Interview: The Cast Talks Beowulf

By George 'El Guapo' Roush on November 13, 2007

Beowulf is the newest Robert Zemeckis creation that blends the latest in cutting edge CGI with the latest in cutting edge 3-D technology. At a recent press conference, the stars all gathered together to talk about their experience in filming the movie. It’s a long interview, but worth the read.  The highlight of the press conference was watching young Alison Lohman try and think of enough words to complete a logical sentence. Angelina Jolie as she tried not to fall asleep. John Malkovich looked like he’d rather be sitting naked on an ant hill than be at the press conference. Anthony Hopkins was cheery and polite, while Ray cracked jokes and made everyone laugh. Crispin Glover looked to be the most excited out of everyone. I should have grabbed a picture of  everyone, but was afraid I’d be tackled by someone from the studios.

On a side note, I had a couple of minutes with Crispin afterwards to talk about his upcoming tour and books. Unfortunately I was so star struck by how awesome he is I forgot to press the Record button. Fear not, just go to www.crispinglover.com to read more about what George McFly has been up to lately.

'Beowulf' Press conference with Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie,  John Malkovich, Alison Lohman, Ray Winstone, Roger Avary, Neil Gaiman, Crispin Glover & Producer  Steve Starkey.

For everyone, what was it like to work with Robert Zemeckis?

Starkey: Well, he didn't disappoint me this time around either. I've spent about twenty years working with Bob and every time out he chooses to tell some story that demands some new way, some invention in the style of making movies, and once again with the making of 'Beowulf', he's taken this new form of cinema, this new art form and taken it to another level. He loves to experiment with different ways of telling stories, particularly when a story demands some new form and some new style. So it was a challenge very much like all the others I've had.

Lohman: This was very different for me because I've never done anything like working in that space which is similar to a black box theater. I enjoyed it though because it reminds me of doing theater and really relying on your imagination. I just felt very lucky to work with Bob and all these actors.

Malkovich: For me it was a great delight.  Working with Robert, he’s very enthusiastic, precise, and clear.  For me it was a great joy. 

Hopkins: Yes, and for me ditto.  It was confusing at first because we had to do these weird gestures, stand up, pull faces, and all that.  I wasn’t quite sure what the purpose was because it was a room very much like this.  There were no cuttings or scenery or such.  I think I was a little late coming in, maybe a day after everyone else, but there was so much energy coming from Bob

Zemeckis:  It was such a positive energy, it made it so easy, and everyone had a great sense of fun with it.  I was just very pleased.  I haven’t even seen the film yet.  I hear it’s pretty good.  I’m looking forward to seeing it on Monday with people.  Yes, it was all together a wonderful experience.  I’m really proud to be part of this great movie.  Thank you.

Angelina, what was it like to play a demon?

Jolie:  It was great, it was a great experience that we all had.  I think that the nice thing about it was that we all do films these days.  So much of it has become a business.  So much of it is these projects where people want to rush through these things, or you feel like you make a movie and you’re not really sure.  You have kind of lost touch with the artistic process and the fun of it.  Bob is a real artist, he loves it so much, he’s so enthusiastic, so original, and you really feel that you remember you’re a creative person.  You have fun with everybody else.  I needed that, as an artist, so it was really great.  I’m really grateful for the experience.

As Beowulf we have Ray Winstone.  Beowulf isn’t flawless.  He’s not the typical hero that maybe we’ve seen before.  That makes him more interesting maybe?

Winstone:  Am I answering that question?  About Bob Zemeckis, I think every film that you watch of Bob’s you win some.  He’s probably, he’s one of these guys that he’s the reason we landed on the moon.  This is where he takes film, in a way.  Every film he seems to make there is some new thing he’s invented.  It was great for me, and I guess everyone, to actually go and work and be in something that was going to be the first.  And, it’s going to get better, so that’s that.

And about your character?

