чудесная статья, одна из лучших, что я читала, просто ащщщ! настолько мне понравилась, что под катом она вся целиком.
A part of everyone wants to be Leonardo DiCaprio. (с)No one knows how to be a movie star. You can be trained to act, but not – really – to be a celebrity. Living in the spotlight, promoting yourself as you promote your movie … it’s something you learn on the job.
Taron Egerton, one of Britain’s best young actors, hardly needs a top-up in the art of playing himself. In 2013, shortly after his (subsidised) training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he was picked by Matthew Vaughn for the lead role in the R-rated spy caper Kingsman: The Secret Service. The day he was cast he was given two roles: Gary “Eggsy” Unwin – a working-class kid yanked from obscurity to join a secret organisation of gentleman spies – and “Taron Egerton” – a working-class kid yanked from obscurity to become the face of a $400m-grossing blockbuster.
Egerton was pulled around the globe on the Kingsman press tour. During it, he returned to Rada for a special screening of the film. The school’s director, Edward Kemp, remembers how quickly things had changed. “It felt like he didn’t know what continent he was on,” he says. “Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Caine [Egerton’s co-stars] – they were not going to be dumped on planes and flown around the world. The next best bet was Taron Egerton. That’s pretty scary, to go from being a student to that.”
Since Kingsman, Egerton has put in skilful, solid supporting roles opposite Tom Hardy in Legend and Alicia Vikander in Testament of Youth. Today, he’s back in the middle of another round of the month-long jetlag that comes with selling a mainstream film. The marketing campaign for Eddie the Eagle is, for a gentle movie, relentless. You can’t walk 20 metres in London without Egerton’s face looming at you from the side of a bus. Not that he would know. He has been in the US, Norway, China and Korea promoting the film. When we meet, France, Germany and Lithuania are still waiting for the Eagle to land.
In the film, Egerton plays Michael “Eddie” Edwards, a former plasterer from Cheltenham who taught himself to ski jump in order to compete at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Eddie didn’t win any medals (in fact, he finished last), but he won people’s hearts. The public loved the story the press wrote for him: the dorky guy, taking to the slopes with his thick-rimmed glasses and prodigious underbite, who had a go at reaching for the top level of his sport because he loved it so much.
In truth, while he made it look like he had no idea what he was doing, Eddie’s mindset was far from that of the bumbling amateur. He was as driven and ambitious as the best. He might not have worked out how to jump as well as his competitors, but Michael Edwards understood how to sell Eddie the Eagle.
“The guy wasn’t an idiot,” says Egerton. “That’s been a really common misconception. The folklore is that he was this fool, but he wasn’t. He was sharp and shrewd. He’s lovely, but he’s not someone to be trifled with.”
Egerton is no rube, either. He has Eddie’s pluck and steeliness. Talk to anyone he has worked with and they will tell you how smart and confident he is. His Eddie the Eagle co-star, Hugh Jackman, says it has taken him 12 years to feel the level of comfort Egerton has attained. Vikander, who played his sister in Testament of Youth, mentions his “warmth and ease” and says the chemistry between her and Egerton was like that of twins.
Colin Firth was his on- and offscreen mentor in Kingsman. He was bowled over by how quickly Egerton took to working on his first film. “He knew he was lucky to have the role. That, in itself, can be somewhat paralysing,” he says. “But he carried it all with remarkably unassuming grace. I keep trying to figure out if he knows, or cares, how talented he is. I could spend hours in his company … trying to cultivate some flaws in him.”
They’re hidden deep. Egerton has quickly become as good at the unfilmed performance as he is in front of the lenses. I’m another face shuffled into another hotel room, but he handles the switch – that moment when a star realises the new person in the room is there not to instruct, primp or feed, but to interview – beautifully. After being ushered in, he offers me a (soft) drink and shows concern for my wellbeing (I look tired – my baby’s not sleeping). He must have done this – different hotel rooms, different drinks, different babies – so many times. But he is genuinely friendly, if a little restless. His feet do a cancan on the coffee table. Perhaps to shake off any chance of lingering DVT. Maybe – perhaps – because he’s a little bored.
Born in Birkenhead to Liverpudlian parents, Egerton moved to Wales with his mum after she and his dad split when he was two. For a while, to the delight of chat-show hosts, he lived in the Anglesey village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Jonathan Ross, Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy Fallon have all goaded him into pronouncing the name, but it was Fallon who had the best comeback: “Did a cat crawl across the keyboard when they were typing this?”
Now, when not up in the air, he calls Aberystwyth home. Life is a balance between using the opportunities his talent is affording him and reminding himself that the route to the A-list comes via many more air miles.
“A part of everyone wants to be Leonardo DiCaprio, don’t they?” he says. “But then a big part of me recognises that I’m a very private person – someone who really likes to go to the pub and get silly with my mates. I don’t want to worry about maintaining an air of decorum that’s not natural to me.”
Does he get lonely?
“Yeah. Massively,” he says. “I don’t want to start getting my little violin out, but travelling across the world constantly and staying in hotels is tough, man. I think it’s probably easier if you have a partner, but I’ve been single for three years now.
“I find the lack of structure difficult, but it’s a very first-world problem. Part of me looks forward to a time when I have a family and a partner and I take less of my nourishment from social occasions. Having a little unit around me will make my working life easier, because it is quite lonely otherwise”.
