Instead I’m going to try and focus on are the highlights from each roundtable interview and place the juicy new stuff at the top of every interview. With Rupert Everett it’s him talking about his work in Matthew Vaughn's “Stardust” movie. If you want to know how an actor really feels about green screen work…this will amuse you.

Question: And you’re in Stardust?

Rupert Everett: Stardust is about a parallel universe next door to the real world; it’s a really good film made by Matthew Vaughn. I play a character who’s pushed off a roof at the beginning of the film and then he becomes a ghost. It has some great performances in there – Michelle Pfeiffer’s best performances ever; she becomes really old, 300/400 years old and she’s amazing, she looks incredible, just very good.

What is the time period?

Rupert Everett: The time period is kind of, I should say, 18^th/19^th century, you’re not quite sure when it is. But it’s kind of 19^th century, very 19^th century it takes place – great story.

Was it on green screen?

Rupert Everett: It’s all green screen.

How was that for you?

Rupert Everett: It was so boring, so boring; I’ve never been so bored in my life – and that was my most bored ever. Standing in front of a piece of green screen in a studio; some people do it for months, I only did it for a few weeks. But it really does get you down.

Did any of your characters not on green screen come and do the lines with you?

Rupert Everett: No, because a whole lot of us are dead; every show, someone else died and they all joined this horrible green screen world. And what happens in green screen – the worst thing is it takes forever; the scene, your scene has been shot years ago so there’s all these little dots where this happened and that happens, and you’re so bored you can’t concentrate on what’s going on. And then you get everything wrong; and then this happens there and you have to move your eye up to there – it’s as boring as it gets.

What’s it like seeing the movie?

Rupert Everett: It is amazing when you see the movie.

Have you seen it?

Rupert Everett: Yeah.

What did you think when you saw those scenes?

Rupert Everett: It made me laugh, you can’t take this movie seriously when you’ve been through that. You can’t really look at a movie you’ve been in; you’re always remembering what happened that day when you were doing green screen or anything. It’s difficult to look at a movie, and so this is great; you’ll get carried away by it.

Here is the rest of the Q and A. As always you can download and listen to the interview as an MP3.

“Shrek the Third” gets released on May 18^th.

Rupert Everett: Everyone’s been under the weather so far

Really?

Rupert Everett: Yeah, roundtables are normally ruckus affairs.

We’re very ruckus.

Rupert Everett: Ok.

Have you ever done bad dinner theater?

Rupert Everett: No, but you know, we don’t have dinner theater in the UK, but it’s a great idea. I would love to be able to eat during the theater; I’ve never done dinner theater.

So you didn’t bring that to your character?

Rupert Everett: No, not yet.

How do you think it’ll translate worldwide?

Rupert Everett: Well, we all have to get used to American phenomena’s, don’t we? I’m sure they’ll understand it. Dinner theater is just one thing, we don’t have sororities or first grade either.

What was it like to return for the third time?

Rupert Everett: It’s great! It’s the best job to have, to be honest; I feel it’s like a golden handshake cause I’ve half retired. It’s a job that you can do all over the world wherever you are; you could be in Poland and they’ll hook you up via satellite to the studio in LA. It’s state of the art; you’ve seen it. It’s beautiful looking, the sea tones, how they’ve done water, the skin tones, the magic hour, how they’ve shown the sun rays – it’s just sensationally beautiful and in that respect, it’s really a pleasure to take place in. Every time you go back, they’ve done something else, and they’ve got such an attention to detail that it’s a brilliant job. It’s not an impossible job, maybe if you were an actor starting out, maybe you’d be nervous cause you’re on your own acting – you don’t have anyone to go to come up with a performance straight away. There’s no rehearsal, and you don’t investigate who your character is; you have to come up with it. And that’s like riding a bicycle; once you learn how to do it, you can do it. At that point, it’s a great job, it’s a really great job.

How much did the script change in the years they worked on this?

Rupert Everett: They don’t change the story line, you sometimes go in and they’ve reworked something and they’ve refined rather than changed. It’s so carefully thought out; that’s what’s nice. In the old days, when filmmaking was less expensive, filmmaking was done like that, too; people would think about every frame of a movie and design and costume and everything. We can’t do that anymore, and film is so expensive; and mostly you don’t have any money for that. Occasionally, for example, Spielberg, you see a Spielberg film and the reason they look so extraordinary, I think, is because he has the money to have attention to every single detail. Most films are rushed. And this is like that – they think about everything, and it’s a pleasure to be a part of.

