How has your relationship formed with first time director, Gary Love?
He’s the first director I’ve worked with who’s had an acting background, so he’s very much an actors’ director. That means he cares a lot about the actors, more than the position of the sun or whether planes are flying overhead. Our focus is most important to him, because he understands how it is to be in that space and to be interrupted and then to have to find it again. So we’re very lucky really, he spends a lot of time with us, working on the scenes and the dialogue. The relationship’s been good, I mean obviously I don’t want to look like a fool when the film’s cut together and obviously Gary doesn’t want me to either, we’ve got that trust there. So when I go over the top, he’ll tell me to bring it down, and when its not enough, he’ll tell me to bring it up. I think its worked really well.
And when you say ‘us’ you’re talking about Steve Mackintosh, how was working with Steven?
Mac is just a lovely guy man. I remember him from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and funnily enough we’ve got the same agent so its good to be working with him. The stuff I’ve seen him in is totally different from the character he plays here. He’s obviously a very good actor. I’m learning every day so I know that I’m with people who can teach me a lot and Steve’s very positive in that sense. He’s a very quiet guy, not shy, but quiet and he fits the part really well, he does the part really well.
And what are your thoughts on working with Andy Serkis?
To be fair, I haven’t really seen much of his work other than Lord of the Rings and King Kong and stuff like that, but I know he’s huge, he’s the man! He’s a brilliant actor, my mum and a lot of people have seen what he’s done and I know he’s good at playing a Hoodwink sort of role. It’ll be interesting to see how he tackles it and what he brings to the table.
What is it like working with slingshot?
It’s just a beautiful thing. We’re making a very low budget film, with a group of guys who are all passionate about the project, and its not about money and sales, its about making a good piece of art. To be honest, I prefer to be on sets where there is that intimacy, where everyone cares about it was much as I do. A lot of people are here for free, you know, a lot of people are literally working their butts off for nothing, for experience and for the love of the script or what they do. There doesn’t seem to be that much hierarchy and everyone is just working together and mucking in. The other day we had to move the ‘video village’ as they call it to another place for the shoot and you see all the actors, me, the director, moving stuff around. Everyone’s just putting their best in and that means a lot to me.
Who would you like to see Sugarhouse?
I think everyone can get something from this movie, so there’s no particular group of people that I would say come and see this movie to although I would encourage the youth and kids to come along and watch the movie, if not for anything else, just to take away from it the thing that everyone’s life is different and has bad times, but there’s always someone worse off than you. You can always put things into perspective, move forward, and make a negative into a positive. But I hope everyone comes to see this movie because it is about a side of life that people don’t really know a lot about.