THE EMPIRE INTERVIEW
Paddy Considine HAS HAD HIS BATTLES, BOTH PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL, BUT HE'S NEVER LOST HIS FIGHTING SPIRIT. EMPIRE ASSOCIATE EDITOR CHRIS HEWITT MEETS THE SECOND - TIME DIRECTOR TO TALK EMOTIONAL BOXING-MOVIE-WITH-A-DIFFERENCE JOURNEYMAN
In conversation with the triple threat that is Journeyman star/writer/ director Paddy Considine. Idea for new show: Considine With Me. We go round to Paddy Considine’s house and eat his dinner. That’s basically it.
Paddy Considine has been fighting his whole life.
Fighting against the constraints of typecasting as the kind of psycho he essayed so memorably in his breakthrough film, 2004’s Dead Man’s Shoes. Fighting against conditions — mild Asperger’s and Irlen Syndrome, which interferes with the brain’s ability to process visual information — he didn’t know he had until he was in his mid-thirties. Fighting against himself, in particular the doubts he harboured about his own abilities as an actor.
And more often than not, he’s been winning. Especially lately. The typecasting hasn’t gone away entirely, but it’s been ameliorated, with Considine stretching and expanding his range on the big screen (a romantic hero in Edgar Wright’s The World’s End), TV (a noble protagonist in ITV series The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher) and, recently, on the West End stage in The Ferryman, as a tragic everyman. The conditions have been leavened by diagnosis, then treatment. And while it might seem strange that this most natural and powerful of actors would require an acting coach, his decision to work with one has bolstered his self-confidence immeasurably.
I’ve interviewed Paddy at least a dozen times over the years since I first met him at the Empire Awards in 2005, where he’d just won Best British Actor for Dead Man’s Shoes. He’s always been funny, sparky and remarkably candid about any subject under the sun, but over the past few years, there seems to be a newfound contentment and calm to him.
You could ascribe this to those dual diagnoses, of course. But you could also argue that directing helped. His first movie, 2011’s Tyrannosaur, is one of the most extraordinary British directorial debuts of recent years. It seemed to be where he belonged. Yet it’s taken seven years for him to follow it up with February’s tender, heartbreaking Journeyman, the story of Matty Burton, a world champion boxer (Considine) who suffers extreme brain damage after a fight, jeopardising his relationship with his wife (Jodie Whittaker). Seven years is a long time, but it wasn’t for want of trying. Considine spent a couple of years trying to make real-life boxing-scandal drama The Years Of The Locust in America before refocusing on this smaller, more intimate British movie. But it’s perhaps no surprise that both Journeyman and the unmade movie both revolve around boxing, the sport that has captivated him since childhood.
It’s been a hell of a year for you. You finished Journeyman in February, went straight into The Ferryman, and then into TV show Informer. You must be reeling. That’s what it feels like. When you do theatre every day, you are owned by it. It’s eight shows a week, six days a week. But it has been momentous in terms of finishing Journeyman, and The Ferryman was a bit of a life-changer in a way. I answered a few questions about myself doing that.
Such as? Well, there was a lot of fear around doing that. There always is with me. I think I have a lot of hang-ups about acting. I’d just built theatre up as this monstrous thing and was pretty terrified about the idea of doing it. So when I was in rehearsals, I was finding it really hard. It’s really exposing. It just is. There’s nowhere to hide. When you’re doing film you learn your little tricks — you know the camera is picking up so much and you develop this awareness. On stage you’re pretty bare: there’s nowhere to hide and anything can go wrong. And that little voice that comes up inside me telling me I can’t do this and
I can’t do that was in full force, telling me all kinds of nonsense. That I was shit, and I was going to fail, and I would look ridiculous. All those things. But I faced it. No matter what my head was saying, that little bit in here, that little soul thing, was saying, “You can do it.” I had Sam [Mendes, who directed the play], who was great with me. Of course, it went wrong some nights, but that became one of the most thrilling things about it.
