Sir Mark Rylance: No chairs for actors on set of Dunkirk
The Oscar winner said director Christopher Nolan did not like the actors getting too comfortable on set.
Sir Mark Rylance has revealed Dunkirk director Christopher Nolan banned chairs on the film’s set, as he joked he used to sit on younger actors instead.
The Oscar winner takes on the role of a civilian who captains his small boat to rescue soldiers stranded on the beach in the movie about the 1940 Second World War evacuation.
“It was quite low-tech actually, that heavy camera was on the shoulder of the cameraman and he allowed us to roam around, it wasn’t too controlled there.
“But he absolutely controls everything else, he’s very particular about using film and about everything being real in front of the camera.
He joked: “You can sit down on other actors and as an older actor I’m allowed to sit on the younger actors.
“So that is why Tom Glynn-Carney (who plays his son Peter) isn’t here, because he’s had some complications, but he’s going to be alright with chiropractic help and modern surgical techniques. He might not play tennis again.”
He said: “It is a different task, a different thing to talk about, to make a film about war.
“The French made a film about Dunkirk, I think in the 1960s, but I don’t know that many people have seen it, it’s extraordinary that no-one has made a film of it before.”
“There couldn’t have been a more resonant beginning for us filming the whole thing and then we saw that big battle ship.
Sir Mark added that the war film Battle Of Britain had a profound effect on him as a child, saying: “I loved it as a boy, I always wanted to be a pilot before I became an actor.
“My parents emigrated to America when I was very little so the flight back on propeller aeroplanes was very romantic for me, I even remember one of the engines catching fire on a flight and us having to turn around and go back.”
:: Dunkirk is released in UK cinemas on July 21.