Winstone:  Well, when I met Bob Zemeckis obviously I had to do a lot of training for the film.  I had to watch my diet and press up, a lot of press-ups.  It was just, for me, people say it was very much like theatre, but I found it kind of like the ultimate cinema without the cuts.  You were there and you played the scene out.  You were allowed to go, I guess like theatre, where you carry a scene on and you become engrossed within the scene.  I loved the speed of it, there was no time to sit around.  You actually cracked on with a scene and your energy levels were kept up.  There was no time to actually sit around and lose your concentration.  For me, I actually really, really enjoyed this experience.  I would love to do this again sometime because I think it’s going to get better, and better, and better.

Crispin, you have in fact worked with Bob before. What was it like playing this pitiful and scary creature?

Glover: Yeah, I worked with him one time before on the first 'Back to the Future' film twenty years prior to working with him on this. It was interesting working from one technology to another technology in terms of the style. Back then he was a man twenty years younger as well as myself, but I remember that it was very particularly storyboarded and there was an exact sequence of things that had to be done for 'Back to the Future'. It was all excellent. I noticed a definite change in the style of how the direction was done because things were not so necessarily exacting, but I actually liked more this way of working where you were kind of finding it as you were going through it and playing the scenes. It was like you kept going into the thing and finding more as you went along, but it's rare that I'm in a film that I actually like. I guess I shouldn't say that [laughs]. It's true, but I'm really excited about this film. I just saw it the other day and it feels like a strange kind of hallucinogenic experience. It's been an excellent experience.

So there's been ten years of work on writing 'Beowulf'. Can you talk about that?

Gaiman: We wrote the first script of 'Beowulf' in May of '97. Ten years of making it and then started working on it with Bob at the beginning of 2005. Originally he wanted to produce it and then he contacted us and said that he really wanted to direct it. He talked to us about that. What's he like? He's very mysterious and secretive. I mean, you might be wondering why he's not up here, but if you actually look around to the person next to you that could be Bob Zemeckis just brilliantly disguised. It was really easy. The process of working on the script was me and Roger and Bob and Roger and I read it out loud.

Avary: Bob began as a writer and so he never had any bad ideas. He'd say, 'Okay, guys, this is a bad idea. I'm just going to throw it out there.' He'd throw it out there and it was like, 'That's actually a fantastic idea.'

Gaiman:  So it was just incredibly easy and incredibly pleasant except that he had these brilliant ideas that he wouldn't tell you and he'd want us to discover them on our own. Occasionally we'd say, 'Okay, we've worked with this scene and we've done it like.' He'd say, 'No, you can't do that because that room isn't facing that way. The room isn't facing that way.'

Avary: Then he'd reach over and pull out…

Gaiman: He'd show us the design of the room. It was like, 'Why didn't you show us that before.' He goes, 'Well, you could've come up with something better.'

Avary: I wasn't prepared for the amount of collaboration, how collaborative he'd be with us. He drew us into the process, and then how excited and childlike he is and he's constantly inventing new technologies to support his ultimate dream as a style of directing. We would walk him to the editing room and he'd be like, 'Oh, look what we just made.' It's the Z-cam which is kind of a virtual camera that you can move around the editing room and as you moved it around you could see what the camera angle would be on the screen. I think what excited me was the amount of passion that he has and that very kind of childlike, excited quality.

Angelina, what about the character you are playing?  She’s been described as the mother of a monster.  How did you approach this?  How do you see her?  What does she mean or represent?  The movie says that the myth is preferable to the truth, in Beowulf’s case, with your highly publicized life do you think that is true?

Jolie:  I try not to think about my public life.  I focus on my private life and that’s just the best way to live.  But, as for this character, I was excited I got a call that I was going to be working with Bob Zemeckis.  I was pretty much saying yes to anything.  Then I was told I was going to be a lizard.  Then I was brought into a room with Bob, with a bunch of pictures and examples.  He showed me this picture of a woman half painted gold, and then a lizard.  I have kids and I thought ‘That’s great, it’s so bizarre, and I’m going to be this crazy reptilian person or creature.’  I was very excited.  I met with Crispin [Glover] and we had a great time, and just amazing scenes.  Then I saw the poster and saw a few other things.  [Laughs]  I realized ‘Oh, I’m not just a lizard.’  But I’m very excited about it.  It was just great.  She’s one of those fun characters.  She’s evil, she’s temptation, and she’s very fun to play.  Again, we had a great time and I got to work with great actors.