The fear of exposing yourself in that way is interesting. I know you went a few years ago to an acting coach, which helped you. But those feelings resurface? It’s that sense of feeling like somehow you’re not very authentic. My thing is, I think there’s some kind of technical thing missing from my game. Part of working with Martin Ledwith, my acting coach, who I was working with at the time when all this stuff about me became apparent, that I had these things — mild Asperger’s, if you call it that, and Irlen Syndrome — is realising I would take everything on the [script] page literally. I’d be doing a scene with you and all I’d see is those words and paragraphs and sentences in front of your face. So it was like wearing a straitjacket. I had to learn to find the freedom within it to act.
What did Martin do with you? He noticed that there was a total difference to when I was given something scripted and when I was given something where I could be let off the leash. When I was doing [A Room For] Romeo Brass with Shane Meadows and was improvising and totally, 100 per cent this character, there was a different freedom in me. The best directors I worked with unlocked that freedom for me and created the playground for me to go into and breathe. That’s what I do when I direct, with my actors. I create that world for them to go into and breathe. How did that work in terms of you directing yourself in Journeyman? The difference is that Matty post-injury was somebody I could disappear into. And so I didn’t feel like I was looking at myself, ever. I literally didn’t see myself at all, from the accident onwards. I was able to look at it differently. There didn’t seem to be much of a problem for me being behind the camera and in front of it. And that contradicts everything I just said to you [laughs] but it was like, it was my universe, it was my world. I knew what I wanted and what I was getting and how I was going to shoot it. I knew everything. It’s not so much about control, it’s more about security. I just felt more secure directing myself in something.
For me, it feels like there’s a pre-tyrannosaur and a post-tyrannosaur phase of your career, which seems to intersect with the diagnoses. I think any time you go through anything there’s a definite change. If I look back five years and there hasn’t been any kind of transformation in me, I think there’s a massive problem there. Particularly if you’re an artist and that’s the thing you’re pursuing. There’s definitely a pre and post. Even when I made Journeyman, I was still coming through something. There was still the residue of something in me, stuck at the back of my head, at the top of my spine, that wouldn’t lift from me. But Journeyman and certainly Ferryman managed to clear that somehow. I think we fear as artists and people that if we start to shave away those edges, we’ll somehow become less effective, or the work’s going to become less powerful. I don’t believe that at all. Once you go through one kind of wall and one set of circumstances, you grow again. Every time you go through something, the world opens up that little bit
wider. The possibilities actually become greater than they were. I think that’s exciting.
Do you see similarities between Tyrannosaur and Journeyman? You started working on them at roughly the same time. They’re both about people who become trapped in their circumstances. But in my head I was saying, “This is a different beast to Tyrannosaur. Don’t get into that ‘difficult second album’ syndrome. Don’t try to live up to it. Don’t try to better Tyrannosaur.” I don’t want to keep making the same film over and over again. Already people have questioned if it lives up to Tyrannosaur. I don’t have to live up to anything. I don’t have to live up to nothing. The minute you’re in competition with yourself, you’re fucked. You may as well try running around biting your own arse. When I make my next film it’s going to be different again than Journeyman.
I’ve spoken to you about this movie a lot. From the off you kept saying, “It’s not a boxing movie.” I thought, “If I’m going to do something about boxing I need to turn it on its head a little bit.” And make the fight about something else other than this penultimate thing. At the moment I’m writing this film and it’s a little bit science-fiction, a little bit of a ghost thing, but I’m not going to flood my head with ghost stories and ghost movies. I don’t want to know how they do what they do. I have to figure out how I do what I do.
