Julianne Moore: Suburbicon's 50s themes of intolerance and fear are all too relevant today
“These are difficult times. But in a way it’s an opportunity because it’s a chance to speak about it, to change our behaviour,” she says
Julianne Moore feels that it’s time to speak out: on racism, President Trump and the sexual abuse of women in her industry. “I think it takes awareness and vigilance and activism,” she says. “We have to keep moving forward and we have to keep talking about it.” Moore isn’t one to keep quiet. She is one of the biggest Hollywood voices to have spoken out following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, tweeting that director James Toback, who was accused of sexual harassment by more than 30 women in an LA Times article, approached her in the 1980s and asked her – twice – to audition for him in his apartment. “These are difficult times. But in a way it’s an opportunity because it’s a chance to speak about it, to change our behaviour,” she adds. Kingsman: the Golden Circle review – “Elton John is the standout” Julianne Moore’s acclaimed performance carries Still Alice “beyond TV-movie blandness” Oscars 2015: Julianne Moore wins best actress In her new film, Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney and co-starring Matt Damon, she addresses another issue close to her heart, the racist underbelly of white-picket-fence American suburbia. It’s set in the 1950s and based around a real event in Levittown, Pennsylvania, where a black family were harassed and threatened by their white neighbours in an effort to force them out of town. As Moore points out, not much has changed in the intervening years. “This film was written years ago and shot a year ago but it’s still so relevant. History repeats itself, unfortunately,” says Moore. “We shot this movie last fall and the riots in Charlottesville hadn’t happened yet. When they did, I couldn’t believe it.” In Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this year, Heather Heyer, a 32-year old legal assistant, was killed when a man drove a car into a group of anti-racism protesters. They had gathered to oppose a Unite the Right March, which attracted neo-Nazis and white supremacists. “A lot of this had to do with Trump’s issues on immigration. It was all about xenophobia and being an something that Trump has stirred up tremendously – that idea of ‘America for Americans’. He has ignited this horrific neo-Nazi nationalistic movement. “Trump is in way over his head. He’s not the leader we need; he’s not the leader that the United States needs, that the world demands. Hopefully, people will wake up and there’ll be some change come the midterm elections.” For Moore, the immigration issue is personal. Now 56, she is the eldest of three children born to Peter (a colonel and later a military judge) and Anne, who was from Greenock, Scotland. Moore has dual US and British citizenship. “I’m a first-generation American. My mother came to the US when she was 10. She didn’t get her citizenship until she was 27. Her identity was always very Scottish and she imparted that onto us. There’s this idea that there are ‘100 percent Americans’. But we are all people who migrated from somewhere else, and that’s an important part of my identity.” After studying theatre at Boston University, Moore moved to New York and worked as a waitress before getting a part in US daytime soap As the World Turns. In 1987, after three years on the show, she left to pursue opportunities in films. By the 90s, with roles in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Friday Sky Action) and The Big Lebowski, she had established herself as one of the best actresses in Hollywood. She was Oscar-nominated for Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair and Far from Heaven, before she finally won the Academy Award in 2015 for her heartbreaking portrayal of a professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice. She lives with her husband, Bart Freundlich, and their two children, Caleb (19) and Liv (15), in Greenwich Village, New York, and is as busy as ever. After Suburbicon (released in cinemas on Friday 24 November), she stars in Wonderstruck, which reunites her with her Far from Heaven director, Todd Haynes. She has also just finished filming Bel Canto, in which she plays an opera singer who is held hostage in South America. “I’m lucky I have the opportunity to have both a career and a family,” she reflects. “I don’t take either one of them for granted. I never take my family for granted and I don’t take my work for granted. But my family always takes priority. It’s hard work sometimes, but that’s fine. “I know I’m lucky, especially getting to work with people like George Clooney. He’s funny, warm and observant.” Clooney is another outspoken Trump critic, but does he ever get angry? “No. I’ve seen George when he’s worried and concerned. He has a very keen sense of morality and what is right and wrong, and how people should be treated. But I’ve never seen him yell at anybody.” You can’t imagine Moore yelling either, but her new film with Clooney roars. “The fact that the story of Suburbicon is based on something that really happened is horrific, shocking and abhorrent. But retelling it on screen is a way of looking at our history and reminding ourselves that these things are never that far away, that it’s only with vigilance that we prevent them from happening again.” View oEmbed on the source website Suburbicon is in UK cinemas from Friday 24th November
Christian Bale hopes new film The Promise will raise awareness of the Armenian genocide
"It's tragic that so many were killed and people don't know"
Christian Bale has a serious addiction. “I’m always at war with myself, ” he confesses. “I’m like, ‘I’m quitting, I’m never going to do it again’ and then I’m like ‘Oh my God, I love it, I can’t wait to go back.’” He’s toyed with giving up acting for good. “It’s the highs and lows of it, the disappointments that come hand-in-hand with something you are passionate about. “I don’t always enjoy it but I am addicted and sometimes you need to get away.” But what would he do instead? “I don’t really know. Spend time with the kids and just be with my family. That’s what I love to do when I’m not working.” He knows, though, that it won’t happen. He’s hooked and he’ll keep going back for more as long as there are scripts like The Promise, an epic love story set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide. “I am embarrassed to say – but I suspect that it’s the same for many people – that I had not heard of the Armenian genocide,” he admits. “It’s tragic that so many were killed and people don’t know. I hope in some way this film will change that.” He first read the screenplay in 2014 and was struck by how contemporary it felt. At the time, he reflects, “the Yazidis were trapped on the mountains in Iraq with IS surrounding them. The correlation was remarkable.” By the time they had started filming last year, the terrible events in Syria were dominating the news. “We were seeing the so-called deportations, which were really death marches, on TV. It’s terribly sad to say that the film couldn't be more relevant now with the refugee crisis." Back in 1915, the then Ottoman government systematically forced ethnic Armenians from their homes and into the Syrian desert. More than one and a half million Armenians were killed but modern-day Turkey has refused to acknowledge the genocide and over a number of years has successfully stopped several attempts by Hollywood to depict the events. In the 30s MGM scrapped plans to adapt The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a bestseller about the genocide, when the Turks threatened a campaign against it. In 2006, Sylvester Stallone’s film of the novel was also abandoned after a campaign by a genocide-denying group. In fact, The Promise had to be made outside of the studio system. US billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, the