Oscar Roundtable: Day-Lewis, Clooney, Jolie, McAvoy, Page & Cotilliard

[Equipoise]

Newsweek’s Oscar Roundtable with actors…

Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood
George Clooney - Michael Clayton
Angelina Jolie - A Mighty Heart (as Daniel Pearl’s widow Mariane)
James McAvoy - Atonement
Ellen Page - Juno
Marion Cotilliard - La Vie en Rose (as Edith Piaf)

Every year, prior to the Oscars, Newsweek magazine gathers some of the potential Oscar-nominee hopefuls and interviews them right before the nominations come out. I’ve always read the ones in the past, but this year, for the first time, I’m able to see the Oscar Roundtable through the magic of the Internet. That link above has both the transcript, and the video. I read the transcript first, and then watched the video, and I’m glad I did. It’s much more interesting to see facial expressions and tone of voice than to just read it. Plus the transcript doesn’t cover the entire roundtable.

There’s nothing deep or amazingly revealing, but for me it’s interesting to see some of these people as just people. I loved all these actors’ performances (though I haven’t seen Jolie’s movie yet) so it’s interesting for me to hear them talk about the acting process and those roles specifically, and in a more comfortable context than award show speeches or sound bites from junkets.

Yeahyeah, I realize there’s going to be a “who cares what these people think or say?” reaction from some, but this thread was started for those who might be interested, if not in these people themselves, at least in the movies they made.

It’s unfortunate in that every year, at least one of the people interviewed does not get an Academy Award nomination. It never fails. Past “ooops” participants who ended up not getting nominations included Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive), Brad Pitt (Babel) and Paul Giamatti (Sideways). This year, I think it’s James McAvoy who’ll be left out. We’ll know on Tuesday morning, when the Oscar nominations come out. He’s an excellent actor though, and will have plenty of chances in the future. He should have gotten a nomination last year for The Last King of Scotland. Best Actor is a crowded race this year though and I can’t see any way he’ll get in. I could be surprised but I doubt it. All the others will get nominations though. Day-Lewis will win Best Actor, there’s absolutely no doubt, and Cotillard has a good chance of beating Julie Christie for Best Actress. It’s a coin toss.

Here are some random snippets from Daniel Day-Lewis, who is the kindest, most gentle man, expected because I’ve seen him as himself before, but still a shock to experience after seeing his powerhouse performance in There Will Be Blood, where he becomes the ruthless Daniel Plainview:

Daniel, were you paid for that little thing that you did in “Sunday Bloody Sunday”?

Day-Lewis: Yeah. I was 12 at the time, and there was a local grocer in southeast London who was, like, the unofficial mayor of that parish, and so the casting agent wisely asked her to round up all the local hooligans, of which I was one. She asked us initially to play soccer in the park as a background shot, and we were going to get £2 a day for that. I thought they must be insane. Because that’s what we were doing all the time anyhow. It was my first professional soccer match, in fact. Then the next day [director] John Schlesinger asked to see the nastier types amongst us, and he chose three of us to walk out of the local church and scratch a row of fancy cars with a broken milk bottle. I got £3 for doing that.

Speaking of acting with kids, Daniel, was your acting process any different on “There Will Be Blood,” because you had a lot of scenes to play with a 10-year-old who had never acted before?

Day-Lewis: No difference, but it certainly would very much depend upon the 10-year-old. And this was just a remarkable young person. He was just a great companion. He was my partner. I miss him a lot, actually. His mom was a state trooper, and his dad was a cowboy. They didn’t know anything about the movies. There was a moment which could have gone awry at the very beginning, when his mom quite rightly thought, “What kinds of people are going to be involved with my son?” She wanted to see what I was going to be like, because she knew he would be spending a lot of time with me. So she rented a copy of “Gangs of New York.” [Laughter] And there was a flurry of phone calls. And the studio dispatched a copy of “The Age of Innocence” very quickly.

For those who might…enjoy.