NYGossipGirl Exclusive Interview: ‘The Last Station’s’ James McAvoy

NYGossipGirl recently sat down with James McAvoy. The 30-year-old actor talked about his new film, The Last Station, what it was like working with his wife and whether or not there’s going to be a Wanted sequel.

McAvoy plays Valentin Bulgakov, Tolstoy’s personal secretary, who becomes mixed up in the drama that centers between Tolstoy and his wife Sofya.

“I would lie if I said I was a humongous Tolstoy fan. I never got through “War and Peace” – I got nearly to the end. But I read it because I thought I should, not because I wanted to. I think, I’m probably finally ready to read it. Maybe in five years,” laughed McAvoy.

In The Last Station, McAvoy had a chance to work again with his wife, Anne-Marie Duff who played ­Sasha, Tolstoy’s daughter. They previously worked on a television show called Shameless.

“It was nice to be together. We don’t actually work with each other that much, which allowed us to accept the job together,” said McAvoy. “Because if we had lots and lots of scenes together, that could maybe get difficult.”

Many actors, especially those who portray real-life people, do everything they can to prepare for the role. McAvoy had a chance to know exactly how his character felt first-hand.

“My main source of information was unparallel then anything I ever had as an actor, it was incredible. I had the direct link to what Valentin thought,” stated McAvoy. “He was a real person and in the film we show that he kept 5,000 diaries and he did keep one that was his own. I know how he felt when Countess Sofya Tolstoy climbed the balcony, and I played it, because 10 minutes after that happened, he wrote down how it made him feel. I mean I never had that [kind of] connection to a character before. It almost made it too easy. It was lovely to have that direct link to somebody.”

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Edited: January 20th, 2010

NYGossipGirl Exclusive Interview: ‘The Last Station’s’ Paul Giamatti

NYGossipGirl had a chance to sit down with Paul Giamatti, whose new film The Last Station is in theaters now.

The movie follows famed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) who disagree over the rights to Tolstoy’s literary legacy.

Giamatti plays Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s chief disciple, who convinces the writer to sign the rights over to the Russian people.

“It was a well-written script and I like the period thing,” said Giamatti. “Americans don’t get to do a lot of period stuff so that was nice. And the Russian stuff was interesting to me. I was interested in Tolstoy, even though [the movie] is not really about Tolstoy, it’s just a love story that happens to be about him. [My character's] kind of an ambiguous bad guy, which I thought was sort of [appealing]. I don’t know what to make of the guy and hopefully the audience doesn’t either.”

To prepare for the role, Giamatti did some research and looked at photographs and read books about Chertkov. He was already a fan of Tolstoy’s and read several of his books including those filled with religion, but found it was a tough read because he’s not a religious person himself. He did, however, like the mustache that he sported for the film.

“That was in the script,” laughed Giamatti. “The idea with this is somebody that you can laugh at too. He’s an ass in some ways and he’s pompous and when you see pictures of the guy, he was a very wealthy, high-born guy. There’s a rumor that he was an illegitimate son of the Czar. And he’s very vain. So part of it was to look very silly and vain, but it’s also a robotic thing that I do when I get nervous. Hopefully people get that that’s funny. My mustache wasn’t real too, so it was really hard not to pull off the mustache – it was tricky.”

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Edited: January 18th, 2010

NYGossipGirl Exclusive: Willem Dafoe Interview

NYGossipGirl recently had a chance to sit down with Willem Dafoe. The 54-year-old actor opened up about his new film Daybreakers and his upcoming role in John Carter of Mars.

Dafoe has a large variety of roles in his repertoire. He played a villain in Spider-Man, a fish in Finding Nemo and a rat in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox. In a recent New York Times article, they described him as having a “distinctive growl” and went on to write that “strange is a relevant term when talking about the work of Willem Dafoe.”

“For me, it is what it is,” said Dafoe. “It’s my body of work, it continues, and I don’t feel the need to reflect on it so much. I think the lessons learned; they stay with you. You don’t look back, but maybe you do. I’m reflective, but not that way. For performing, I think it’s instinctive. I don’t have much of an attitude. I do it from the heart, and get ready for the next one.”

For him, choosing which roles he wants is a combination of things.

“The accent, the priorities are always changing,” said Dafoe. “But I will say that it’s often in reaction to what you did before, just as a natural thing. It’s not a question of repeating yourself, you don’t want to keep going on the same route, it’s nice to mix it up.”