A femme fatale?

Jolie:  I suppose.  I suppose she is.

Is one of the attractions of doing this because of the short work schedule?  You were able to spend more time with your family?  How are you able to balance all of these different aspects of your life, public and personal?

Jolie:  I’m not the only one on this panel with children.  [Laughs]  I do, this was a two and a half day shoot for me and I was three months pregnant.  [Laughs]

You wouldn’t know.

Jolie:  Well, we did the mapping of my body before.  But no, it was a pleasure.  Yes, the fact that it was short was that much easier to not have to work too much.

And the balancing?
Jolie:  You just try to balance, try not to work too much, and take turns working.  It’s not that hard.

Many of us remember having to study 'Beowulf' in school. What was the motivation for the changes? I know that there's no relationship between the monster and 'Beowulf' in the real story and the Queen is barely mentioned. So what was the motivation for the changes, and also for the actors that read the story what did you think about the film?

Gaiman: The biggest motivation was creating a film that would be satisfying as a story. 'Beowulf' is a remarkable and powerful story. It's the oldest story in the English language that we have, but it's always been considered incredibly problematic from a literary and critical point of view in that it starts with young Beowulf and Grendel and from Grendel's mother and then we cut in fifty years later and he fights a dragon and dies. That's the poem. What we were trying to do was keep the events of the poem the events of the poem while giving the events a reason to have happened. I think when we wrote it we tried to be very faithful to the poem and to the characters in the poem whilst assuming that maybe there were things happening offstage, that maybe some of the things that were being told had eroded by time and sometimes people had lied.

Avary: I'm not entirely sure that our version of 'Beowulf' was the original version, but if you read it and keep in mind that it existed as an oral tradition for maybe seven hundred years before it was written down and when the Christian monks added their own flare to the storytelling. They added their own elements of Christianity to it themselves. What we did was we looked at the existing translations and realized that there were maybe hints and elements -

Gaiman: For example, when Beowulf goes off to fight Grendel's mother he heads down into that cave all on his own and disappears. He's gone for eight days fighting her and comes back with Grendel's head. We thought that eight days was an awful long day to fight a monster and why did he bring her head back. So we were faithful to what happened, but we're just implying that maybe there was other stuff as well.

And for the actors who had read the poem before, what do you think of the changes?

Glover: I just think it was very playable. Grendel in the story doesn't speak and I speak in the film. So that counts. On top of it, psychology they're delving into the characters and I do think that they're being faithful to the original story structure, but as Neil was saying, they're getting into the gut of it which really isn't a violation.

Ray, what did you know of the story?

Winstone:  Well, I told Robert Zemeckis that I knew the story, but I didn’t.  Where I went to school we read Al Capone and things like that, so ‘Beowulf’ was very, very new to me.  All I knew about Vikings was Tony Curtis and Kurt Douglas.  In a way that was a good thing because I read the script not knowing the story.  It seemed to me, when I read it, I spoke to the boys about it when it came down, and it’s kind of a modern story as well.  It is about ambition, about greed, hate, and then love at the end.  Finding what you really wanted was there all the time, right in front of you, your son.  It kind of reminded me of Hollywood in a way.  The ambition in people, and that’s exactly how I kind of approached it from the off really.  When I spoke with the two guys that’s how I kind of pitched it.  They went ‘That’s exactly what we thought.’  You’ve been lying as well!  [Laughs].

Gaiman: Actually, the very first thing that Ray said to us was, 'Do you know what I like about this script?' We said no and he goes, 'All the swearing.' We said, ‘We just had to take that out.'

Anthony?

