Posts Tagged ‘Ken Watanabe’

Black Book Magazine has posted a fun little interview with two of the co-stars of Inception, Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe. The two actors -who have chosen to live outside of Hollywood- talk about what that means for their careers, what it was like working with director Christopher Nolan more than once, and just what they can tell us about Inception.

What can you tell us about Inception?

Cillian: This film has the structure of a heist movie, although not quite that conventional, of course. It’s an existential heist. Chris plays with shifting narratives, like he did in Memento. This one’s equally complex. I don’t know how it was for you, Ken, but when I first got the script, it was a hard read because it’s so visual. I’d never read anything like it in my life.
Ken: It was so confusing. I couldn’t understand it the first time.

What do you do in that situation, when you read a script and have no idea what’s going on?

Cillian: I trust Chris. He came up with this idea when he was 16 or something. He’s one of the greatest living directors—I think he’s proven that. So I knew this was material he’d be able to manifest in scale and emotion.
Ken: I had just wrapped a film in Africa and was on my way back to Japan when I got a call from Chris. He asked me to come to L.A., which is a 16 1/2-hour flight from Dubai. I met with him and he asked, “Are you a skier?” Coincidentally, I was born in snow country, and my father is a ski instructor. He explained the synopsis. His projects are really big so I needed to prepare a lot and also train in English. I wasn’t confident I had enough time before we started shooting, but I thought, This is the first time I’ve been asked to work with the same Hollywood director twice. I need to do this.

Head over to BlackBookMag.com to read the full interview. Thanks to GamingFreak in the forums for the heads up.