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Edited: January 14th, 2010

NYGossipGirl Exclusive: Ethan Hawke Interview

NYGossipGirl recently sat down with Ethan Hawke, whose new film, Daybreakers is out in theaters now.

The 39-year-old actor is getting ready to direct Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Minds at the New Group.

“We start previews on January 29, and I wanted to do this play for a really long time,” said Hawke. “I think it’s going to be really great. It stars Keith Carradine, Laurie Metcalf and Josh Hamilton.”

Daybreakers directors, Michael and Peter Spierig were eager to get Hawke who was their first choice for the lead role. After he read the script, he realized that it was a great genre film.

“I’ve been interested in other genre movies, and been offered other genre movies, graphic novels, superheroes, stuff like that. It never interested me,” said Hawke. “I thought it was funny how this embraced being a B movie, and it’s a throwback to a kind of genre filmmaking. There’s a huge message, tucked away in the hidden bowels of a genre movie. Reading this thing, it’s such a fun allegory to how, as a culture, we are vampires, sucking dry our natural resources. I thought it was really smart and funny and clever. They were really passionate. I wanted to do something I had never done before, so I said yes.”

Read the rest after the jump!

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Edited: January 13th, 2010

NYGossipGirl Exclusive: Maggie Gyllenhaal Interview

It wasn’t difficult for Maggie Gyllenhaal to play Jean Craddock in Crazy Heart. She herself had fallen for the “bad boy” before and could relate to being a mother – she has a daughter named Ramona.

NYGossipGirl recently caught up with the actress and talked about her new role and what it was like working with Jeff Bridges.

After having her daughter, Gyllenhaal took some time off, but when Ramona was around 18 months, she got a sudden urge to get back into acting. She took the role of Rachel in The Dark Knight and followed it with Sam Mendes’ Away We Go.

“I spent a year and a half, almost 2 years with all of my focus on my daughter and I just kind of went, ‘I need something for me,’ and it was this, it was this movie,” she said. “That’s exactly what Jean is going through. I think she spent a better part of her time completely focused on her child; trying to survive and she’s in an emergency state of where I was.”

In Crazy Heart, Jean falls for Bridges’ character, Bad Blake and although she knows the relationship won’t end well, she does it anyway, but Gyllenhaal can see why her character does what she does.

“Why does anyone like anyone? You know? The movie wouldn’t work if these two people didn’t love each other really deeply and they’re a very unlikely pairing, though I knew and I think Jeff knew that we had to make that true no matter what,” said Gyllenhaal. “And I think about the people that I’ve loved in my life, even my husband and it’s a little bit good for you and a little bit not good for you. When I’ve fallen in love in my life – and I met my husband really young, so maybe it changes things when you’re older – it happens immediately and I think that’s what happens to them. You just have that electricity immediately.”

Gyllenhaal met her husband, actor Peter Sarsgaard when she was 23 on the set of Steven Soderbergh’s 2003 low-budget and never-released drama In God’s Hands. Although their daughter is still very young, she doesn’t really know what her parents do.

“She came to set for lunch on this movie,” she said. “But it wasn’t really appropriate for her to be around, but for Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang, she was around a lot. It’s very confusing I think.”

Gyllenhaal remembers that she first met Bridges on the premiere of her film, Mona Lisa Smile and was excited to work with him on Crazy Heart.

“I met him at the premiere and I had a couple of glasses of champagne and I just went over to him and said, ‘I love your movies’ and he said, ‘We’re going to work together one day’ and it made my week of course, I was so thrilled,” she said. “But then I thought, we do work in a similar way and before we started shooting [for Crazy Heart], he called me a couple of times and I didn’t call him back, I just wasn’t ready yet to get into it. He didn’t care, but when I met him on the set, a couple of days before we started shooting, without saying anything about it, in 5 seconds I felt like we just said to each other immediately ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ And underneath that was ‘I’m up for anything, are you up for anything? Let’s do this’ and then it was just like that. We are really good friends.”

Edited: December 22nd, 2009

NYGossipGirl Exclusive: Jeff Bridges Interview

At first Jeff Bridges turned down the role of Bad Blake in Crazy Heart. He felt that a movie like that deserved to have music in it, which was something that it lacked, but when everything finally came together and T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton wrote the songs, he took on the role and garnered a Golden Globe nomination.

NYGossipGirl recently sat down with the actor who talked about the challenges of the role and the Oscar buzz the film is getting.

