Jim Sturgess on debut album: It’s weird when other actors become musicians

Jim Sturgess has said that he has found it “weird” when fellow actors release music as he brings out his debut record.

Known for playing Dexter Mayhew in the 2011 film, One Day, opposite Anne Hathaway, Sturgess will be under the name of King Curious when he releases Common Sense For The Animal.

He also starred in science fiction film Cloud Atlas, period drama Close To The Enemy, gambling movie 21 and thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking.

On Wednesday, he released the video for the song, The Hollowman Come, featuring Sister.

Sturgess, who has previously released music with other people, told the PA news agency that he chose the name King Curious as tea had spilled on his notebook where he had written, “I am so f***ing curious”.

When asked how people seeing him in a romantic movie like One Day might view his darker music, he said: “It’s quite weird, even for me, when I watch actors that I know from movies, and stuff, sort of put out music, I’ve seen it with other people.

“It is quite a weirdly interesting sort of line to walk, a tightrope … and it sort of messes with your sort of mind and perception and it sort of does quite weird things to you, when you see an actor that you know, and love, suddenly sort of performing in a band, and vice versa when you sort of see a musician that you love, suddenly turn up in a film trying to play another character.”

He added that some actors, such as Melancholia star Charlotte Gainsbourg, who released an album with her father, the director Serge Gainsbourg, have a “creative universe” where all forms of art make sense.

However, Sturgess said it can be “jarring” and “really disappointing” for other actors playing music.

“I’ve had an interesting journey with other people so I’m very aware that people could have that journey with me,” he added.

Sturgess also spoke about how he found out that his co-star, Ambika Mod, known for BBC NHS drama, This Is Going to Hurt, is going to be in an Netflix series adaption of One Day, which is based on the novel by David Nicholls.

“I sort of found out that she was doing One Day while we were sort of working together,” he said.

“So it was great to swap stories and spend time together and she could tell me her experience and I could tell her mine.”

Sturgess said it is great that image of aspiring writer and hopeful student Emma Morley in One Day will be “challenged” by the “dry, comedic sort of energy” of Mod.

He said that it will also be different this time around as the bestselling book was a “phenomenon” when it first came out in 2009.

Sturgess said: “I do remember knowing that I was playing Dexter and sort of … sitting on a tube in London and seeing that sort of book, the bright orange cover of the book … everywhere … I’m really excited to see what they do with it, and sit back and watch someone else tell that story, it’s never happened to me before.

“So it’s quite an interesting sort of thing to kind of go through, because it was a very … important and beautiful moment in my life, and I have great memories of making it.”

Mod and Sturgess are starring in upcoming Disney+ seven-part thriller Playdate along with The Borgias actress Holliday Grainger.

Sturgess also has plans to be in a companion movie to Rosemary’s Baby, called Apartment 7A.

The new film is set in the same New York building where a husband and wife discovered a Satanic cult.

He said the movie, which also stars Ozark actress Julia Garner and Hannah And Her Sisters star Dianne Wiest, was an opportunity to be given “carte blanche to sort of look into the world of Satanism”.

“I didn’t realise that it’s quite misunderstood, Satanism and Satan,” Sturgess added.

“My image (of it) is instantly drawn to the devil and, (that) sort of horrendous sort of dark side but it actually is very connected to individuality if you sort of dive into the roots of it.

“It’s actually much more to do with going against the grain and not sort of following the herd, you know, so misunderstood perhaps possibly.”

Sturgess is married to Dina Mousawi, who was nominated for a Bafta award for the short film Yellow – about a woman going to a shop after the Taliban return to Afghanistan – along with Elham Ehsas, Azeem Bhati, Yiannis Manolopoulos.

Sturgess said he was “proud” of Ms Mousawi hopes the film “reminds people of what’s going on”.