He recognises that all of this, the playing of a part to promote the playing of a part, is imperfect, but it’s endemic now – a crucial part of the franchise system that offers an actor job security (Jackman: “If you haven’t got a franchise, you’re dead”), if not always the best roles. Egerton thinks he’s lucky to have latched on to one (Kingsman 2 is released next year) that gives him both.
“The endless teen franchises that come out of Hollywood ... more often than not the central character doesn’t have any discernible character traits,” he says. “They’re just the young, good-looking guy who goes on this journey. They’re always played by fantastic young actors, but ultimately they’re not very interesting characters”.
It’s for that reason he’s wary of taking other big roles. Recently he has been named as one of the three key contenders to play the young Han Solo in a spin-off Star Wars film. He has denied he has auditioned for the part and has said he’s flattered by the suggestion. He tells me that – if the part were offered – he would think hard before making the leap.
“Roles of that level are always going to be life-changing,” he says. “I wouldn’t run into it blind. It would definitely be a shutting-a-door-behind-me moment. That is something that I’d be wary of.”
There’s no way drama school can prepare someone like Egerton for what he’s going through now, says Rada’s Kemp. He last saw this kind of mania around one of his 2007 graduates, Gemma Arterton.
“Doing the press has become as much of a job as getting in front of the camera,” he says. “You have to avoid burnout, avoid saying anything stupid, but still come across as yourself.”
He thinks Egerton has the tenacity to ride out the hype and will still be making interesting work in 40 years’ time. The tricky bit is doing that while keeping something for yourself. Kemp talks about attending this year’s Baftas, where the biggest star in Hollywood was going about his public life, and mollycoddled through every moment.
“I saw DiCaprio slip out for a breath of air,” he says. “There were a dozen people around him, just to get Leonardo DiCaprio from one side of the room to the other. That’s the world you enter into.”
Before all this, when he was a kid, Egerton conjured monsters. A Pixar nut, he went through a phase of drawing strange and fabulous beasts, inspired by Monsters, Inc. One of the high points of his new life was a meeting with Pete Docter, the film’s director. Docter drew him a picture of Joy and Sadness, the anthropomorphised emotions at the centre of his recent film Inside Out. Egerton has the sketch framed in his flat and carries a snap of it on his mobile phone. He shows it to me proudly. Joy is leaping – for joy. Sadness is crumpled in a heap. Joy and sadness. Professional success and personal fulfilment. You sense that Egerton is flying high above all of it, working out where it’s safe to land.
столько прекрасных моментов, что ААААА КУДА БЕЖАТЬ ЧТО ЦИТИРОВАТЬ!!
скетч с Радостью и Печалью, омг. мой сладкий хлебобулочный фанат пиксаровских мультяшек!
You can’t walk 20 metres in London without Egerton’s face looming at you from the side of a bus.
правда-истина!
ну, и отдельной строкой жжот Колин: I could spend hours in his company … trying to cultivate some flaws in him.
ну и как, взрастил? как же так, товарищ Фёрт! вы же должны были положительно влиять на йуный ум, а вы!..
из прочих новостей:
- сегодня Тарон на концерте в Лондоне
- "Эдди" появился на торрентах. например, здесь. корейский хардсаб, но качество очень даже. ВСЕМ БЕЖАТЬ СМОТРЕТЬ!
обзорам
чудесная статья, одна из лучших, что я читала, просто ащщщ! настолько мне понравилась, что под катом она вся целиком.
A part of everyone wants to be Leonardo DiCaprio. (с)
столько прекрасных моментов, что ААААА КУДА БЕЖАТЬ ЧТО ЦИТИРОВАТЬ!!
скетч с Радостью и Печалью, омг. мой сладкий хлебобулочный фанат пиксаровских мультяшек!
You can’t walk 20 metres in London without Egerton’s face looming at you from the side of a bus.
правда-истина!
ну, и отдельной строкой жжот Колин: I could spend hours in his company … trying to cultivate some flaws in him.
ну и как, взрастил? как же так, товарищ Фёрт! вы же должны были положительно влиять на йуный ум, а вы!..
из прочих новостей:
- сегодня Тарон на концерте в Лондоне
- "Эдди" появился на торрентах. например, здесь. корейский хардсаб, но качество очень даже. ВСЕМ БЕЖАТЬ СМОТРЕТЬ!
обзорам
A part of everyone wants to be Leonardo DiCaprio. (с)
столько прекрасных моментов, что ААААА КУДА БЕЖАТЬ ЧТО ЦИТИРОВАТЬ!!
скетч с Радостью и Печалью, омг. мой сладкий хлебобулочный фанат пиксаровских мультяшек!
You can’t walk 20 metres in London without Egerton’s face looming at you from the side of a bus.
правда-истина!
ну, и отдельной строкой жжот Колин: I could spend hours in his company … trying to cultivate some flaws in him.
ну и как, взрастил? как же так, товарищ Фёрт! вы же должны были положительно влиять на йуный ум, а вы!..
из прочих новостей:
- сегодня Тарон на концерте в Лондоне
- "Эдди" появился на торрентах. например, здесь. корейский хардсаб, но качество очень даже. ВСЕМ БЕЖАТЬ СМОТРЕТЬ!
обзорам