CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by GREG WILLIAMS/JANE CROWTHER
The last time Boyd Holbrook was at Cannes Film Festival he was on the Croisette with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a huge operation on a big budget Hollywood film directed by James Mangold. ‘Yeah, they let me tag along on that one,’ he chuckles when I meet him in his modest Airbnb apartment in the centre of Cannes ahead of his premiere. This year, he arrives with a much smaller film (the first feature by Reed Van Dyk), Atonement – a pertinent tale based on a New Yorker article about a US marine who feels compelled to connect to the family who lost all their men during a firefight in the 2003 Iraq war. ‘I’m a small cog in the wheel of a giant film like Indiana Jones. I’m very grateful to be in that. It was such a great experience. But this is obviously such a richer experience in terms of why I got into making movies, and what, to me, cinema is really about.’
Filmed in Jordan and chronologically, Atonement follows Lou (Holbrook) as he engages with his enemy using a 40-cal machine gun during a visceral and terrifying opener where a local family, the Khachaturians, inadvertently get caught in the crossfire. Ten years later, broken and suffering from PTSD like many of his unit, Lou discovers an article written by war reporter Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) about the incident and he reaches out to the journalist in the hope of brokering a meeting with the family, now living in California. What follows is a study in the inhumanity of war, the trauma suffered by so many (as a character says ‘when a gun is shot, the bullet goes both ways’) and the hope of reconciliation. ‘Having a mother wave her own baby’s white shirt to surrender is soul-crushing. It’s a reminder of how important life is,’ Boyd tells me as we hang out on his sunny balcony and he considers how pertinent the subject matter has become in light of today’s news headlines. ‘When I found out about this film, I thought it was incredible but maybe not really relevant right now – this happened 23 years ago. And strangely enough, here we are…’
Boyd found the experience of channeling PTSD an overwhelming one. ‘Living in guilt and shame, that’s where Lou’s resonating in life. It’s wreaking so much havoc in his life. There’s the scene outside the club where he literally breaks and has a panic attack. I did so much preparation that I literally had a panic attack. It was so real for me, that I’d taken this woman’s children and husband. I was inconsolable.’ The challenge and investigation that goes into his process as an actor is what he thrives on, he says. ‘I love projects like these where I have no idea how I’m going to crack this. Before this, I did Johnny Cash [in A Complete Unknown]. I knew that Joaquin Phoenix had done it. It’s going to happen, whether you’re ready or not. I love that pressure. It’s so exciting to me, having to figure things out, and to really push myself, and to get scared, and fuck up, and fail, fail, fail, fail, and fail until you get it right; until you start figuring it out. You can’t use any tricks that you used on the last one. You have to start from square one. Every actor is probably going to blow a little bit of smoke and say that they figured it out. You try to do as much prep as you can. But that is also part of it. When you’re there on the day, you’re discovering it. I love being so prepared that I’m free to do whatever I want, and you have new discoveries.’
Acting is also something he doesn’t take for granted. When I mention that I loved his work in Narcos, he smiles. ‘You know, I was about to stop acting, right before Narcos. I’d been in a bunch of films, and filmmakers… I’d done a lot of cool projects, but I just wasn’t making a living. And then Narcos happened, and basically opened up the whole world for me.’ Having gone to a place of almost quitting and then found success has been good for him, he thinks. ‘Some actors have – I won’t use names – come out of the gate really hot. But I think there’s a birth, life, and death to everything. There’s not another man in the world that I would want to be, or have another life than what I have now. I love my journey. I’ve learned so much. I’m an incredibly flawed person, but I found identity and self and so much through trying to portray humanity. I know how pretentious that might sound, but I really care.’ I ask if he stays in character during his process. ‘ No, I genuinely enjoy being on set, and the vibe of the people and everyone there. I love the kind of switching back and forth, and dropping in and dropping out. I only think I can do that because I do a lot of prep work. Do I remember my takes? Yeah. I know exactly how it should be done by the second or third take, because I can’t stand going home and having 20/20 hindsight. I had that early on in my career, and I couldn’t stand that. So now I try to edit that as we go.’
A Kentucky native (‘I’m from a very, very small town in the Appalachia’), he’s the son of a coal miner and real estate agent. Acting wasn’t something that was in his family. ‘I saw a film called Slam by Saul Williams when I was 16. I just knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I was in some programmes for art when I was a kid, because I used to love to draw, and that was up until sixth or eighth grade. In high school, they cut the art programmes. There was no acting in school plays. I had no idea how to do it, but I knew that one day I was going to be an actor.’ An artistic kid, Boyd was a poet in his younger years. ‘Like all poetry, mine was about… everything. I think especially in that pivotal age, our teenage years to your early 20s – it’s all about Rumi and all those poets. ‘Don’t go back to sleep. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.’ I was really interested in that. And now it’s more about expression and performance. ’ I wonder what he might have done for work had acting not worked out. ‘Good question,’ he laughs. ‘I don’t think I can do anything else. I don’t know, man…’
Atonement premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
Boyd wears Loewe
Stylist Chloe Hartstein at The Wall Group
Grooming Charlie Cullen at Forward Artists