son of Armenian immigrants and a former head of MGM, bankrolled the $100 million budget. He died in 2015 before the film was made. And already The Promise has been targeted. It premiered in Toronto last September where only a few hundred saw it. But within weeks, tens of thousands of negative reviews had been posted on the IMDb website. Also, last month a film called The Ottoman Lieutenant, about the same period in Turkish history and starring Ben Kingsley, came out in the US. In response, Terry George who co-wrote and directed The Promise said: “It’s an Erdogan propaganda film released as a feature in America, remarkably just ahead of us.” Ben Kingsley in The Ottoman Lieutenant “I wasn’t surprised,” says Bale. “This story has been decades in the making and has been thwarted so many times. Kirk couldn’t make it at MGM – it couldn’t happen until he funded it himself. “The conversation should be about why there is denial. I think with the end of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of Turkey, they didn’t want to admit that these atrocities happened. And reparations could also be a factor. “But it’s a bit like the climate change argument... the facts don’t support the deniers and yet they refuse to accept it.” In the film, Bale plays an American reporter who is living in Turkey with his Armenian girlfriend when war breaks out and they are caught up in the unfolding horrors. For Bale, it also highlights the importance of journalism. Since they made the film “that has also become more relevant”. “We’re living in this ‘post-truth’ era with fake news, and a free press is essential to democracy. At that time, during the genocide, they tried to restrict reporting but a few brave men got the story out. “There’s a line in the film where someone says, ‘It must be nice to come and report on other people’s pain and then go back to the comfort of your home.’ My character says, ‘Yes, but without reporters nobody would know anything about this.’” Bale, 43, was born in Wales but now lives in California with his wife, Sandra Blazic, and their two children, Emmaline, 12, and two-year-old Joseph. A few years back he had a reputation for being intense, but these days he’s affable and funny. “Do I have a reputation for inhabiting a character?” he smiles, when we first meet on set in Spain (filming in Turkey was never an option). “I thought that’s what actors are supposed to do.” Then when we caught up on the phone last week, he quips, “How are things in Brexit-land?” Rather surreal, I say. “Yeah, Trump-land is a funny place, too.” He is arguably Britain’s most successful actor, with a stellar career stretching back three decades to Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. Since then, there have been Oscar nominations for American Hustle, The Big Short and The Fighter (he won best supporting actor) and a well-received turn as Batman for Christopher Nolan. He walked away from the franchise at the right time, he feels. “Yeah, absolutely. People thought we were crazy but Chris always said, ‘If we’re fortunate enough to make three, that’s it.’ It was Chris’s choice but I was in total agreement.” Would he take on another franchise? “I don’t think so,” he says pensively, “but you never say never.” So there’s no point in Barbara Broccoli giving him a call to see if he’s interested in James Bond? “I’m not sure,” he laughs. “How would you reinvent that?” If anyone could, it’s Bale. The Promise is released in cinemas today, Friday 28 April View oEmbed on the source website
Michelle Williams on Manchester by the Sea, a Dawson's Creek reunion and why kids should come first
Michelle Williams’s number one role is being a mother – but she’s picked up three Oscar nominations for the others
"If I were a man, I would have been arrested for stalking,” Michelle Williams laughs. “I hung outside schools, I watched moms walk their kids in and I observed their details – how many piercings they had in their ears, if they wore silver or gold, how high their boots were, what their hair looked like, how many kids they had, what their kids looked like, what they sounded like, what their accents were. I really stalked them!” Before the schools of small-town Massachusetts issue a restraining order, however, she clarifies it was all in the name of research for her new role in Manchester by the Sea. View oEmbed on the source website In recent years, Williams has turned down many roles, often ones that would involve a long spell away from her apartment in Brooklyn, where she lives with her 11-year-old daughter, Matilda, and their five-year-old spaniel, Lucky. But when Williams goes to work, it’s worth the wait. She’s already earned three Academy Award nominations – for Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine and My Week with Marilyn – and could easily collect a fourth for her heartbreaking role as Randi, a working-class mother who is in a happy relationship with Lee (Casey Affleck) before tragedy shatters their marriage. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan – his first film since the universally acclaimed Margaret five years ago – Manchester by the Sea (in cinemas from Friday 13 January) is a painfully real study of loss and grief. A role that one would think she didn’t need to research that much, having experienced more than her fair share of both. Her daughter Matilda’s father was the Australian actor Heath Ledger. They met on the set of Brokeback Mountain in 2004 and had a three-year relationship, which ended in 2007. After he died, in 2008, from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, she stopped working for more than a year. Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 “If I say no to a role I don’t think about it. I forget it and move on. Any decision you make to spend time with your child is the right one. There’s nothing more important,” she says solemnly. “I’d be hard-pressed to name something that I regret not doing, because I’ve been living my life and deepening our connection and furthering her happiness. That’s the most important thing for me.” Still, she knows full well that finding the balance between work and parenting is tough. “It is such a struggle to do both things to the level of your expectations. I think what we’ve figured out at this point is that it’s a myth – you can’t have it all, something is always being underserved and sometimes it’s your work and sometimes, let’s be honest, it’s your kids. “What I try to do is pay her back. It’s like ‘OK babe, we’re going to do a big work push here and I’m going to commit myself to this play or whatever it is, and we’ll spread ourselves a bit thin and then when it’s over we’re going to fill ourselves up again.’ And that balance works really well for us. “Our apartment is a complete and total mess because I can’t do that, too, you know, it’s not going to happen. I’ve learnt to let go of so much other stuff in service of the two big priorities, my daughter and my work.” She’s rarely spoken about Ledger, except to say that he had left a void in her life that was “impossible to fill”. When his name comes up during our interview, she’s polite, but firm. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t talk about it.” Michelle Williams and fellow Dawson's Creek actor Busy Philipps at this year's 74th annual Golden Globe Awards But it would be wrong to portray her as unfriendly. Today, in a plush London hotel, her blonde hair is cut into a bob, and she’s wearing a simple, high-necked black dress. She may be wary of discussing her relationships – there are reports in the US that she’s been dating author Jonathan Safran Foer – but she’s chatty and funny. Williams, 36, was born in Montana and started acting as a child, making an appearance in Baywatch as a 13-year-old and in the film Species a year later, before landing the part of rebellious teenager Jen Lindley in TV series Dawson’s Creek, which gave her the platform to launch her career. Does she think that Matilda will follow her parents into acting? “If that’s what she’d like to do as an adult, then that’s totally up to her, but it’s certainly not something I’m going to push her towards.” Her own big break in Dawson’s Creek came when she was little older than Matilda herself. “I was just 15 when I got the pilot,” she recalls. “I was so young. I was just a kid trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me and everyone else. View oEmbed on the source website “I loved that show. It was a dream job. I moved to North Carolina where we filmed it, and it was this sleepy, very protected place and I lived in a lovely little bubble for six years.” There’s recently been speculation about a reunion. “Yeah, I’ve heard that too, but I’d have to come back as a ghost,” she laughs. “I think it’s a fun thing to imagine but I haven’t heard anything serious about it. If they do maybe I could come back in flashbacks.” Manchester by the Sea is in cinemas from Friday 13th January