“This movie was presented to me when I was in the middle of something else,” said Bridges. “It takes me away from my wife and everything else. Finally, when things came into place, a year after, T Bone fell in place and I was there.”

Bridges plays Bad Blake, a broken-down, hard-living country music singer, who drinks too much and doesn’t have his life together. Bridges tapped into his own life experiences to prepare.

“I’ve been drunk, hungover, so I knew how to do that and I’d go to my close circle of friends and that included these two great guys, T Bone and Stephen, and so Stephen was probably my biggest role model because he was there from every step of the way. Teaching me how to play chords and organizing a band to practice with. He was there everyday when we were shooting,” he said.

Bridges had to gain weight to play Bad Blake and throughout the film he gets out of his car with his pants unbuckled.

“That’s what happens when I’m fat and I’m driving,” he laughs.

“It’s tougher each time you do it,” said Bridges of gaining the weight. “I have to watch that, it’s not healthy to do that. I didn’t take too long to [gain weight]. Just eat that extra pint of Häagen-Dazs and have that extra drink.”

In the Crazy Heart, Bridges has the opportunity to work with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Colin Farrell. Although Farrell’s name isn’t credited in the film, his appearance is meant to be a surprise to the audience. The film was shot in a short amount of time, but Bridges found it to be easy, especially when he’s working with someone with the same work ethics.

“Maggie and Colin and I approached the work the same way and we had a lot of fun and you get to know the people that you’re working with as much as possible,” he said. “Colin flew in for less then a week and the whole movie was shot in 24 days. And some of the challenges as an actor is how you’re going to get up to speed quickly enough to get deep enough as you can get.”

And what about the Oscar buzz the film is getting?

“It feels great to be appreciated,” said Bridges. “It feels wonderful, especially to be appreciated by people who do what you do. There’s a whole commercial side to it and [sometimes it's hard with] a movie like this [especially one] that doesn’t have too much money to get TV ads and print ads and stuff. You have to look at other ways to bring people to the show and certainly festivals and winning awards makes the movie stand out.”

Edited: December 21st, 2009

NYGossipGirl Exclusive: Jenny McCarthy Interview

NYGossipGirl recently caught up with Jenny McCarthy and she opened up about her new film, Santa Baby 2 and her son Evan.

NYGG: The first movie was such a success on the network, did the network approach you to do a second one?

JM: Yes, because it was so successful, but who knew? Not I. I read the script and said ‘Omg, it’s better than the first one.’ So the fact that it trumped the first one, I said I’m in.

NYGG: And since you worked on the first film, when you read the script for the sequel, were there things that you wanted to change?

JM: They had more of a villain type theme throughout the second one and I said no. There are so many young teenage girls that want to see this movie, so I said, ‘you have to stick with the romance.’ And it worked.

NYGG: What was your favorite part of filming the movie?

JM: My favorite part was that I had my son with me the entire time and I had Paul Sorvino dressed as Santa and he thought I was working with Santa. So everytime Evan was there, he was talking to Santa and having full conversations with him for hours. Fortunately for Paul, he never had to break out of character when Evan was there. It was pure heaven to watch.

NYGG: And Dean [McDermott] plays your love interest, what was it like working with him?

JM: I couldn’t ask for a better guy. He was really cool, down-to-earth, which is what we needed and held his own against me.

Santa Baby 2 premieres on ABC Family tonight at 8:00 p.m.

Edited: December 13th, 2009

Cheryl Hines Opens Up About Her New Film, ‘Serious Moonlight’

When Cheryl Hines got the call to direct Serious Moonlight, she didn’t know what to expect.

NYGossipGirl recently sat down with Hines and she opened up about her directorial debut and how she brought Adrienne Shelly’s script to life.

Shelly was murdered before her film, The Waitress opened in theaters and her husband Andy Ostroy called Hines to see if she wanted to direct Serious Moonlight.

“I really love the way Adrienne wrote; she was a great writer,” said Hines. “I felt like the only thing I could do was to tell the story the way I saw it and to do the best job that I can do telling that story. I decided early on in the process [that] I can’t approach this filled with ‘what would Adrienne have done, how would she have wanted it to be?’ because you’ll never know. Then you’ll be second-guessing yourself. I just tried to find all the comedy in the script, as much as I could because I thought she was such a funny writer and bring that to the screen.”

Hines was shocked when Ostroy called her because she never directed a film before and thought that he would want her to act in the film rather than direct it.

