Martyn Palmer - Access Interviews

Mel Gibson

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Nobody is without sin. You have to try to make amends if you can. You have to shut up and move on and not whine about it. And you have to deal with it like a man'

Viggo Mortensen

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Cormac McCarthy's The Road won the Pulitzer Prize and was feted as the apogee of the novel. Now, as Hollywood dramatises its haunting vision of one man and his son after the apocalypse, the film's suitably brooding Oscar-nominated star explains why the lead role was closer to home than he could have imagined...

Thandie Newton

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

She's the Cambridge graduate who studied for her finals during the Cannes Film Festival, believes she was exploited on her first film and has no time for Gordon Ramsay. Thandie Newton is small boned, beautiful and looks as fragile as a bird of paradise but she's certainly no pushover. For her role in disaster blockbuster 2012 - whose central premise is that the end of the world starts on December 21 2012, as predicted by the ancient Mayan civilisation - she had to spend days submerged in a water tank 'the size of a swimming pool', filming scenes of floods that follow devastating earthquakes when the planet's tectonic plates shift. She grew up in Penzance, the daughter of a Zimbabwean mother and an English father, and started acting at 16, keeping her career on track while attending Downing College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a 2.1 in anthropology. She won a Bafta for best supporting actress in Crash and has also starred in Mission: Impossible II, The Pursuit of Happyness and RocknRolla. She has two daughters, Ripley, nine, and Nico, five, is married to director Ol Parker and turns 37 on Friday.

Paul Bettany

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

The British actor has clambered up the Hollywood ladder playing a naked Chaucer and a murderous albino monk. But does his latest role - as Charles Darwin, Britain's most famous naturalist and Christian America's public enemy No 1 - threaten his rapid ascent?

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

It's an about turn from her edgy earlier roles, but Maggie Gyllenhaal's current films - a Sam Mendes comedy and the Nanny McPhee sequel - reflect where she’s at in her life. Just don't expect yummy mummy from the actress best known for unconventionality…

Brad Pitt

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

He’s gone from the Sexiest Man Alive to one half of the World’s Most Talked About Couple. Yet these days, with a gritty role in Inglourious Basterds and high-profile charity projects, Brad Pitt casts himself as the cultured philanthrope. But is it a role that suits him? Brad Pitt is nursing a hangover. He rubs his bleary blue eyes, reaches for a jug of orange, and pours himself a tumbler, gulping it down in one go. There are a few lines around the eyes these days, and the snake-hipped young man with faded denims and a cowboy hat in Thelma & Louise is now a mature 45-year-old. But today, dressed in dark slacks and a blue shirt, and despite the sore head, he looks as ludicrously handsome as ever. “Late night,” he admits before settling down in an armchair in the corner of a boutique hotel on the Riviera. “Now, I need coffee.”

Tom Cruise

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

WHEN Tom Cruise first met Bryan Singer back in 1996, he promised the director that one day they would work together. "And when I say something, I mean it," says Cruise

Tom Cruise

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Even when you're trying to kill Hitler, playing at Nazis is still a dangerous game. Tom Cruise exclusively reveals the perils of filming WWII thriller Valkyrie - and why Scientology should never have been part of the controversy A bungalow suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel is salmon pink, oak-floored and costs $1,200 a night. The one I’m sitting in also has an incongruous open fireplace, a Yamaha grand piano and french doors leading to a private garden, which is bathed in winter sunshine. ‘Hey!’ shouts Tom Cruise as he steps in to join me. ‘I’ve been in this suite before! Katie and me stayed in this very room! Just a night in a hotel. We had a great time. Yes, this place brings back memories.’ I don’t know what is more remarkable; one of the world’s most iconic actors arriving bang on time, or talking about a memorable night in a hotel room with his wife Katie Holmes, or inspecting my tape machine helpfully to make sure it is working, or serving me drinks. ‘A water? OK, coming up,’ he says, grabbing a bottle from a sideboard ludicrously overstocked in readiness to satisfy Cruise’s every whim....

Scarlett Johansson

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Cameras love Scarlett Johansson’s starlet looks– and so do film directors, from Woody Allen to Sofia Coppola. So why is the 24-year-old actress already looking forward to her next decade? Martyn Palmer meets a reluctant sex symbol. Scarlett Johansson is relaxing, legs stretched out before her on a sofa in one of London’s most luxurious hotels, and pondering the strange phenomenon that is life as a modern-day sex symbol. Think Marilyn Monroe or Sophia Loren transported through time – the hour-glass figure and sprayed-on frocks – and you have some idea of the cinematic heritage of Ms J, a woman who, at just 24, has men young and old (including Woody Allen and just about every other director she’s worked with), praising her as a siren, a muse and a pin-up for our times. Women, too, can appreciate La Johansson. According to one glossy, she possesses the body that most admire. “Oh yeah, that stuff,” she drawls in that unmistakable, husky voice, raising a pencil-thin eyebrow. “Well, I never expected that kind of thing, to be honest. I think that comes with my age, the whole sex-symbol thing. I’ll grow out of that. It’s a phase. And people want to turn you into merchandise in some way, don’t they?”