The real story of race and romance in A United Kingdom
Selma star David Oyelowo talks about the shocking real-life events behind the movie
When David Oyelowo first read the story of Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, he became obsessed with turning it into a film. Seretse and Ruth fell in love in London in 1947: he was black, she was white; he was an Oxford student and heir to an African throne, she was a typist. Together, they defied the might of three countries, and changed the course of a nation. View oEmbed on the source website After they married, Seretse brought his young wife back to Bechuanaland, then a British protectorate, now Botswana, to take up their roles as king and queen. But neighbouring South Africa, on the verge of introducing apartheid, feared that the couple would undermine their race laws, and threatened to ban the export of minerals and gold to Britain unless they were forced apart. Shamefully, that’s exactly what Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour government tried to do, by exiling Seretse from his own country. Oyelowo, born in Oxford to Nigerian parents, came to fame in Spooks, before Hollywood and a role as Martin Luther King in Selma beckoned. View oEmbed on the source website Now, seven years after reading Susan Williams’s Colour Bar, he’s starring in the film of the book. “When you think about these two people, who simply fell in love and then had the weight of three different countries bearing down on them, the pressure they were under must have been almost unbearable,” he says. “But actually the best relationships thrive under pressure. They only grew closer and that, to me, shows that they were destined to be together.” Seretse and Williams in 1950 At the film’s premiere, Marcus ter Haar, the deputy managing director of the Okavango Diamond Company in Botswana, struggled to keep his emotions in check. For the grandson of Seretse and Ruth, the nephew of Botswana’s current president, and consultant on the film, seeing their story on screen was overwhelming. “The beauty of the film is the romance, politics and intrigue, but also that it truthfully tells a story that is very personal for my family, a story that means so much to our nation as a whole.” His grandfather died in 1980 when Marcus was two years old, but he has vivid memories of his grandmother Ruth, who died aged 78 in 2002. “She was phenomenal,” he says. “She lived on a remote farm until her last years. She was strong, very determined and a very principled lady. “My grandparents’ story taught subsequent generations in Botswana how to do things. Seretse and Ruth stood for such sound principles at a time when, in Southern Africa, the racial divide was huge and the effects of apartheid were just coming into play. How two individuals were able to overcome governments, and all the power at their disposal, is phenomenal.” View oEmbed on the source website Today’s Botswana is a very different place to what it was then. “Certainly from a race perspective, the whole region has moved on,” Marcus continues, “and Southern Africa is far more integrated; race doesn’t have a bearing in any decisions. A lot of my friends are in multi-cultural or international relationships and marriages.” Marcus’s uncle, Ian Khama, President of Botswana, also gave A United Kingdom (in cinemas from Friday 25 November) his seal of approval. “We suddenly heard a helicopter, looked up and it was the president arriving,” recalls Oyelowo. “He walked on to the set to be confronted by his mother and father. He stood between myself and Rosamund [Pike, who plays Ruth] and said, ‘My mum and dad!’. “Thankfully, he was very complimentary about the casting but we could see it threw him a little having his life literally flash before his eyes.” View oEmbed on the source website Oyelowo is married to Jessica (nee Watson) who plays the racist wife of a British representative in Bechuanaland. In the film, Jessica has to deliver some particularly unpleasant lines. “In many ways, my love for my wife is the inspiration for wanting to do this film,” says Oyelowo. “But she plays this person who is very against interracial marriage and says the line: ‘Think of their children!’ Jess and I have four kids ourselves, so that wasn’t easy. “In many ways we have also experienced attitudes like this, although not to the same degree. Jess and I live in a completely different time but the unfortunate truth is that there are still people who find myself, as a black man, and her, as a white woman, being married an affront. I think that’s a tragedy and really saddening. “Our job here is to show that Seretse and Ruth were human beings first, that’s how they saw each other. It was the world around them that tried to define them by race, but ultimately it was their humanity that allowed them to triumph. When I look at my wife, I don’t see a white woman, I just see a woman, a person who I deeply love. I hope one day everyone can stop seeing the colour of someone’s skin.” A United Kingdom is in cinemas from Friday 25th November
The day Meryl Streep became the world's worst singer - with a little help from Hugh Grant
The Oscar-winning actress stars as the infamous amateur soprano in Florence Foster Jenkins
In the evening of 25 October 1944, a music legend was born. Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy New York socialite who believed herself a soprano worthy of playing a packed Carnegie Hall, took to the stage. She held (and paid for) the concert in honour of the servicemen returning home from the war and tickets sold out in hours, with guests including Cole Porter and soprano Lily Pons. Next morning, the reviews weren’t quite what she expected, however. The critic from the New York Post described the evening as “One of the weirdest mass jokes New York has ever seen”, adding: “She can sing anything but notes.” Florence wasn’t just bad – she was truly terrible. But instead of being ridiculed, her awful arias became the stuff of legend. Her recordings (also self-funded), one of which was called The Glory of the Human Voice, became a cult joke. David Bowie was apparently a big fan. Now, her operatic ambition is being celebrated by Stephen Frears (The Queen), with triple Oscar winner Meryl Streep as Florence and Hugh Grant her partner and manager, St Clair Bayfield. Streep, who has a good voice (watch Mamma Mia!), prepared with vocal coach Arthur Levy. “I went to him twice a week, and broke his spirit,” the actress smiles. “I knew we had something when the accompanist, who played like this [does a serious face], would giggle periodically. “I feel like I’m a B, B+ singer – I’m very well aware of my limitations. Much as I would have liked to be a good singer after I began studying opera as a child, I gave it up very early and sort of ruined my voice with smoking, drinking and debauchery,” she laughs. Luckily, that only went to help and not hinder her performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HszfdNS0JSc Grant knew that his co-star had captured the awfulness of Florence’s voice – once described as a “cacophony of squawks and screeches” – at the first script read-through. “All read-throughs are tense,” he explains. “But this one was a highly wrought occasion. I was thinking about how I had to actually act in front of Meryl Streep! On top of that, Meryl was quite tense because she was going to finally show everyone what she was going to do. Thank God, it was genuinely side-splittingly funny and no one had to do fake laughter.” On set, it was also hard to keep a straight face. Streep wore a padded suit and festooned her ample body in a rainbow of mismatched colours, in Florence’s flamboyant style. “What she put on was part of her celebration of being alive. By the end of the film, just as I lost my objectivity about how I sounded – I thought I sounded good – I looked in the mirror and thought I looked good. I completely lost it! I said to my husband, ‘It’s too bad we don’t wear dresses like this any more.’ He said, ‘Are you insane?’" The giggles would often get the better of Streep. “I’m very bad at not laughing. Yes, you’re concentrating on what you’re doing, but at the same time you’re alive to the fact that it’s ridiculous.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTvko32UVg But below the grandiose surface, Florence Foster Jennings was a woman who’d been dealt some cruel blows. Born in Pennsylvania in 1868, Florence was a piano prodigy as a child but her ambitions were dashed by her father’s refusal to fund her studies abroad. With her hopes in tatters, she eloped to Philadelphia with Dr Frank Thornton Jenkins, but rumour has it that the marriage ended after Florence found she had contracted syphilis from him. Back in New York, she inherited a fortune following her father’s death and met Bayfield, the son of an English country parson. Together, they staged tableaux vivants starring Florence, for private audiences. “She fell for his English charms and they became a couple, albeit a platonic one,” says Grant. “He protected her from knowing how bad she was, organising the audiences so that they were all people who supported her. He kept the bad reviewers at bay, and slipped a bob or two to the others to be nice.” Despite caring deeply for her, Bayfield never had a sexual relationship with Florence, the film suggests, because of her disease. “Bayfield lived this double life,” says Grant, “where he was an incredibly loyal husband, but also had this other woman living in a flat nearby. But, as he says in the film, ‘Love takes many forms.’ I think that is perfectly possible – it didn’t affect his love for Florence. “It’s a very strange relationship, in which you wonder, ‘Is this guy in it for himself? Or is this real love?’ I think that was one of the things I liked about the script very much; it is a very strange, unorthodox shape of love that is being celebrated, and I’m all for that.” Florence Foster Jenkins is in cinemas now
Ellen Page: 'I felt a moral imperative to come out as gay'
The young actress and star of new film Freeheld says she wants to challenge the assumption that you can't be gay and successful in Hollywood
Ellen Page chose a very public forum to tell the world what her close friends and family already knew. At the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference in Las Vegas in 2014, the 28-year-old actor announced she was gay. “I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission,” she told hundreds of delegates. It was a brave move for an actress who has starred in blockbuster mainstream films like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Inception. But for Page, coming out was a defining moment. Within months of making her announcement she started work on Freeheld, the true story of Laurel Hester, a gay police woman, and Stacie Andree, her younger lover, who helped pave the way for legalised same-sex marriage in the United States. Knowing she was about to portray Stacie partly informed Page’s decision to come out. “It was at a time when I was thinking about it. I was just done with feeling the way I had been feeling, which was not good, to say it simply,” she says. View oEmbed on the source website “I was like, ‘You cannot be a closeted actor and make this movie.’ It’s that simple. People like Laurel and Stacie are the true, courageous people, who in a time of unimaginable difficulty and sadness inadvertently became activists. And when you hear a story like that, or you see a documentary like God Loves Uganda [not yet shown in the UK] or you’re witnessing what is happening in Russia – you watch those things and you’re like, ‘Ellen, just say you’re gay.’ It started to feel like a moral imperative to come out.” She admits that she did fear going public might harm her career. “I went from being an anonymous to not an anonymous person at the age of 20,” she says, referring to her role in 2007’s Juno, a critical and box-office hit. “At that point, I was in a relationship with a woman and very much in love but I was still figuring out my own identity. And no one is overtly saying it, but I think there is an idea in Hollywood – and this is why there aren’t more out gay people and particularly out young gay people – that if you come out then your career is done. I guess I choose not to believe that any more, and right now it’s not true and I feel happier in the work that I’m doing.” View oEmbed on the source website Page felt a strong personal connection to Laurel and Stacie when she first heard of their story. Set in 2005, Freeheld (in cinemas from Friday 19 February) tells how Laurel (played by Julianne Moore), a New Jersey police force lieutenant, fell head over heels for Stacie, a younger mechanic. They built a home together before fate dealt them a cruel blow when Laurel was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. During the last months of her life, her wish was that she could leave Stacie her personal pension benefits so her partner would be financially secure after she was gone, just like any heterosexual police officer. But the five Ocean County freeholders – the name for the local elected officials – repeatedly refused her request, with one saying doing so could threaten “the sanctity of marriage”. In June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that the right to marriage is guaranteed to all citizens, including same-sex couples. Stacie and Laurel’s campaign, ten years earlier, was credited with informing that historic decision. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada, Page first acted as a ten-year-old when she landed a role in a TV movie and series called Pit Pony. By the time she was a teenager, she was appearing in Hollywood films. Juno propelled her on to the A-list and a returning role as Kitty Pryde in the X-Men franchise, working with Woody Allen on To Rome with Love and starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception. Since coming out, she’s been photographed at the Freeheld premiere with her girlfriend, artist Samantha Thomas (above). “Walking down the red carpet holding my girlfriend’s hand was pretty awesome.” These are, she says, more enlightened times but homophobia is still an issue. “It wasn’t so long ago that if you flirted with a cop in a bar in some states you would be thrown in jail, so the progress has been extraordinary, but we still live in a homophobic and trans-phobic society. “There’s still so much homophobic rhetoric and people who say, ‘Oh I’m not homophobic, this isn’t about hate, but it’s inappropriate for kids to learn about this.’ “Why? Why don’t you want kids to know that these people are not different? That is the exact time when you should be saying ‘Love people for who they are, they are not different from you.’ ”
Michael Caine on the challenges of Youth and why his wife is the only reason he's still alive
At 82, the Alfie actor is still going strong — but he says it's marriage that saved his life...
