The successful actor Joel Edgerton has been just a few steps away from the directors chair for years. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the actor turned director talks about his directorial debut, The Gift. Here are some highlights.
On directing
“One of the lessons [Mr. O’Connor, who directed him in “Warrior”] taught me was that every moment in a movie is important,” he says. “No scene should be treated with greater importance than any other scene.”
On his influences
Mr. Edgerton also found inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock, among other masters of suspense. “I chewed up the entire canon of ’80s triangle thrillers like ‘Fatal Attraction,’ ‘Pacific Heights,’ ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.’ ” He tucks three visual homages into “The Gift”—two to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and one to Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby.”
On acting
The idea of playing a psychopath had appeal. “I thought it would be great for me to play a character who is very overbearing and yet the balance to [that] is the misunderstood nature of his personality. We may actually at different times feel empathy for him.”
Check out the rest of the interview at wallstreetjournal.com
