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Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin: three actors, one man

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Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin: three actors, one man Empty Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin: three actors, one man

Message  Matthieu Dim 21 Nov 2010 - 6:46

Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin: three actors, one man (The Observer, 21 novembre 2010).
The stars of Any Human Heart talk about playing Logan Mountstuart, from randy youth to eating dog food in old age
What's so fascinating about Logan Mountstuart, the hero of Any Human Heart, is that over his 85 years, as charted in William Boyd's novel and now in Channel 4's film adaptation, this chameleonic character seems to live so many lives. At school he is both a teacher's pet and a rule-damning deviant; in love he is a devoted husband sandwiched by great stretches as a scoundrel; during wartime he's a pampered emissary on the conflict's fringe then a daredevil spy in the thick of it all; in war's aftermath he becomes a depressive art dealer and even a fledgling terrorist. "Every human being is a collection of selves," is a significant line in the TV adaptation. "We never stay just one person."

But when you portion up a many-storied life between three actors, one just out of drama school, one in his middle-30s, one almost pensionable, the spoils do not necessarily divvy up very fairly. Matthew Macfadyen, ex-Spooks actor and sometime Mr Darcy who plays Logan in his fertile middle-years, gets to golf with royalty and plunge romantically into the Spanish civil war and the second world war. He falls giddily in love and experiences the great wound that bisects Logan's life.

Newcomer Sam Claflin gets Logan in his early, randy years. Stewarding the character from the end of his schooldays through to (one) marriage, the 24-year-old gets sloshed on absinthe with Ernest Hemingway and writes a hit novel. He experiences the first flush of wealth and has lots of sex. "I get Logan's 'wonder years'," says Claflin. "The chasing girls, making bets with mates, enjoying the good and the bad as you trundle along. Great fun."

Which leaves Jim Broadbent, taking Logan "from his 60s through to the end". He gets the tapering libido, the extreme penury that requires him to eat dog food to get by, the gloomy discussions with heart doctors. "There's quite a lot of deterioration and illness and death in the characters I've played recently," admits Broadbent, himself 61. He smiles. "But each falling hair, I see as another casting opportunity."

Broadbent expresses great affection for the character of Logan, one he likens in richness to real-life figures he's played such as Lord Longford (in Longford) and writer John Bayley (in Iris, a role for which he won an Oscar). "There was a great responsibility in playing those roles because they were real people, well remembered. But readers have a very set idea of Logan, too, even if every reader has a different one.

"He's not an angry man, nor bitter when he hits the bottom in the dog food-eating years. He's non-judgmental throughout, both of himself and of all the extraordinary people he meets."

Macfadyen agrees: "He's present through all these incredible events in the 20th century and has the ability to talk to almost anybody on their level. It makes him very attractive." Despite meeting luminaries of the 20th century from Winston Churchill to Virginia Woolf to King Edward and Mrs Simpson, says Claflin, "he just floats through as an ordinary man".

To their regret, the trio had little opportunity to work together during filming, the downside of portioning up a lone character. "There was a pleasant day beside a lake when we filmed a dream sequence and we were all there," says Broadbent. Claflin, who had already worked with Macfadyen on another TV adaptation, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, recently broadcast on Channel 4, had been particularly looking forward to acting alongside Broadbent, a hero of his. "Heartbreaking," he says, "to realise that as we were playing the same character I'd barely get to meet him. Our filming weeks didn't overlap, and Jim's last day was my first."

Claflin recalls seeing Macfadyen reading the novel between takes while filming The Pillars of the Earth, "sitting in full medieval costume in the middle of Vienna, thick mud all around, avidly turning the pages of a paperback". It was a long shoot, and when Macfadyen had finished he passed the book to Claflin: "I'm not much of a reader, but I absolutely loved it."

"Fuck! Fabulous!" was Macfadyen's response, months later, when he discovered Channel 4 was plotting its adaptation and wanted him to play "middle Logan". When he heard producers were looking for somebody to play Logan in his teens and 20s, he suggested Claflin. "Much better-looking," says Macfadyen, "but I thought he'd be perfect as a younger me."

