A Most Violent Year takes place during an early 1980s crime wave in New York City, and while today’s Big Apple is undoubtedly a safer place, the film’s star, Oscar Isaac, insists that there’s much that hasn’t changed.   “One thing that’s still there,” he says, “is the idea you’ve ... More

For Chris Rock to get the kind of leading role he’s most desired, he says he always knew he’d have to pen it himself. “I write with myself in mind because no one really writes for me,” says Rock, who wrote, directed and stars in the witty comedy More

John du Pont, the character Steve Carell portrays in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, was a convicted murderer. But Carell says that when he took on the role, he was intent on digging deeper into the man’s being.   “I didn’t necessarily approach him as a dark character,” says Carell, whose ... More

Timothy Spall’s portrayal of the controversial 19th-century painter J.M.W. Turner in Mr. Turner was a long time in the making.  In 2006, he explains, “I was walking in London near where Mike Leigh has an office, and I bumped into him and he said to me, ‘I’m making a film ... More

To play English mathematician Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, it was important for Benedict Cumberbatch to walk the line between fact and fiction.  “It’s tricky to get the balance right between storytelling and authenticity,” Cumberbatch says. “Being true to the character and being honest to him, and at the ... More

When it came to playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne faced something of a learning curve.  “I gave up science when I was about 14,” he says, “but I started reading A Brief History of Time knowing that I had to for this job. I got ... More

Some actors-turned-directors prefer not to wear both hats in a single film, but Tommy Lee Jones says he doesn’t mind the extra work. “They’re two different jobs,” he says plainly. “I don’t have much trouble doing both of them at the same time.” He certainly didn’t seem strained in The ... More

When Ralph Fiennes first considered a part in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, he knew the role of the eccentric concierge M. Gustave was for him. “Wes said, ‘Tell me which part you’d like to play,’” Fiennes recalls, “which was quite funny because there’s really only one great part.” Gustave ... More

The role of Maziar Bahari in Rosewater was appealing to Gael García Bernal for a number of reasons: One was that Bahari’s story—he’s an Iranian-Canadian journalist who was jailed in Tehran while covering the 2009 presidential elections—made for a compelling, inspiring tale. Another was that the film marks ... More

If someone tells you to watch a film called A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, it is likely that within seconds you will have envisioned an egregious queue of horrors set to befall the girl in question. But the feature-length directorial debut of Ana Lily Amirpour is nothing if not ... More