AdvertisementWell, the script, by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. I mean, I must have been very good at a previous life. Not only did he write this script, which was marvelous, but he also wrote it with me in mind, which is, you know, a sensational development obviously, in my view. And I was drawn to the character because it’s something I’m really interested in. I’m interested in that degree of personal restraint, that sort of locked up kind of the prisoner of manners.
It’s funny, a little island where people wear bowler hats. You know, if you had a white collar job, you wore that hat. I mean, isn’t that weird? Like, there were thousands of them, all over the country. And they all carried a rolled up umbrella,nd they all wore this bizarre hat that was built like a crash helmet. So if anybody gets you over the head with a hammer, you’d be fine. Honestly, I promise you, they’re built really tough.
, which is from the same period. It’s a [World War II] wartime movie. He’s said that he’s always wanted to marry the atmosphere or the general story of, with what’s called the Englishness of the 1950s. And then, when he saw me, he figured I was the person to help with that. I don’t know why. I’m often mistaken for some kind of old-timey English gentleman, but I don’t truly understand it.
AVC: But it’s funny because I think many of us associate you with charm and exuberance, whereas Mr. Williams is so closed off. But then you said you were interested in these issues of restraint and of building performances with the most miniscule of gestures and moments. What was it like inhabiting that? Did you, for instance, build him out from the bowler hat in or from the inside out?Oh, I don’t know the answer to that. A bit of both really? Not the bowler hat, though.