Is that you singing in this?

Rupert Everett: Yes.

Did they ask you do sing not very good? One note just was off

Rupert Everett: Well, it wasn’t in my register.

Did you have fun doing that?

Rupert Everett: Yeah, it was a lot of fun; it was lovely. That song is great.

Did you do that several times?

Rupert Everett: Several days, actually; we did it one time, and then I went in and did it again. But, no, it was great. He’s a really funny character, really; he’s a villain, but he’s hopeless. He’s also who never gets his chance in life, and he’s been brought up wrong; he’s been spoiled too much. I think he’s been spoiled a lot and he’s weak and he thinks it’s going to come naturally, and it doesn’t; and then he tries to make it come to him unnaturally. So in one sense, I have a lot of sympathy for him; he never gets his chance.

They’re going to be making this into a musical; would you have any interest?

Rupert Everett: They are? No, I didn’t know. No, I don’t think I could. You have to be very good vocally to be able to sing in a musical 8 shows a week; I would collapse after the first night.

Are you a fan of animation in general?

Rupert Everett: I love animation, yeah; but I love animated films. I think they shed more light on society than live action does really, to be honest. I think Shrek and Simpsons and South Park – I think they tell you much more about the world than Maid in Manhattan or Mission Impossible. Live action doesn’t seem to tell you anything; it’s all wannabe characters and fantasy relationships and political correctness. I think it’s really dwarfed.

Why do you think that is?

Rupert Everett: Because political correctness means you can only smoke a cigarette if you’re the villain, right? Now, we know that’s not – there’s good people, I’m not pro or against smoking, but you could be a saint and smoke; you can’t be in a movie. That’s just one example. But political correctness means nothing can happen that doesn’t have a moral outcome; it kills cinema dead because then everything becomes – For example, if you have a couple, two kids in love, everything has to come out with some moral tie-in so that it’s acceptable politically. It’s totally uncreative.

So why do you think you can do that in animation?

Rupert Everett: For some reason, particularly in this country, if you look at animation, it’s so much more edgy than anything you’d ever be able to do. You wouldn’t be able to have someone fart in a bath in a live action movie, it just wouldn’t happen. But for some reason, we stand one step back from a cartoon or something – I don’t know what it is.

Because the premise is comedy?

Rupert Everett: I don’t know, because we have very far-out comedies as well, I suppose, in live action – but they go even further. You get Something about Mary where you have sperm in the hair, which is four or five degrees further and it doesn’t really have the same profundancy as something like this, because this actually does tell you about our culture.

A social commentary?

Rupert Everett: A social commentary, where is that is just fantasy; but I don’t think live action in the old days really holds the mirror up to society very much.

South Park can take a headline from Monday and put a show on the following Wednesday.

Rupert Everett: Well, that’s the other thing that’s very different from live action cinema and things like Shrek, where a lumbering machine – we can’t come up with a response to what happened last week very fast.

How was working with the new director? Did you feel like you knew the character better?

Rupert Everett: I always feel like I know more about the character than the director, so that’s nothing new. No, he’s really nice and they’ve both been very nice directors to work with; it’s really fun working on cartoons cause you have to enlarge everything that you say. It’s a very good lesson for acting actually, cause when you look at a cartoon character acting out a scene, there’s not one emotional beat in the image that’s not – it’s all there. Everything’s a bit larger than if you were acting in a live action movie, and it’s fascinating, actually, cause they don’t miss out on one emotional beat of a sentence. So when you’re acting out a scene, you have to draw it out to be the same length as cartoons, and it’s very interesting for acting, I think. Cartoons can teach you a lot about acting.

Where did you record this one?

Rupert Everett: This film, I was in Hong Kong, Berlin, I’ve been in London, I’d been in New York and I’ve been in Los Angeles.

What’s it like recording this in Hong Kong?

Rupert Everett: It’s all done by satellite, so you’re on satellite.

When you call and tell them you’re going to be away, what’s their reaction?

Rupert Everett: No, because it’s understood you have to make it –

You have to make it work?

Rupert Everett: They have to make it work. Either you have to come back or they’ll make it work if they can’t. Most of the time, they want to be with you, so only towards the end will they do it by satellite.

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