Hopkins:  No, I hadn’t read the original because I’m very lazy.  I tried to read it, but I think I’m a little dyslexic sometimes.  Maybe ADD, I fall asleep very quickly.  [Laughs]  I tried to read it but I read the script and I liked it very much.  I was called into Bob Zemeckis’ office, maybe I was living out here, I just went in and we had a chat.  He said ‘What sort of accent do you think you would use for Hrothgar?’  I said ‘Well, I’m Welsh.’  It’s a pretty old language. It's Celtic. we were the Irish who couldn’t swim.  That's a fact. I said ‘I’d like to play it Welsh.’  He said ‘Do you think it would work?’ and I said ‘I’ve played Welsh before.’  He asked ‘Can you give me an example.’  So, I did a little bit from Hugh Griffith.  He played that horse dealer in ‘Ben Hur’.  ‘How dare you treat my horses like animals’  I sort of stole from that a bit and Welshed it up a bit.  It felt comfortable because it’s my own language.  I can understand those fighting, drunk, Welsh people because I was one myself.  Can’t go outside and fight now when I’m in a temper.  All that stuff, I felt comfortable playing this drunken, lecherous, man.  Thank you very much.

John would you like to add anything to that?

Malkovich:  Where I went to high school it was required reading, believe it or not, and we had to do recitations from it in Miss Berkhart’s English class.  I’m sure they were splendid but I don’t remember.

Alison?

Lohman:  No. It wasn't required reading for me so it was new.

Angelina, had you read it?

Jolie:  Yes, I had read it years and years ago.  I hardly remembered.  I think I read it half asleep as well.  But ditto, it’s one of those great stories that you know the themes of it.  The themes you take away and you never forget.  But, when I read the script it wasn’t fresh enough in my mind to compare it and it wouldn’t be at this moment even, I doubt.

For the ladies, I was wondering what you thought of this particular time period?  It seems like it might have been a tough time for women, back in the 6th century.  Even for those that had reptilian attributes.  Can you talk a little bit about getting into character, in terms of the time period?  Do you think this had kind of wetted your appetite for more animation?

Jolie:  I feel it is tough to ask me because my character seemed beyond, certainly not restricted, time.  She was quite powerful and capable, even though she was stuck in a cave.  Quite a different character, certainly not a woman of the period, so that would be better handled by someone else.  I would certainly love to do more.  I wouldn’t call this animation though, because we were physically doing all of these things.  Every single gesture is ours, everything is acted out by us, even where our eyeballs move, because it’s such a new thing, is exactly where we look.  They were mapped exactly.  It is our performances and we had these scenes together.  I do think that is important to state because it’s exciting that it’s not and it’s different.

Lohman: It was different because we had the skullcap and as far as the costume it was, I guess – I think that we had kind of like a wig just to feel the heaviness of the hair and the dress, the wardrobe. I mean, we did this two years ago and so I can't really remember everything. It was different. Then I played the mistress of Beowulf and so I think that my character is in a place of just wanting to please him and wanting to make him happy and wanting to live the rest of her life with him and is completely and utterly devoted to him.

Maybe John, you could jump in on how this performance captured technique and how it liberated the actor in many ways?

Malkovich:  Well, to me it was remarkably reminiscent of doing plays.  You go in the morning and you put on all your things.  That doesn’t take very long, really no longer than sort of make-up takes, and then you act all day.  A lot of the things that might have come into play in normal filmmaking, don’t come into play there.  You don’t wait for lights, you don’t wait for camera, and you don’t wait really for anything.  Continuity doesn’t matter too much.  You just act all day.  I think, it seems to me and speaking with the other performers I worked with, that everyone loved that part of it.  You came in, that’s what you did all day, and then you left.  It’s a very good story, very good, text.  I think that for most of us it’s quite liberating, because at times, the process of making a regular film has remained quite medieval in some ways.  Especially with the amount of time it can take.

Anthony?