Instead, boxing is a way into the world, and into Matty’s life. But boxing is so huge for you. When did you first become interested? Since I was a little kid. I look back now and boxing was very much in my family. My granddad boxed, my uncles boxed in Ireland, my dad boxed, or certainly held [up] his hands, you know, in many a different bar. It was always there. I’d seen my dad shape up when I was a kid. It started with that Muhammad Ali thing and into the ‘Four Kings’ in the ’80s. But really when I became a massive boxing fan, it was Barry Mcguigan when he fought Eusebio Pedroza. To me, Mcguigan was a really heroic figure. I’ve always done that with boxing. To me, they’re like titans. I put them on such a pedestal and see them as such heroic people. There’s humility in them. I’ve always found it pretty compelling, boxing, all the while knowing how dangerous it was.
I know Rocky is a huge touchstone for you. Rocky changed my life. It altered my DNA when I saw that film. It was as big a moment as when I saw Adam Ant on Top Of The Pops, it was one of these pivotal things. Looking back now, I always saw Rocky as a kind of saintly figure who accepted his limitations and he called himself a bum and said, “If I can do the distance with this guy, then at least I can walk around these streets with my head held high.” Something in that, even as a kid, made me go, “Yeah.” That’s all I want to do, walk around these streets with my head held high. Not better than anybody else. Nothing about status, but just to have a greater sense of pride in who I was.
You have a collection of Rocky toys, don’t you? I’ve got a massive Rocky toy collection. I’ve got original dolls from the ’80s. I’ve got so many Rocky toys it’s unbelievable. I’ve got a big Rocky boxing ring they all go into. I don’t sit there playing with them, by any means! But I love those films. Every one of them has a slightly different message. Some are better than others.
That’s for sure. I can’t watch Rocky IV now. It’s such a horrible propaganda film to me. It’s awful. Rocky V didn’t work. The other ones were kind of great. All of them had something in them. To me, it felt like the end was Rocky Balboa. That is an incredible character and there are moments in every one of those films where he is exquisite, Stallone.
I’m intrigued by Creed 2. Dolph Lundgren is going to be back, apparently. Carl Weathers must be sitting at home going, “Bollocks. Why did you kill me?” [Laughs] The first time I ever went to LA, I was going to meet Jim Sheridan to do a little thing for In America, to meet Samantha Morton, get in a room and talk about it. And the first person I saw was Carl Weathers standing on a street corner with a Kangol hat on. I thought, “Is it like this? Do you literally walk down the street and there’s Apollo Creed and shit? Whoa!”
I remember speaking to you on the set of one movie a few years ago and it seemed like you weren’t happy, professionally speaking, with the quality of the work. That seems far from the case now. I sometimes have to do shit to survive so I can go and write for a couple of months, or play with my band [Riding The Low], and all that kind of crap. But I still try to do something with good taste. After In America, I didn’t work for over a year. I was skint. I thought, “No, I’m only doing the things I really want to do.” It didn’t work. I ended up having to do some pop videos to make money.
Did you ever feel constrained by some of the roles you had played? Post-dead Man’s Shoes, I didn’t want to keep doing that. Dead Man’s Shoes was easy. It was nothing. It demanded nothing of me and it’s still the one that people quote to me. But it was no stretch for me. I could easily have been that guy from Dead Man’s Shoes over and over and over again. And if you want me to be dark, I’ll do dark. I can do the guy in Peaky Blinders [hardarse clergyman Father Hughes], I can fucking do it now, not a problem.
But you didn’t want to do that. Yeah. I tried to do other things. [In 2008] I did a play for television, My Zinc Bed, with Uma Thurman and Jonathan Pryce, and I was miscast. I know I was. And I wasn’t great in it. But I fucking dared to do it. I always take this quote from George Foreman after he lost to Shannon Briggs. He said, “You can pursue excellence when you decide, not when somebody tells you it’s okay to do so.” I listen to those guys. I don’t listen to the teacher who told me I couldn’t be a film director. Guess what? It’s a career. You’re going to fail. Some things are not going to work, and you’re going to be shit at that, but other times you’re going to play a fucking blinder and that’s why I keep coming back to this thing. Sometimes you play a fucking blinder. That’s why I haven’t fucked off yet! Journeyman is in cinemas from 30 march