The naked actor - David Thewlis - Interview

Interview, Nov, 1997 by Katrin Cartlidge

David Thewlis can play pilgrims, mad-men, and degenerates at will - but those are the easy roles. It takes a truly sensitive actor to make an ordinary or humble bloke interesting, and that's what this bony, lanky Englishman has done in films like Resurrected (1989), Life is Sweet (1991), and Restoration (1995). He does it again in Seven Years in Tibet, playing a wry, resourceful German mountaineer - the good conscience to Brad Pitt's bad one - who finds a Tibetan wife and a non-Teutonic lifestyle under the caves of the Potala, fortress-palace of the Dalai Lamas.

Jean-Jacques Annaud's epic movie unfolds in the years of Tibetan resistance to communist China in the late '40s and early '50s. Inevitably, it was not filmed in the still-oppressed Himalayan region, but half a world away in the Andes. Talking to Thewlis here about his experiences is that excellent actress Katrin Cartlidge, his friend and neighbor, who could be seen climbing all over him in Mike Leigh's Naked in 1993. Having just returned from promoting Leigh's Career Girls in America, she knew exactly the kinds of things journalists ask. G.F.

KATRIN CARTLIDGE: So what's the name of your current girlfriend, and what color knickers does she wear?

DAVID THEWLIS: The answer to both those questions is the same.

KC: The problem is, I haven't seen Seven Years in Tibet.

DT: I haven't either. It's about eight months since I finished it, and I had a great time making it, but I've no idea yet what it's like. We had a very special young actor [Jamyang Wangchuk] playing the Dalai Lama, and I'm looking forward to seeing his stuff.

KC: Did you shoot in Tibet at all?

DT: Jean-Jacques smuggled a camera and a couple of doubles into the tower [the Potala] at Lhasa to get some shots of it without tourists, but we filmed everything else in Argentina. I spent three months out of the five in an army base called Uspallata, which has two cafes, four shops, and a hotel. Brad and I lived in two houses that belonged to the generals. Going through the security check, I had guns pointed at my head all the time. I don't think Brad did, but I'm not as well known as he is, especially in Argentina. Sometimes I'd go round to his place in the evening and be held up in the dark on the road back. They'd ask who I was and where I was going. I'd say, "I'm a friend of Mr. Pitt!" It was weird having a gun pointed at you when you were going off to work with Tibetan monks.

KC: So there were two atmospheres: one aggressive, and the other the antithesis of that.

DT: They kind of came together halfway through the film. There was a scene where we needed more than the hundred monks we had, so we went to the barracks and recruited some of the soldiers and shaved their heads and put them in monks' robes. It would be nice if just one of those soldiers was converted because of that. In the scene in question, the Tibetans are praying for the Dalai Lama to be given his majority and the seat of power. We shot four takes where the monks were chanting this prayer, and on the fifth take Jean-Jacques decided to let the monks carry on chanting after the prayer had finished and he'd stopped filming. It was no longer a movie scene - it was coming from the heart. They were saying a genuine prayer for their country, and it went on maybe ten minutes after the camera stopped rolling. When it was finally over, there was a minute's silence and all the electricians and the camera crew kept perfectly quiet. I remember the sun was going down. I've never witnessed such a beautiful moment on a movie set.

KC: When I worked on Nobody's Children [1994], we filmed in an orphanage in Romania. I had a strong feeling about the morality of making a film inside the real political events. What are your feelings about that?

DT: It depends on the integrity of the people making the film. Most of the Tibetan people involved in this film were not doing it because they aspired to be in movies. For example, Lhakpa Tsamchoe, who plays my wife, Pema, is not an actress and has no desire to carry on acting. She was very loath to be involved in the film when she was first approached, because all she saw was "Hollywood." But when she read the script and met Jean-Jacques and realized his integrity, she saw that it would be a great way to put over her country's message. Many of the Tibetans we worked with are exiles who fled Tibet following the Chinese invasion in 1950. It was poignant for them to see their history re-created in such amazing detail.

KC: I hear you're now banned from China.

DT: Yeah. Apparently, myself and all the other protagonists on this film and Martin Scorsese's Kundun are on a blacklist banning us from entering China or Tibet. I haven't tested it out yet.

KC: Tell me about your part in the film.

DT: The character I play, Peter Aufschnaiter, is actually closer to me than other ones I've done whom people might think are closer to me. Peter wasn't a huge challenge, because I understood him immediately. On the first day, Jean-Jacques did ask me to sell a watch to a market store in Tibetan, which was a tall order on five minutes' notice, but I learned a handful of words and improvised. I can buy or sell a watch in Tibet now should I ever need to.