“The odds of somebody calling you and asking you if you want to direct a film – I don’t know what the odds are, but they’re not good,” laughed Hines.

While she thought of who to cast as the leads, Hines thought that she might as well reach for the stars and try to get the best actors she could. She sent Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton the script and they gladly accepted. The next challenge for Hines would be the different aspects that her job would entail.

“I did as much as I could to prepare,” she said. “I sat down and talked to my director friends and asked them for some advice, very specific advice. Even on the set, I would be texting questions. On the way to the set I would call one of my friends and say ‘what do I do in this situation?’ I tried to use all my resources as much as possible. And even before I said yes to direct this film, I directed a few television episodes.”

Of course there were some stressful situations on set, but as time went by, Hines new how to deal with them. After seeing the finished project, Hines wants to direct again.

“I would like to do it again. If you had asked me while I was shooting, I would said there’s no way I would do this again, it’s not worth it. My hair’s falling out, I had adult acne for the first time ever, I was a mess. But, by the end of the shoot I got to a point where I knew what to worry about and when to let go.”

Edited: December 12th, 2009

Candace Cameron Bure: No ‘Full House’ Reunion

NYGossipGirl caught up with Make It Or Break It star, Candace Cameron Bure at an event in Bryant Park celebrating the ABC Family movie, Santa Baby 2: Christmas Maybe.

The mother of three, who brought along her daughter, Natasha talked about Full House, Twitter and how she’s spending the holidays.

Is there ever going to be a ‘Full House’ reunion?

I don’t think that there’s going to be. Everyone asks us. I know several of us would and I think there are a few hold outs, so who knows?

Last season Make It or Break It ended on a big cliff-hanger, what’s in the future for your character?

Yeah, there’s lots of cliffhangers. My character, now that she’s broken up, she might find another love on the show, so you have to tune in?

Are you working on anything aside from the show?

I have a production company and we’re working on some television movies right now and independents and I have a book that’s going to be released in the summer about health and fitness.

When did you start your production company?

Recently, earlier this year. We’re still in the early production stages.

And you’re on Twitter?

Yes, I love Twitter, I love being on there. I think it’s a great thing for fans and I’m always happy , especially if I’m on the set and I have that extra 15 minutes of downtime, I’ll get on there and say ‘shoot out a couple of questions you have and I’ll try to answer a few.’ I just think it’s fun and I’m happy to do.

How are you spending the holidays?

We’re going back to Florida and we’ll be at the beach in our bathing suits getting a tan.

Edited: December 9th, 2009

NYGossipGirl Exclusive Interview with ‘Precious’ Star Gabourey Sidibe

Gabourey Sidibe didn’t initially want to be an actress, but after several auditions and finally getting the lead role in Lee Daniels’ film, Precious, the rising star has fallen in love with the craft.

NYGossipGirl had a chance to sit down with Sidibe and talk about her new film and the challenges she faced playing her character.

Precious, which is based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, tells the story of an overweight and illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child and is emotionally and physically abused by her mother.

Sidibe first heard about the casting call when her mother was asked to audition for the role of Mary.

“I went to the open casting call, and within an hour, I got a call for the callback, which was the next day and within half and hour I got a call saying that Mr. Daniels wanted to meet with me and so, I went to meet him the next day – this is all Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” said Sidibe. “Wednesday we had a meeting in his office and we talked about nothing. Nothing of relevancy at all. We talked about sunglasses and cake from Brooklyn and Lenny Kravitz – really nothing. And he just offered me the part, without another audition.”

Sidibe was nervous on her way to set on the first day. She felt that her lack of acting experience would be obvious to the other actors, who were trained and already had a few films under their belt.

“I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time,” she said. “I was nervous in the car on my way to set for the first time, but once I got there, I looked around and there’s so many people involved in the production and I realize that I’m in every single scene and if I don’t show up, then they’re all here for nothing and so all the nervousness sort of dissolved and melted away.”

Sidibe read Sapphire’s novel and really wanted to give the character a face.

“I totally internalize this girl, which isn’t hard to do,” she said. “When I read the novel, I felt like I knew this girl, I recognized her in friends, I recognized her in family and I recognized her in people I did not want to know and I realize that I am part of the problem. I have ignored her, I have neglected her. I felt a responsibility to this girl that I’ve met time and time again. I felt like I finally had to come around and do her justice.”

Edited: November 22nd, 2009