe we were out on our own, me and my boys, on the Channel. [ laughs] But it wasn’t hard to believe that Messerschmitts and Spitfires were flying over us, because they were – and they’re so loud.

Dunkirk is one of Christopher Nolan’s most stripped-back scripts – does it make it easier or harder when you don’t have as much backstory?

One of the hardest things in acting is having to speak exposition as if you really need to say it. There’s no exposition in this. So that wasn’t hard at all. And if I needed more backstory, I just made it up. Backstory can be very flexible.

You’ve worked with Steven Spielberg three times now. Do Nolan and Spielberg have anything in common?

They’re both very knowledgeable of the past of their particular craft. They’re both concerned about digital and technological advancements, whether they are aiding or spoiling filmmaking. They’re both very, very keen storytellers, in that they’re very interested in what the story of their film is, and how to tell that story in the most effective way. MM