There are times when being Sir Michael Caine must be a little surreal. "A couple of years ago," the acting legend laughs, "someone sent me a birthday card and on it was a picture of me and it said, 'You're only supposed to blow the candles out,’” referring, of course, to his famous line “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” in The Italian Job, which rocketed him to international stardom in the 60s. “And you know those GPS systems,” he continues, “where you have the maps in the car and they tell you to turn left or right or whatever. Well, there’s one with my voice on it. But it’s not me; it’s an impressionist. I wish I could get paid for it – I’d be a multimillionaire!” Thanks to a career that spans more than six decades and includes two Oscars and three Golden Globes and, of course, a knighthood in 2000, he must surely be one already. Not bad for the proudly working class son of a Billingsgate fish porter. He’s 82 now, still going strong, with no immediate plans to retire, unlike the character in his latest movie, Youth (in cinemas from Friday 29 January). He plays classical music composer Fred Ballinger, who is on holiday at a luxury Swiss spa with one of his oldest pals, film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel). Mick is struggling to finish a troublesome screenplay and Fred is resisting attempts to coax him out of retirement for a special concert. View oEmbed on the source website “As I’ve got older,” Caine explains, “what is attractive to me is to play parts that push me as an actor, which means playing someone who is farther and farther away from who I really am, and I feel I’ve done this with Youth. “I’m from a very working class background and for me to play a classical music composer and conductor, in terms of class and accent, was one of the hardest things I’ve done and I think I’ve carried it off. “I connected with Fred because we are both 82, but he’s completely apathetic about his work and has an unhappy family life, whereas I’m completely the opposite.” He did try retiring once, back in the 1990s, convinced that the industry had given up on him and content to spend his days in the Florida sunshine where he had a home. “I thought it was over. With the movies, they retire you. Eventually nobody wants you and it’s only desperate people who send terrible scripts, or there’s no money and it’s not worth getting up in the morning. So this whole later career is a complete surprise to me.” It all changed when a friend, Jack Nicholson, tempted him back for a part in the thriller Blood and Wine in 1996, which was conveniently filming near his home in Florida. He's produced some of his best work in these later years - winning his second Oscar for The Cider House Rules, another Academy Award nomination for The Quiet American and playing Alfred, butler and surrogate father to Christian Bale's Caped Crusader in Christopher Nola's batman films. Nolan continues to cast him in his other films, including Interstellar. "He's my lucky charm," he laughs. "I've made a fortune out of him. I've done six pictures with him and they're all blockbusters. It's funny how these things happen. He recalls their first meeting. “I was at home one Sunday morning and the doorbell rang and there was this man standing there with a script. I knew who he was, so I said I’d have a look. But he’s very secretive, is Chris, and he was like, ‘No, read it now!’ So I said, ‘OK. By the way, what’s the name of the film?’ It was Batman Begins. “I thought, ‘He’s not going to offer me the bloody butler, is he? What do I say... ‘Dinner is served’ or ‘Would you like another piece of toast?’ But I read it and, of course, Alfred is our foothold into all this fantasy. I thought it was great and asked what the budget was and he said $175 million. ‘Shit, how much of that can I get?’ I asked. It all changed when a friend, Jack Nicholson, tempted him back for a part in the thriller Blood and Wine in 1996, which was conveniently filming near his home in I didn’t even get ten per cent!” It’s a typical Caine one-liner. He’s hugely entertaining; full of anecdotes about stars like Shirley MacLaine, John Wayne and Roger Moore, which he rolls out with the ease of a polished raconteur who has penned two autobiographies. “You never know,” he says, “I might do another one.” In Youth, his character is full of regrets but Caine is not the type to dwell on the past. He insists, "I tell my children: 'never look back, you'll fall over. Just keep going, not matter what.' "It's like when people say, "That picture was a disaster, have you seen the reviews?' Yep, I just keep going and do another one." He offers this as a lesson to other young people looking to break into show business. “I watch those talent shows – The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – and when someone cries because they’ve been knocked out, I always want to say to them, ‘This is one of a thousand auditions, pick yourself up.’ I did 27 auditions for parts in theatre and never got one. I auditioned for Alfie in the theatre and didn’t get it. “I was sharing a flat with Terence Stamp when they were about to make the film of Alfie and they offered it to everybody, including Terence who turned it down. I was the last one to be offered the role because Lewis (Gilbert, director) was desperate. So my advice is, you have to ride with it and keep going. As Churchill said, ‘Carry on and keep going’. That’s my motto.” He was married, for seven years until 1962, to actress Patricia Haines (she died in 1977) who had his first daughter, Dominique. But he credits second wife Shakira Baksh, who is 14 years his junior, with saving him from his wilder ways. “Without her I would have been dead long ago. I would have probably drunk myself to death. I was a bit of a piss artist when I was younger, I used to drink a bottle of vodka a day and I was smoking too, several packs a day. “I wasn’t unhappy but it was stress. You know, ‘Am I going to get another picture? How am I going to do this part? How am I going to remember all those lines? I’ve got to get up at 6 in the morning and I hope the alarm works.’ There was always some stressful thing. Meeting Shakira calmed me down. “And she’s not the little wife; she runs the whole business side of my life. She’s my righthand man, my confidante. I tell her everything. I was famous when I met her, but I couldn’t have got this far without her. She is the most important person in my life.” They were married in 1973 and have a daughter, Natasha. “I’m a big family man. I’ve got two grandsons, aged five and six, and I love ’em to bits.” He adds proudly, “I became a bit of a hero to them. I was watching cartoons with the eldest and a trailer for one of the Batman films came on and there’s me with Batman. He said, ‘Do you know Batman?’ I said casually, ‘Yeah, he’s a friend of mine...’ ” Michael Caine stars in Youth, in cinemas now
She spent a month locked inside for her latest role in Room. If anyone deserves an Oscar, it's surely Brie