Hopkins:  Yes, John said it.  It is freeing, it is paradoxically it opens you up.  I remember the first day I was working, it was an entrance and I had to be sitting in a throne.  I was completely smashed out of my mind.  You don’t have to have a beard or costume, because they have done all that in the computer, so what you see up there is what they photographed in a previous, a few days before.  They take all the information of gesture, facial expressions, and you do feel a bit of an idiot.  Standing there with these helmets on looking like an idiot. I thought the only thing to do is just jump in the deep end, just jump in and do it.  Sometimes on film I think the most mind boggling thing is when you have two weeks rehearsal before you start a film.  To me I would rather have my fingernails pulled out that to do that, because it’s so boring.  You can’t get it, but I really don’t like rehearsing.  On this you just have to be ready.   What you throw out there is what you are going to put in the camera.  You have to have a pretty good idea of what you are going to do. You are on the set and you are actually confronting each other, you are actually there, and you are virtually naked.  You don’t have any of the props that a movie set is usually like, or costume.  You have no references.  In a way, having no references, you have no mask so you have to create this performance as you go through.  It’s really quite electrifying.  You think ‘Oh, I’m free.  I can do whatever I like.  What are they going to do, put me in jail?’  To find out that it’s going to take another two years before they get it up there on screen is really something else.  I can’t even remember what we did much, it was such a long time ago, but I’m so excited to see it, I really am.  Those overused words, excited, but I really am looking forward to seeing it.

Glover: There's an interesting thing once you watch it. I didn't know when we were performing it – the question was originally about animation – and when I watched it if it was going to have nuance, if it was going to feel like I was watching myself or not. It's a very strange experience watching it because you can feel yourself and all the performers and you can feel that it's good acting underneath as well which is what surprised me. That's also very exciting about it at the same time. I just wanted to address that.

Ray?

Winstone:  I think, going back to what Anthony was saying about feeling an idiot at first, playing it.  First you stand there in this wet suit, with this thing on, and you stand there and you do feel naked.  You really do feel vulnerable.  It’s a question of okay are we going to do this or not?  I remember the first take I had done was with Brendan Gleeson, on this mechanical ship being thrown around, trying to hang on, and do the lines.  We came out kind of talking like good guys.  We were in a storm, it was that fear of actually letting yourself go.  You had to do a pose before every take and it felt really stupid.  I’m a 50 year old man, you know?  And you got these geniuses all around you, looking at you, and smiling.  ‘Okay pose, lift your leg up, and do a little dance.’  That’s so the computer gets you and then all of a sudden you go to work.  You go ‘Oh, Jesus I can’t do this.’  I think I’m like that on every film.  I never know whether I’m going to be able to do it or not.  You become a little bit scared and you have to find something deep down inside you.  You go ‘You know what?  Fuck it, I’m going to do it.  Let’s have it, you know?’  Once you get over that barrier you do really start to enjoy it.  I really didn’t know what to expect when I saw the film.  I saw it two days ago in 3-D and I just sat there with my mouth open for the whole film.  It just blew me away.  I think what I really loved about the film was that without the effects, without the 3-D, without all the gizmos and all that, it’s a great story.  The story holds up.  Very rarely do you see films, or special effects movies, that have a straight story that will kind of live forever.  I think that is what I’m very proud of the film for, for me, and being part of that.  It is the initial thing of the nakedness.  You feel really kind of not having anything on.  Everyone is looking at you.  But it’s really freeing once you have done it.  I would love to do it again.

Crispin was playing an inhuman character but everybody else had a representation of your very famous faces that were pretty close to life.  How do you feel about how you looked on screen with this new technology?

Glover:  Again, what I just said earlier, I didn't know until I watched it if there would be nuances or if you'd be able to feel the stuff coming across. I was very pleased that I was able to feel that and then especially with the other actors whose faces I could recognize as well more readily. In terms of the initial thoughts of what I was playing, Robert Zemeckis talks particularly about the violent scenes and what was going through, that everything that I was doing was painful, that I had terrible problems and it hurt me very much. When you're acting, of course, you're not necessarily thinking about what you're looking like as much as what you're going after. I had intentions of getting rid of the things that were bothering me and then I had my own bodily problems that were causing me the other reactions.

