| Excerpts from Starstruck UK channel 4 four
part television series Part 1 To tongue or not to tongue Rufus - From all I’d heard - (I thought) that someone will come in and say, "OK, we’re gonna go this far in with the tongue and then pull up and …" No one says that! So if you’ve got two people who don’t know and if you don’t know each other well enough, it’s a very embarrassing thing to say, "Oh, I’m going to be using my tongue. Daphne…" You don’t know to say that so it can be a little bit -- stilting. Part 4 - Auditions and unemployment I learnt quite early on - you walk into an audition, and this is my least favourite thing that directors do - is you sit down and they just go (here Rufus folds his arms and just stares blankly, see the video capture to the right) and stare at you like that - The humiliation ….I remember these things, where even now, my shoulders go up - and it’s my cooperation in my humiliation is what makes it so terrible. You so wish -- (finger pointing, muttering) but you never do. I always would try to cooperate. They say it’s not personal. It IS personal. It’s YOU they’re rejecting. They’re not rejecting the - you know - the, the craft that you’re in, they’re rejecting YOU. And your face and your funny shaped head and your big arse - and - and your walk, everything about you is what’s not getting the job. You hear these actors saying, "Oh when I’m unemployed I’d learn a poem a day, learn a speech a week and go jogging". I didn’t - I sat on my brother’s sofa, living off him, smoking butts out of ashtrays, and eating potato and salad cream sandwiches - and got fat and sat there complaining. And I’d like to think I’d do that again (laugh) if I got unemployed now. The big time Personally I’ve been through the experience - "there’s something enormous about to happen to me" SO many times and, hey, here I still am, that now when it happens it feels like nothing. You just don’t pay attention. It’s very confusing - and very dangerous for your mind to be involved like that. I mean you’re an actor, especially when you’re young and you’ve maybe done a film for the first time. The people slap you on the back and say, "This is the big one, sonny," It’s very exciting when you hear it, but it’s just as likely that you’ll do a film that will come and go and you’ll be recognized on the tube for a week, and then you’re faced with a taxi driver saying, "Well I ‘aven’t ‘eard of you. Can you tell me what you’ve done?" Size matters I had this trailer which was ENORMOUS - ridiculous, ridiculous, stupid Val Haylen you know, "15 naked people in a -----" trailer. And I walked in a started laughing, and someone said (hands on face with a concerned look) "Is there a problem?" And I go "No, it's just - " "It's the trailer isn't it? Is it ok?" "Yeah, it's all right." It had a TV and a video and a bathroom and a bedroom and a bar. And suddenly I see how it happens that people get difficult. The next job I did I had a tiny trailer and for a split second I caught myself thinking, "does this mean the don't really think I'm - as - good - or does that mean they don't - " And I thought, "Jesus, shut up!" Remaining "normal" I was on Broadway, you know, having the time of my life, and I came back to London. I suddenly got scared that people would think I'd changed. And I met all my friends in one night, terrifying, all at the same time. My brother, agents and all had a kind of get-together to welcome me back. And I was so paranoid that people would be going "you never used to speak like that." What really happened, it wasn't a conscious thing. My brother had to call me aside after a couple of drinks. (Whisper) "Rufus, you didn't use to speak like Bob Hoskins." And I went, "What?" He said, "You didn't used to be Cockney." And what I'd been doing is I was saying, (at this point Rufus goes into an exaggerated Cockney accent, very funny) "New York's all right, like, but if you're a geezah - " And I was using this full "trying to be down to earth Londonah" and completely forgot who I was in a effort to let people know that I was down to earth and normal. (thanks, Rai) |
video captures by Ginny |