At the age of six, Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers (now Brie Larson, her Swedish great grandmother’s surname because her birth name is “hard to pronounce”) told her mother she was going to be an actor. “My mom was doing the washing up and I said, ‘Mom, I know what my dharma is: I’m supposed to be an actor,’ ” Larson recalls. “My mom was like, ‘Whoa, where did you learn the word dharma?’ She thought I was just repeating something off the TV.” Twenty years later, Larson could be about to become the hottest actress in Hollywood following what critics are calling “a career-making performance” in Room (in cinemas from Friday 15 January). She has already received a Golden Globe nomination, and an Oscar nod looks likely to follow. View oEmbed on the source website Room is based on the bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize back in 2010. The story was inspired by the case of Austrian man Josef Fritzl who imprisoned one of his daughters in a basement dungeon for 24 years, where she bore him seven children. In the film, Larson plays Ma who was kidnapped by a man she calls “Old Nick” (Sean Bridgers) seven years earlier. She is being held in an 11ft by 11ft garden shed with her son, Jack (played by Jacob Tremblay), now five years old, who was born during her captivity.He knows nothing of the outside world, or of the terrible ordeal that his mother has suffered. It’s a riveting thriller buy Larson takes exception to the idea that Room is a harrowing watch; she insists it is an uplifting film about the mother/son bond. "For me, it's a love story. It's about love, freedom and perseverance," she says. But the lengths she went to in order to prepare for the role certainly sound harrowing in themselves. “I wanted to fully understand what it was like for Ma to be in ‘the room’ for so, so long. To simulate that, I stayed at home for a month and only left to go to the gym. I had very little connection to the outside world and I stayed out of the sun since Ma has not had sun on her skin in many years.” Her self-imposed isolation brought back memories of her own childhood, she says, in particular the time her parents split up. “A lot of old memories resurfaced. I remembered a lot about my childhood that I had forgotten about. I was born in Sacramento but moved to Los Angeles with my mom and my little sister when I was seven. We moved into a studio apartment that was a little bit bigger than ‘the room’ – we had a door to a toilet so there was a little bit of separation there – but the bed came out of the wall. View oEmbed on the source website “My mom couldn’t even afford Happy Meals but I remember it being one of the greatest times of my life. My mom has this incredible imagination and she instilled so much life into that space, so I never felt that I was lacking and I didn’t realise that we didn’t have anything. “I also remembered all three of us asleep in the bed that came out from the wall, and waking up in the middle of the night to see my mom with her hands over her mouth trying to be quiet but sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t realise until many years later that my father had asked for a divorce, which was why we had moved to Los Angeles. View oEmbed on the source website “Sometimes you never fully understand why you are attracted to a project until you get deeper into it and that for me – and it’s giving me chills talking about it – was such a huge part of my life and I brought it to this film.” Larson has been working steadily since she was nine when she performed sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. During her teens she popped up on various TV shows and landed smallish roles in films including 13 Going on 30, Sleepover and Madison. Articulate, smart and funny, she left high school at just 15. When Room premiered at the Telluride film festival, she considered wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with an Oscar to the press conference but then changed her mind. “I didn’t know if people would realise I was trying to be funny,” she says. It’s certainly not a joke now. At 26, this newcomer has arrived and she could be picking up a real statuette very soon.
Amy Poehler on how she learned to make people laugh after 9/11
From Saturday Night Live to Pixar's Inside Out, the comedian's star continues to rise
Up until recently, Amy Poehler was – as described by a fellow comedian – “the funniest person nobody knows”. She may still not be that well known here, but make no mistake, she is one of the most powerful women in the entertainment business. Her stint on Saturday Night Live, alongside her friend Tina Fey, as well as her role in Parks and Recreation (which returns for a new series on Monday 27 July on Dave), have turned this teacher’s daughter from the Boston suburbs into a star. For the past two years, Poehler and Fey have hosted the Golden Globes to rapturous applause. At 43, Poehler still has the air of a lottery winner, who, rather charmingly, can’t quite believe her luck. “My career has been an interesting one,” she reflects. “It’s been like a slow and steady race. Every step has seen me figuring out where to go next.” She’s acknowledged as one of a number of American comedians who have pushed the boundaries, with a razor- sharp satirical wit that takes in everything from politics (she does a deadly Hillary Clinton impression) to how men react to pregnant women. She writes, directs and produces her own shows (including the sitcom Welcome to Sweden and several episodes of Parks), is a successful author and, of course, acts, too. Her latest role is in Pixar’s animated adventure Inside Out, voicing the character Joy, one of the inner emotions ruling the behaviour of an 11-year-old girl named Riley. View oEmbed on the source website When I suggest that Poehler is forging a new path for female comedy, she protests, saying, “I think that would be presumptuous. But I do feel I’m in a ‘straddle’ generation. I see the younger generation and I’m lucky enough to work with them, and I’m also very respectful and in debt to the generation that came before, who had harder obstacles to overcome than I did.” Poehler grew up in a happy home where banter over dinner with her brother Greg (who co-writes Welcome to Sweden) was part of family life. “There was an expectation to keep up at the table,” she says. “Brits understand this – you kind of have to get good at teasing and you have to be able to take it and give it. You guys call it taking the p*** – and we learned that early on.” Growing up, her own comedy influences were not exclusively American. “Monty Python and The Carol Burnett Show were the two shows that seemed to be on in our house all the time. My mom watched a lot of British comedy for a suburban schoolteacher from Boston. Later I was watching a lot of early SNL (Saturday Night Live), Eddie Murphy, Gilda Radner.” In 2001, just after the attacks on the Twin Towers, Poehler joined Fey on Saturday Night Live. The show is based in New York and the city was grieving. “It was a really interesting time to be on a live sketch show because people were saying ‘Comedy is dead’, and I remember thinking, ‘Could we just hang on a few more years?’ “Funny people, to me, are an elixir – they get you through the hardest times. Jokes kind of pull you up and reset you. And I’m lucky to be surrounded by some of the funniest people in the world.” Her first SNL show aired just 18 days after the tragedy and featured then New York mayor Rudy Giuliani along with members of the city’s police and fire departments. It opened with producer Lorne Michaels asking Giuliani “Can we be funny?” and the politician replying “Why start now?” “Comedy is so subjective,” she says, “and that’s why, when people connect to something they find funny, they feel really deeply connected. It’s like when you’re attracted to someone. It’s really hard to be attracted to someone you don’t find funny or share the same sense of humour with.” View oEmbed on the source website Poehler was married to comedy actor Will Arnett (Arrested Development) for nine years and they have two sons: Archie, seven, and five-year-old Abel. The pair separated in 2012, and Poehler has since been dating comedian Nick Kroll, juggling being a mother with her demanding career. “It’s an interesting time for women because there’s so much expectation and pressure to do all things well. But the lesson I’ve learned about being a mom is to be easier on myself. You are constantly crossing off what doesn’t work any more and then trying something else, having to readjust and stay flexible. But it’s worth it.” Despite being a kids’ film, Inside Out (in cinemas from Friday 24 July) resonates with Poehler for those reasons. “We struggle constantly to have our children avoid any kind of fear, anger, sadness or pain,” she says. “But they feel all of those things whether we like it or not. “On one level Inside Out is a really funny romp. But it works on another level, too, because as an adult you watch it and it’s like, ‘What used to bring me joy doesn’t any more. Who’s running my controls these days? What kind of parent am I?’ “When I walked up the red carpet at Cannes, one of the actors who voices Fear in the French version of Inside Out told me that you are supposed to make a wish. I won’t tell you what that wish was, but it was a good reminder that sometimes you should actually stop and enjoy the moment.” Inside Out is in UK cinemas now
Pierce Brosnan on why losing his first wife helped shape his latest role
The former 007 actor on "brilliant" Daniel Craig, why Mamma Mia! was scarier than Bond and the poignancy behind new film Love Is All You Need
In a few weeks’ time, Pierce Brosnan will celebrate his 60th birthday, but he is entering his seventh decade with a self-deprecating blend of good humour and appreciation for life’s blessings. “Growing older just creeps up on you,” he says. “You’re on a movie set and you look around and you suddenly think, ‘S**t, I’m the oldest one here!’ I’ll celebrate with my darling girl and the kids – you give thanks and then on you go. I’ve got a lot of gratitude for the wonderful things in my life.” And he has much to celebrate – a happy marriage, five much adored children and beautiful homes on the ocean in Malibu and Hawaii. He can also look back on a career that took him from theatre here in the UK, via a BBC costume drama (Nancy Astor) and American TV series (Remington Steele) in the 1980s, to playing James Bond in four films between 1995 and 2002, before he stood aside for the latest 007, Daniel Craig. He has no regrets. Craig is a friend and a “brilliant” Bond, he says, and the legacy of his own time in the tuxedo and driving the Aston Martin DB5 is still with him. “Bond is the gift that keeps on giving,” he says. “It was a monumental part of my career – I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to play Bond and I loved playing him. Really, who wouldn’t? It’s a small group of men who have played him and I’m very proud to be one of them. But once it’s finished you have to look in other directions and you have to move on. Bond allowed me to go forth as an actor and play the characters that I do now.” One such character is Philip, a middle-aged English businessman still grieving after the loss of his wife, in Love Is All You Need, a bittersweet romantic comedy from acclaimed Danish director Susanne Bier that’s released in cinemas on Friday 19 April. It’s a particularly poignant film for Brosnan because there are echoes of his own past in the story. He lost his first wife, Australian actress Cassandra Harris, to ovarian cancer in 1991 when she was just 43. They had a son, Sean, now 29, and Brosnan adopted Cassandra’s daughter, Charlotte, and son, Christopher, from a previous marriage. “You cannot escape your own life and the experiences, good and bad, when you play certain characters,” he says. “Losing Cassie to cancer was part of the vocabulary of playing Philip. You draw upon your life when you create a character. I didn’t find it acutely painful because at the same time the story had its own tone and narrative, but there are many emblems in there which I could identify with as a man, as an actor, and that was part of the reason I wanted to do the film.” Brosnan met the woman who would turn his own life around, journalist and broadcaster Keely Shaye Smith (50 this September), three years after his first wife died. They married in 2001 and have two sons together, Dylan, 16, and Paris, 12. “We met when I was like Philip, adrift,” he says. “I’d lost my wife and been a widower for three years. Keely is the backbone of our family, of my life, and I tell her that I love her every day. I tell her that she’s beautiful and I couldn’t have done it without her.” The actor was raised in County Meath in Ireland by his mother, May, after his father walked out when he was a toddler. They then moved to England in 1964 when he was 11. And now almost five decades later, his matinee idol looks may betray some signs of his age (his thick hair is greying, there are lines around his eyes), but he could still pass for a man 15 years younger. “I like my golf, I get on the bike, I get on the treadmill, I kayak and, you know, living in California is conducive to that lifestyle. I live right by the beach and I get up and hike up into the hills with the dog. It’s a simple life, really. “If I’m not filming I take the kids to school, go to the office and see what’s on my desk, pick the kids up from school and go home and make dinner. You have to look after yourself but I put it down to some good Irish genes and good lighting…” Post-Bond, he’s relished taking on vastly different roles. He starred with Meryl Streep and Colin Firth in Mamma Mia! and the musical based on Abba’s songs became the biggest UK hit of 2008. “Doing Bond was fairly terrifying but I think Mamma Mia! was even more so,” he laughs. “But it was worth it. It really was the best of times.” He’s as busy as ever and recently finished filming a comedy, Love Punch, with Emma Thompson. He will also play a disgraced TV personality contemplating suicide in A Long Way Down, based on the Nick Hornby novel, and hopes to work with his son, Sean, in The Ghosts of Belfast, an adaptation of Stuart Neville’s thriller, set in the aftermath of the troubles in Ireland. “It’s about a man released from prison who has to deal with the venom of the past and Sean will play my character as a young man. So if we can make it happen, I’d obviously love the chance of working with my boy. “Sean is doing well and he’s creating a career for himself. And my son Dylan goes to film school in the summer and makes his own movies. You get apprehensive, regardless of what they do. It’s part of being a parent. But I embrace their decisions as long as they get an education. If they choose the world of film-making then I’ll certainly help them in any way I can. But in the end, they all have to find their own way.” Love Is All You Need is released in UK cinemas on Friday 19 April