It was one element in a charmed year for Claflin, who left drama school in 2009. He was considering a touring theatre job – Macbeth – when he got a part in The Pillars of the Earth as a swashbuckling knight. That led into Any Human Heart and there, while in a make-up chair having his prosthetic dimple applied, he received a call to tell him he'd been cast to star in the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. He's spent the time since filming in Hollywood and Hawaii alongside Johnny Depp.

Broadbent and Macfadyen get a little misty-eyed thinking of themselves at Claflin's age. "I've just turned 36, that grand old age," says Macfadyen, currently "in green-screen hell" filming CGI scenes for his role as Athos in The Three Musketeers. "Hopefully, I'm only halfway through my life and, as with Logan, there are a lot 'mes' to come."

Broadbent remembers being a young actor, "working in rep, which doesn't exist now, and in rough fringe theatre, which doesn't exist now". He didn't get his big-screen break until well into his 40s. "It's one of the advantages I have over Sam, who's young. I can recognise the sequence of different experiences in one's life."

Macfadyen thinks the clue to Logan's appeal is that he deals with these changing sequences – his portions of good and bad luck over 85 years – without complaint or resistance: "He doesn't try terribly hard, Logan, he's just sort of there. He's present. He believes that so much is luck, which doesn't mean you oughtn't work, or oughtn't try, but ultimately it's out of your hands and you should just ride the wave."

Has he re-read the book since playing the part? "I dipped in the other day. It makes you realise any adaptation is only an impression of the novel." All actors express disappointment – jokingly – at favourite sequences of the novel being excised from the screenplay, adapted by Boyd himself. Claflin misses early scenes that involved Logan becoming a suicidally enthusiastic rugby blue as part of a dare. Broadbent liked a later bit in which Logan (adopting yet another identity) became a lecturer in Nigeria, a sequence excised regretfully by Boyd for lack of time.

While filming an adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now in 2001, Macfadyen abandoned his research-read of the novel. "My character was described by Trollope in totally different terms, a totally different person to me. You have to remember it's not the book, ultimately, that you're shooting, but rather the scripted adaptation. As an actor you can't play the book, only the moments – very simple moments – in the script. I've never enjoyed watching something as much as I've enjoyed reading it."

But Any Human Heart, boosted by being adapted for the screen by its author, transfers very well. Like the book, it clips along at great pace, eating up the century over four episodes and leaving the viewer – like Logan – wondering at how quickly a lifetime ebbs away. None of the trio has seen a final cut when we speak, but each is looking forward to a viewing.

They don't look hugely alike, and some effort was made to homogenise their looks. "Jim doesn't have any earlobes," chuckles Macfadyen, "so he got some fitted." Claflin was given blue contact lenses and even a prosthetic dimple in his chin to make him more like Macfadyen. They all recall long talks about developing a shared idiosyncrasy each would feed into his scenes, involving the choreographed twiddling of a Zippo lighter, but the idea was ditched. "We realised my version of Logan wasn't a smoker by the time I got to him," says Broadbent. "We didn't want it to seem like we were doing impressions of one another," adds Macfadyen.

In the finished film the moments of transition between the trio are unobtrusive. Macfadyen replaces Claflin on the eve of a wedding, and they make very plausible cosmic twins. Broadbent takes over from Macfadyen in the third episode, having hung over the previous films as a kind of narrator and spectral presence. He plays the final, haunted years of Logan with a terrific combination of fire and sadness. Ultimately, it is Broadbent's Logan that lingers.

"My favourite moment," says Macfadyen, "comes when Jim's Logan speaks to a visiting priest late on. He says something like: 'No plumbline can fathom the depths of my faithlessness – now fuck off.'" It is what Macfadyen ultimately loves about the character: "He doesn't buy any superstitious claptrap. There's life, and what you make of it."
Matthieu
Matthieu
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Nombre de messages : 7004
Age : 62
Localisation : Lorraine
Date d'inscription : 17/12/2008

http://www.matthew-macfadyen.org/

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