Interview

JW: I always question how much you get involved in micromanaging something like that. If you get involved all the way down to the lighting of the foyer . . . See, that's what I would get obsessed about if I was in your position. I would want the lighting to be perfect out in that foyer so that those conversations could take place. Do you find yourself doing that?

CB: Well, the casting is, like, 75 percent of the job. So if you've got great people around you, then overmicro-managing can actually strangle the flow of things.

JW: Sometimes it can be fulfilling, though, to micro-manage-and not in a control-freak kind of way, but in a way where you get a taste of all the different departments. You find yourself a part-time carpenter, for example, when you have no rhyme or reason for being in that part of the world to begin with.

CB: Yes. When you're directing something, you absolutely have to be involved in all layers of the process. It's quite precarious in a way. But it's been great to just step away from the filming rhythm for a while, just to take stock.

JW: It takes a lot of time to make a film.

CB: It took a lifetime to make Benjamin Button.

JW: Oh, it looks like it took a long time, from what I've seen. I don't know where your character stands in relation to Mr. Button, but I got a sense that there's almost a twist on this Harold and Maude [1971] sort of love relationship between people of different ages.

CB: Yeah. It plays on that. I mean, I always kept thinking about that image of the lovers encircling one another in-I don't know which tier of hell it is-is it Purgatory? Is it the definition of limbo where you can see your beloved but you can never actually touch them and you're constantly circling one another?

JW: That's not good. What is that state called?

CB: It's called torment. And, the weird thing is that some people actually create those relationships on earth.

JW: I was going to say a word to you that I thought we could talk about: erotomania.

CB: Erotomania?

JW: Erotomania: A rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that another person, usually of higher social status, is in love with him or her.

CB: You thought of me when you found that word?

JW: When I got to this word I also found out that you played Ophelia in Hamlet, and I was just thinking about Ophelia. I went back and was reading some of her parts, because there's a debate over whether she killed herself or whether she slipped and fell, and I wanted to know what you thought.

CB: She was pushed.

JW: You think she was pushed.

CB: Well, if someone stands on the ledge and they slip, did they kill themselves or was it an accident? I think Ophelia stood on the ledge.

JW: She stood on the ledge. Some people consider the way Shakespeare was writing about Ophelia as erotomania-that she was delusional in thinking that Hamlet was in love with her. But I don't think so.

CB: But that's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is. So with each Hamlet-and everyone who is brave enough and, frankly, talented and skilled and emotionally capable enough to do that-the spirit of the actor will profoundly influence the role and, therefore, influence the way it's played with Ophelia. But don't you find that if you've been around someone who's in extreme grief or crisis or pain, that they become transformed through the physical nature of what's happening to them? It's always felt that way to me. In the production that I was in, we had an extraordinary Hamlet, Richard Roxburgh. And it felt like, as Ophelia, I was looking at a Hamlet who was becoming increasingly unrecognizable to me. He was being transformed.

JW: His Hamlet was becoming unrecognizable to your Ophelia?

CB: Yes. The person that Ophelia was trying to speak to was a Hamlet that was becoming remote. So in the present, perhaps, he was speaking to her like she was an erotomaniac. That's a good word. Now you're going to read something about some interview I've given where all I'm talking about is erotomania, as if it's something that I have discovered on one of my trips to the mountaintop . . .

JW: This is a psychological opinion, but someone once told me that you can only desire something that you've already had in your life.

CB: Did this come from a Buddhist?

JW: I don't know. But the thing is, if that's the case, then when you fall in love with someone, you're not really changing at all. You're really just reliving something that already happened at some point.

CB: That would be very comforting to think that. I think there are certain echoes in life. But I think those echoes are probably much more to do with what's going on in your sort of neuro-linguistic processing. For example, if you've said something that you've said before or that you've heard your parents say. I think my thinking about it is much more scientific than spiritual. I would absolutely love to have the comfort of thinking that these things have somehow existed before or happened before, or that there's a kind of collective store of experience. I would love to find that place-I just don't necessarily know that it's there. But on the subject of change, I reckon I used to seek out dangerous experiences in certain situations. But since I've acted more, I somehow have that sense of danger and the adrenalin rush that comes with it, in my work, so I don't need to have it in my life as much. I do think, though, that as a species we have been bleaching out our passion. The situation of existing in extremes-and I don't mean violent, dangerous extremes, but rather extremes of thought or living with contradictions-is kind of considered increasingly abhorrent and antisocial. I think that's why good theaters are really important. They allow you to exist in a space with other people and deal with these things, and not in a passive way.

JW: Because you physically see everything happen.

CB: Yeah. You see people sweat. You see them breathe. They can offend and hopefully terrify you, and on a good night, you'll laugh, and you'll cry. And if it's bad, you feel so cheated and so angry because you've been there and you've been actively participating in that fantasy that's been unfolding. But if you go to a bad film, it's just like, "Oh, that wasn't so great," because you're not implicated in it. You don't have to buy into it. Theater is a space where you cross over from everyday life, because there are real people in that moment moving in front of you-you're being invited to believe in a story and cross that bridge.

JW: I think we should all feel lucky and blessed that people are still, in this day and age, getting in their cars with other people and driving to a location and paying money to sit in a theater and watch a play. With all the media that's out there and all the other things that are going on in people's living rooms right now that could distract them, they are still going out and watching live music or watching the symphony or watching theater.

CB: Particularly with what's going on in the world, which is going to hell in a handbag. Maybe there's an opportunity there for people to kind of reengage with those human experiences . . . Well, look, I hope. But there's something in that space that you're talking about that really has to do with your body. When you go to a concert-or, I would imagine, perform in one-it's really all-consuming. Obviously, you're intellectually engaged somehow. But it bypasses that and goes straight to the body. I think rock stars and dancers-and physical actors as well-exist in that space because those boundaries are somehow broken down between what we think and what we feel.

JW: The thing I love about live performance the most, though, is that the doors are closed, the lights are turned down, and the audience has to be reverential to what's happening onstage. It's not like being at home where you can change channels, fast-forward, turn it off, put the book down, or walk away. It's this phenomenon where we all, as a community, go to church and sit and experience this thing together.

CB: I'm hoping it's going to have even more of a resurgence. But I think you're right, that sense of reverence is to do with surrender. You have to surrender less when you see a film than when you go and see something live.