I hope I'm posting this in the correct area. It's not really about David but I thought this is a good interview. It is publised in the North Shore Tmes today.
One point in particular interests me. Since I'm technically at a German fan site, this question might reflect the cultural differences. At the heart of the Reader is a love story between a 15 year old boy and an older woman, here in the US Kate and Director Stephen Daldry were asked many times about this "child abuse" relationsihp. Bernard Schlink certainly didn't have an issue with it. In this interview, Kate Winslet, who is a British actress not American, also struggles to comprehend the child abuse accusation. How do most Germans view this?
Here's the interview:
British actress Kate Winslet stars in the new film The Reader, based on the best-selling, award-winning novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink. It is a story about truth and reconciliation, and an entire post-Holocaust generation of German people trying to come to terms with the horrific acts committed by their parents.
In January, she won the prestigious Best Supporting Actress award at the Golden Globes for her extraordinarily powerful performance.
Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, first seen as a woman in her mid-thirties, embarking on a passionate, clandestine affair with Michael, a teenage boy (David Kross). Hanna keeps him in ignorance of the terrible deeds in her past life, and also guards a personal secret of which she is deeply ashamed. In later years, Michael encounters Hanna again in dramatic, highly charged circumstances – and learns startling truths about her.
The Reader also stars Ralph Fiennes, who plays Michael as an adult. It is directed by Stephen Daldry and is adapted for the screen by David Hare; the two men are reuniting for the first time since their collaboration on The Hours, for which they were both Oscar-nominated.
Q: Technically, this is a difficult role for any actor. How do you empathise or even understand such a character?KW: It was a real stretch, and I have absolutely no qualms in admitting that I was really frightened. I had to think long and hard: “Can I really do this? Am I good enough to play this part, to disappear into this woman? You never really know in advance whether you can or you can’t.
But I did know I was sufficiently brave enough and terrified enough of it—which is a good combination. Fear is a good thing, I think. It means you’re on your toes every day and stay very prepared.
Q: But even once you’ve got yourself prepared and ready, it’s still a very hard role.KW: It was, even aside from the nudity, and aside from aging 35 years. Those things really became incidental. Not to belittle them, because they come with their own challenges. But just playing this lonely, vulnerable woman, who has this terrible past and has had to survive for such a long time with this enormous lie - that was the thing I focused on.
Q: Obviously, because of Hanna’s notorious past, it’s easy to be judgmental about her.
KW: Exactly. I learned that people had decided who Hanna Schmitz is, what she was doing, thinking, whether she was in control or not. Weirdly, playing the character was a little bit the same. Stephen Daldry, David Hare, Ralph Fiennes, members of the crew, extras on the set – they all had an opinion. And they tended to assume that everyone shared their feelings about her.
So for me, hanging on to my idea of who she was, that was hard, and I had to be extremely private. I didn’t want to be challenged on it, nor did I want to question my instinct or get into big debates with people about her, because that would have caused me to defend her. I knew I couldn’t judge her. I didn’t necessarily have to love her. I had to understand her.
But that was the hardest part of playing her. She’s the hardest of all the roles I’ve played.
Q: What do you think are the major misconceptions about Hanna?
KW: The most shocking one to me is that she was in some way predatory towards that boy and used him. It baffles me how people can think how she is taking a young boy’s innocence away. I didn’t see him running to the corner of the room.
I think it’s one of the most striking things about the story: I saw it as a beautiful love story, an awakening not only for the boy but for her - almost more so for her because it means so much more. She’s a closed-off, lonely woman who has not been able to have close human contact. Living in such an awful, emotionless world has formed every decision she has made in her life, including becoming an SS guard. Q: Still, it must be tricky as an actress, trying to find some empathy with a woman who was in the SS.
KW: Of course. And people are very quick to say ‘she was a Nazi, therefore of course she should go to prison.’ One can’t argue that yes, she contributed in a horrific way. I can’t begin to find a way to excuse those acts or sympathise. But my feeling about Hanna was that she didn’t believe she had a choice about doing what she did, and that was specific to her.
Q: Did you do a lot of research for this role?KW: I certainly did. I had to put myself in a place where I could absorb a lot of research material, public records and books about the Holocaust. And now I wish I’d never had to do it, because you can never undo it. You can’t unsee or unhear those things. I didn’t enjoy the research at all. There’s one image from a book of a mother and toddler (in a death camp) that I will never forget. And I wish I’d never seen it. Research is usually enjoyable, but this was horrific.
Q: Was making the film itself more enjoyable?
KW: It truly was. Hanna at first is 36, a little older than me, but then we see her again at age 68, so prosthetics were involved. I was so excited by the whole process because I’d never experienced it before in that way. It ended up being extremely collaborative.
Every day doing the aging involved seven hours in hair and make-up from 3.30 a.m.. I also had a body suit which weighed 15 pounds, just to give my body some gravity. To say it helped would be an understatement. It affected how I moved, in a good way. I did a lot of observing older people, how they stand up from a table, hold a cup, even the speed with which they turn their head.
Q: Seven hours with prosthetics before you even start acting - that makes for a gruelling schedule.KW: It was such a long day! Sometimes we worked for 12 hours, and by the end of the shoot, it was seven-day weeks. Plus the prosthetics takes an hour to get off. So I was almost hallucinating with tiredness. I was getting two and half hours sleep. I’d leave a light on because I couldn’t allow myself to go into a deep sleep.
Q: When did you first read the book?KW: I read the book five or six years ago on holiday. I read it in a day, which is unheard of for me. I couldn’t put it down. I was absolutely compelled by this story.
But never at any time did I say: ‘I would love to play Hanna.’ I was 27 at the time, I couldn’t imagine it. She was 36, so it seemed very distant from me.
Six years later, when Stephen wanted to talk to me about it, my first reaction was ‘oh no, not me, you’re wrong!’ Because I was still in the same frame of mind I was in six years earlier when I first read it. When I sat down and re-read the book, I realised I was now close to her in age.
But sometimes I think things happen at the right time. In those six years I got to play Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sarah Pierce in Little Children, April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road. I learned a lot about acting, broadened my range and figured out what things I can do as an actress. I was certainly far more ready to play Hanna. Not that it changed the fact I was terrified every day!
Q: How did you find working with Stephen Daldry?
KW: I really love Stephen. He’s a wonderful director. It was a great thing to feel so watched and supported. There was never a time on set when I didn’t feel his gaze, even if he was working on a monitor in the next room. This was a hard, troubling character to play, but I would always feel he was emotionally with me.
Thema: Kate Winslet interview on the Reader 
Mi Jan 28, 2009 7:03 pm
I will read it after I have seen it 
