In a new conversation for Variety’s Actors on Actors issue, Drew Starkey and Harris Dickinson discuss working with iconic movie stars Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman in “Queer” and “Babygirl,” respectively, getting their starts in school plays, and more.
Starkey on working with Daniel Craig in “Queer”:
Starkey: “I didn’t meet Daniel until a month before we shot in Rome, at Cinecittà…The jungle was in a back lot. Dude, Luca was like, ‘I want these plants,’ and they brought in thousands of pounds of dirt and built a jungle. Luca was very specific about how he wanted the world to feel. He sent visual references. Some photography; these paintings by Francis Bacon. With Daniel and I, there wasn’t a lot of conversation about the dirty word—’chemistry’—between us. It was just going for it. My heart was racing on the first day.”
Dickinson: “Did you ask him about James Bond?”
Starkey: “He just started talking about it. I got a lot of insider trading on that. It was really strange, because I’m watching this beautifully crafted, prepared performance, but also free of all inhibitions. I’m like, ‘What is he tapped into? Fuck! Let me lock back in.’”
Dickinson on working with Nicole Kidman in “Babygirl”:
“The script got sent to me, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ You tend to go to that place of ‘I don’t think I’m right’— to protect yourself, maybe. But [Director Halina Reijn] and I had a really long chat, and I knew that Nicole was on board, which was intimidating…Nicole and I didn’t have a ton of time together. To not fully understand each other—there was an element of mystery between us that was helpful.”
Dickinson and Starkey on getting their school-play roots:
Dickinson: “My mum was figuring out child care during summer, and there was a local drama school. We did ‘Grease.’ All of the boys played Danny, and all of the girls played Sandy. How did you get into it?”
Starkey: “Just being in school plays…But I went to college, like, ‘I want to take an acting class. It’s fun.’ And a professor was like, ‘I think you could do this.’”
Dickinson: “I was in the Marine Cadets for years as a kid, and even they were like, ‘Do you want to play the victim that we do our medical training on?’ Then an acting teacher said, ‘Don’t join the military. You can probably be an actor.’”
[Photo Credit: Alexi Lubomirski for Variety Magazine – Video Credit: Variety/YouTube]
Previous post:
Cate Blanchett in Lanvin at the New York Special Screening of Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA Next Post:
Cate Blanchett in Lanvin at the New York Special Screening of Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA Next Post:
-
Zendaya and Nicole Kidman on EUPHORIA, BABYGIRL, CHALLEGERS and more for VARIETY Magazine
-
Angelina Jolie and Cynthia Erivo on MARIA and WICKED for VARIETY Magazine
-
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson at the BABYGIRL Los Angeles Premiere
Please review our Community Guidelines before posting a comment. Thank you!