Angelina, how did you feel about the way you looked onscreen?

Jolie:  [Laughs] I got a little shy.  I really wasn’t expecting it to be as real, I didn’t expect ourselves to come out as much.  Because of, especially the type of character I play, it was kind of funny at first.  There were certain moments where I felt actually shy and called home.  I explained the fun movie I had done, that was this digital animation, and it was in fact a little different than they were expecting.  I was really surprised that I felt that exposed. 

Did you like your body?

Jolie:  [Laughs]  I love my tail.

Ray?  When you saw yourself as a 6 foot 6 Viking?

Winstone:  Yeah, I loved it.  Yeah, yeah, there is nothing really more to say about it.  It’s really weird because, obviously he’s 6’6 or something like that, with an 8 pack.  My wife loves it, she thinks its great.  It’s funny, you just look at a picture and you go ‘I’m the only one who kind of don’t look like me.’  Until you see the film move, then you do, you start to recognize yourself.  The big thing for me was movement.  I’m 5’10, I’m an older man now, and I’m playing a warrior who is 6’6, the way you move, and that kind of bulk on you.  That was something I really think about before the film.  Then get older without becoming too old.  You still have to be a warrior and you’ve got to fight a dragon.  It was that kind of thought.  It was like making a film really.  My wife pulled out a picture of me, when I was 18, when I was boxing.  I didn’t have the 8 pack, right yeah, but it looks like me.  They had no pictures of me beforehand.  I don’t know how they brought that out.  I’m probably lying about it, it doesn’t quite look like me.  [Laughs]  But it’s great, it opens so many doors.  You can play someone who is five years of age, and you can play anything you want to play.  You can anyway, I always think, but this opens a hell of a lot more doors in a way.

Steve, you're the one who actually knew what they were going to look like. Are you still surprised by the visual power of the film?

Starkey: The beauty of this art form is the fact that we get to cast the perfect performer and combine them with the look and design that the director has in mind. It's completely liberating and allows you to conceive of a film in exactly the way that you see it. In the case of Crispin's character, if we were filming in a live action setting we would've had to put him in prosthetics which actually limits the performance entirely because he's hidden behind this mask. In this case he's actually able to perform and we get to see all that performance come through in this digital character that we've created. So I think that it's just a wonderful blend being able to design characters the way that you want and then get the greatest performers in the world and act in your movie.

Glover:  Yeah, there's no question. I've worn prosthetics before. This feels like a much more nuanced form of makeup than the kind of foam that they would normally put on your face. You can see through this much more readily.

This is a really wonderful story about a mom and dad, a Greek culture.  Which kind of stories did you love when you were a child or a teen?  In which way did you relate your fantasy to this story?

Avary:  I grew up with the Arthurian legends read to me by my father and so I felt after reading 'Beowulf' in high school, after having been given it in high school and looking at the cover and saying, 'Okay, it's a guy with a sword and a dragon.' This is like twenty five years ago now and cracking open that cover and suddenly realizing that I can't understand what I'm reading. It wasn't until many years after high school that I realized it had to be read out loud. Also, I think that 'Beowulf' is in some ways the kernel, the progenitor of so many other myths that came after it, both the Arthurian legends and the legend of -

Gaiman:  Not to mention 'Lord of the Rings'. Tolkien was hugely influenced by 'Beowulf'.

Avary:  And probably the first great defender of 'Beowulf'.

Gaiman: He was. For me it would've probably been the Norse legends and Marvel comics at more or less the same time. So discovering as a seven year old these comics and going, 'These things are so cool. Who is this guy called Thor walking around with a hammer?' Then finding a copy of Roger Lancelyn Green's 'Tales of the Norsemen' and reading all these Norse tales until the pages fell out of the book. I loved reading that stuff as a kid. I discovered 'Beowulf' as a comic, as a terrible comic and he wore one of those horn helmets and the horns were so high that he never could've gotten through a door. Then I went out and found a copy of  the comic 'Beowulf', a translation because I was interested in the material that they based the comic on. That's how I discovered it. I just thought of it as an amazing story.