Angelina Jolie

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Dispelling rumours of postnatal depression and marital rifts, Angelina Jolie is back on form with an Oscar-worthy performance in a gripping period thriller. But as a parent herself, she found that portraying a traumatised mother put her through the wringer

Alice Braga

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Latina actresses have never been hotter in Hollywood: Eva Mendes, Jennifer Lopez, Eva Longoria... and now Alice Braga

Russell Crowe

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Russell Crowe tells Martyn Palmer about putting on 50lb for Ridley Scott's new film and the benefits of family life. Russell Crowe and Sir Ridley Scott make an odd couple. The latter is a 70-year-old, softly-spoken knight of the realm who made his way into filmmaking in the Seventies via the BBC and commercials; the former is a 44-year-old, blunt-talking, New Zealand-born sports-loving actor, who has been in a few highly publicised scrapes. Yet Sir Rid, as the actor affectionately refers to him, has been Crowe's creative mentor-in-chief - and the man responsible for instigating some radical changes in his body shape - since they scaled the cinematic heights together with Gladiator in 2000. The film took the Best Picture Oscar, and Crowe won the award for Best Actor. ...

Leonardo DiCaprio

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

The film that made him also taught Leonardo DiCaprio that he didn’t want to make another one like it. Physically at least, little has changed since Leonardo DiCaprio stood on the deck of the Titanic and was propelled into mega-celebrity. The frame is bulkier, more toned, but those boyishly handsome features remain unlined. At 33 (34 next week) he could still play early twenties, maybe even younger, if he so chose. But DiCaprio isn’t particularly interested in pandering to the millions who fell in love with Jack Dawson. He’s serious, and serious about being serious. “For me, unless it’s stimulating and invigorating, unless it’s a compelling story — not necessarily a movie that will make tons of money — then it’s a waste of time,” he says. Instead, he’s out there making films with his close friend Martin Scorsese (four so far), Sam Mendes (the imminent Revolutionary Road), and now Ridley Scott, for whom he’s made the political spy thriller Body of Lies. “Ridley’s been on my list of people to work with for a long time and there are only a couple of people on there,” he says. “Besides Kubrick he’s probably one of the only directors to have made a masterpiece in every genre.” For years, DiCaprio has been doing his best to dismantle his Titanic image and look instead for darker, edgier fare — a man seeking to avenge the death of his father in Gangs of New York, examining the human cost of the gems trade in Blood Diamond and now a CIA man hunting down a terrorist cell in Body of Lies. ...

Daniel Craig

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Daniel Craig is out of action after exacerbating a shoulder injury during the filming of the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace. Having undergone surgery, Craig is under doctor's orders to take a long break from work. "The cartilage and sinew have to mend properly," says Craig, "which is apparently going to take about six months. It'll be a while before I can hang off the side of a train again …" So how does he feel about the enforced break, and what are his plans for filling his time? "I'm frustrated, but I need to slow down for a couple of months, as people keep reminding me. And, really, unless there's a role out there for a man with his arm in a sling, there's not much else I can do. So I intend to enjoy life and have a drink or two." The shoulder injury is not the only damage Craig sustained while filming Quantum of Solace. The top of his right-hand ring finger was virtually chopped off by a slamming car door and his face was sliced open by a stuntman's boot. But he's determined to continue doing as many of his own stunts as possible. "The finger and the face have healed up fine. It's nothing. And, no, it doesn't put me off, not even slightly." One spectacular sequence filmed in Siena, Italy, sees Craig jumping from one rooftop to another and hanging from a balcony. "What was it like? Interesting and very high! We were about 30 feet up and I was wired for safety, obviously, but I did the leaps and jumps." "You're up there and there's no going back. For a start it's all set up to film - we had five cameras and a crane in place. But also, there was an audience. I looked down and there were all these tourists staring up at me going, 'Oh, what's he going to do?' So I was there thinking, 'There's no way I can back out now. I've got to do it.'" *Read the full interview in the latest edition of Radio Times.

Benicio Del Toro

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Benicio Del Toro gets to the man behind the T-shirt myth in Che. Clouds of cigar smoke, courtesy of the Cuban Cohiba he’s happily chomping, waft around Benicio Del Toro’s impressively hairy head. If it’s possible to embody his two latest roles in one go – playing the revolutionary leader Che Guevara and the Wolf Man – then he’s giving it a decent shot. “You can buy Cuban cigars in London,” he says as he relaxes his lanky 6ft 2in frame into the sofa of his Soho hotel suite. “And that’s a good thing.” Del Toro is unshaven, with a magnificent growth of stubble spreading up around his chin to meet the collar-length curls peeping out from underneath his baseball cap: being this hirsute must have made the make-up artist’s job on The Wolf Man, a remake of the 1941 werewolf classic, that much easier.

Kiefer Sutherland

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Kiefer Sutherland found stardom as 24’s Jack Bauer, but years of hellraising culminated in him spending last Christmas in an LA prison

Jessica Alba

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

Jessica Alba's Cash and carrycot Three weeks after marrying film-maker Cash Warren, actress Jessica Alba gave birth to their first child. Here, she tells us why being a mother is even more important than being a film star

Angelina Jolie

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

'I've got my Tomb Raider guns - and I'm not afraid to use them.' Angelina Jolie has revealed she owns real versions of the guns she toted in the movie Tomb Raider - and she and partner Brad Pitt wouldn't be afraid to use them. The actress, who is rumoured to have given birth to twin girls Isla and Amelie, says she and Pitt keep a firearm in their house to protect themselves and their expanding brood...

Jack Nicholson

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

\When Jack Nicholson met Posh'. It's surely one of Hollywood's oddest pairings - Jack Nicholson and Spice Girl Victoria Beckham. Then again, the old rogue has always had an eye for the ladies...

Charlize Theron

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:01:28 +0000

'Charlize Theron looking for trouble' Charlize Theron is famous for playing gritty roles – perhaps because she has risen above a troubled family past