Alec Baldwin on yoga, running for office and the end of 30 Rock
"In our hearts we could have kept it going for another couple of years. But it all has to end eventually and you have to move on"
In a few weeks Alec Baldwin is planning to say goodbye to Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and the rest of his pals on the critically acclaimed comedy 30 Rock, pick up a stack of books and head for his boat to contemplate the next chapter of his life. Somewhere off on the horizon might well be a political career (more of which later). But, for now, Baldwin wants to put his feet up and relax. “The TV show is ending and that’s a big change,” he says. “I want to work less and do different things.” Such as? “Well, maybe make films for a little while, but not too often. And I’ve been thinking about going back to school. That’s a big fantasy for me. I’d like to study English literature - something that’s good for my soul.” As he points out, he’s worked virtually non-stop for more than 30 years, and the last seven have been dominated by the rigorous demands of making a primetime TV show. Now, at 54, he wants a rest. On 30 Rock, Baldwin plays the suave Jack Donaghy, the network boss who often makes life hell on comedy sketch show TGS with Tracy Jordan, especially for chief writer Liz Lemon (Fey). The show is fast, funny and occasionally brilliant, and it’s bowing out leaving its fans wanting more. “Everybody is sad that 30 Rock is ending,” he says. “We’re due to finish filming the last series in mid-December and that’s it, it’s over. Gone. We’ve had a lot of success and it’s been like a long distance race at times, with ups and downs - but mostly ups.” “We did season five and it dipped and everybody thought, ‘let’s go home, it sucks.’ But we went back last year and it did well and we all loved it again. In our hearts we could have kept going for another couple of years. But it all has to end eventually and you have to move on.” It is, then, a year of big changes for Baldwin. A few months ago he got married for the second time, to ballroom dancer-turned-yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas, who, at 28, is 26 years his junior. His nine-year first marriage, to the actress Kim Basinger, ended in divorce in 2002 and led to an increasingly bitter, and public, custody battle over their daughter Ireland, now 17. He said afterwards that he would never marry again. And then he met Ms Thomas at a vegan restaurant in New York and clearly changed his mind. “Now I’ve finished the show I am going to be doing a lot more yoga,” he jokes. “And not just to get her off my back. Honestly, it’s great.” “Hilaria was a competitive Latin ballroom dancer for many years, until she was 22, and worked all over Europe and a lot in England, on the circuit. She wants to have a family, she wants children and maybe when the show is over we’ll see. But first we’ll do a bit more travelling because I haven’t been able to travel as much as I would have wanted to.” Baldwin started his career in TV as a regular on the daytime soap The Doctors and later played a preacher on Knots Landing. He’s worked in theatre and made films: some good - The Hunt for Red October, The Departed, The Aviator, It’s Complicated - and some not so good, as he candidly admits. “Twenty five per cent of the films you do are good or very good, and 25 per cent are disgusting and horrible, and then there’s the 50 per cent in the middle,” he says. “I’ve had a very average film career but I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve always enjoyed the people, working with great actors like Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep. People that I admired.” These days, it takes a lot to tempt him to make a film. “This is a great time in my life. I’m happy. I don’t need to work, I like to be by the pool with my favourite yoga instructor, eating fruit and taking in the sun. So when someone knocks at the door and wants you to get up and go to work and invest a lot of time into making a film, it’s critical who is doing the knocking.” Rise of the Guardians (in cinemas from Friday 30 November) is a good example, he says. It’s an animated film from DreamWorks, the studio responsible for favourites such as Madagascar, Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, and one of the bosses, Jeffrey Katzenberg, called Baldwin personally to ask him to join the all-star voice cast, which also includes Jude Law and Hugh Jackman. “In this genre, Jeffrey stands alone, so when he asks you to do a film of this nature with that incredible team he’s got there, you immediately pay attention. When it’s Jeffrey Katzenberg doing the knocking, it’s a completely different imperative.” In the adaptation of William Joyce’s successful book series The Guardians of Childhood, Baldwin voices Santa Claus. But North, his burly, Eastern European-accented action man, is hardly recognisable as that nice old Father Christmas, and heads a band of childhood legends (the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, the Sandman) to fight off the threat of wicked bogeyman Pitch (Jude Law), who plans to spread fear across the globe and rob kids of their dreams. Baldwin is one of six siblings born in Long Island, New York (and the oldest of four brothers, all of whom became actors). He studied politics at George Washington University and planned on becoming a lawyer (and, ultimately, a politician) before he got the acting bug and won a place at the famous Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. “And I had a different life as a result,” he says. But he is a committed Democrat (“Romney would make a superb ambassador to Switzerland” was one of the many tweets he sent during the presidential campaign) and has long flirted with the idea of going into politics. He considered running against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who will be up for re-election at the end of next year. “But that wasn’t possible because I would have needed to start raising money this year, and I was working.” He wouldn’t be the first actor to run for office either - Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger and, most significantly, Ronald Reagan all made the move. Even so, Baldwin knows that there would be a lot of cynics waiting to pour scorn on him if he declares himself a candidate. “If you step up to the microphone and you speak about politics and you are the head of a big corporation or a bank and you give your opinion to Congress, no one asks any questions, even if you are there to try to influence trade decisions, regulation, business for your company and profit.” “I have never taken one position in my entire life that lined my pocket. I spoke about campaign finance reform, gun control, the environment, and not one of them put a dime in my pocket or raised my stock prices.” “But the minute I open my mouth in my country, people go, ‘shut up!’ There’s no self-interest, there’s nothing self-serving about it. But they are constantly criticising you. Conservative critics are like, ‘why don’t these actors shut up?’ Well, I’m never going to shut up.” And it must be said that Mayor Baldwin has a nice ring to it. Rise of the Guardians is out in UK cinemas on 30 November