Glover: I do really like the Greek ancient religion stories. I think there's a lot of fun in all of the Gods and Goddesses that got angry and upset and had very human qualities. I make my own books and I've read a lot of Joseph Campbell and I think the way that these guys with, I guess they call it monolith or the  story structure – they're having fun with it in that way. There's an organically quality to how they're having fun with the structure that's really a lot of fun in the way that those ancient Greek religious stories are as well.

Winstone:  For me, growing up in the 60’s, I was born in ’57 so it wasn’t so much books for me.  It was cinema at the time, like ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and films like ‘A Man for all Seasons’ or ‘The Lion in Winter’.  I love history.  I really got history in that way and stories, so my books were kind of cinema.  Cinema, to me, was great.  Films like ‘Zulu’ so I think one of the greatest films ever made was ‘A Man for all Seasons’  it’s not much action.  It’s great scripts and great work.  That’s when great films can be books for kids that don’t read that much.  I wasn’t a great reader as a kid.  My stories were through cinema really.

Angelina?  Stories you enjoyed as a child?

Jolie:  ‘Treasure Island’.  I’m sitting here trying to think of some brilliant answer like everybody else has, but I really don’t have one.  I loved ‘Treasure Island’.  When it comes to film I love ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.  I love ‘The Traveler’, I loved reading Winston Churchill’s works, and I loved his stories of his early life and his adventures.  I loved the history in that, so those are mine.

Hopkins:  Well, very early when I was 12 years of age it was Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows’, which was a great Victorian novel of the time.  It was kind of legend and fable, just a beautifully written novel.  When we were doing the movie, this one, I thought what a great power this technique of making a movie has a visual of what’s going to come.  For example I mentioned some of the great Shakespeare’s, I know that makes me pretty old at times, but I know that people are scared stiff of Shakespeare, it would be interesting to take some of those great plays like ‘Lear’ which were fables and epics of their own kind, ‘Macbeth’.   You can do limitless things with those.  I’ve got an idea that they could be very powerful in this kind of medium.  I think there are all kinds of possibilities.

John?

Malkovich:  I remember quite a few things that I read when I was very young.  Things like ‘Peter Pan’, or ‘Our Town’ but for some reason I can’t remember that time so well, so I couldn’t say more.

Lohman: I remember reading 'The Hobbit' and getting really carried away in that magical land. It really affected me.

Starkey: I too remember having, like Roger, read to me the myths and legends of the Greeks and also Norse legends. When you're a child having a story read to you, you get this vivid impression of this mythic tale being told and somehow movies have transported me into the same space of having a mythic tale presented to you in the same space that's almost like you'd see it as a child. I just love that quality about it.

Angelina, you character is living in a cave.  I think the green screen with green suit your character flying and swimming.  What was more challenging to do?

Jolie:  Bob will make you do weird things.  I was on, I think for swimming we had to think of something I could be attached to, and my waist was attached.  My waist was attached, I had a harness, and had something with wheels.  It was day one, I had to suddenly swim, and we were trying to think of what that would be in this new way.  I was swimming with my upper body, being rolled around Crispin, and trying to pretend I was swimming.  With flying we hooked me up with wires and flew around.  I had something where I was hooked up and being moved.

Was there another language the two of you were speaking?

Jolie:  It’s Old English. We had more of it, it was actually great, but I think it went over a lot of people’s heads.  It was fun to learn and it was beautiful. 

Glover: My character speaks only in old English and we had a professor that I got to sit down with and help me figure out what actually was said in old English. It was written in modern English and then it made sense for Grendel to be the one that speaks in complete old English and then Grendel's mother speaks in modern and old.

Source:Latino Review

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