IGN Interview William and Anna
GN chimes in with their own interview of William Moseley (Peter) and Anna Popplewell (Susan). In the interview William talks about getting acting tips from Tilda Swinton and learning how to smile on camera.
IGNFF: William, did you look to any of the other actors for tips?
MOSELEY: Totally. What I found with Tilda, I really did actually… James [also] told me – I learned two tips from both of them – Tilda would always say to me, you know, it shouldn’t be difficult, acting shouldn’t be difficult. You should just be enjoying it… It’s best to go with it and just be there and just let yourself go. You don’t have to really even try hard at all, that’s what she said to me. It’s something that she had found out herself over the years. And then James McAvoy also said to me, which is really interesting, because I had a problem in one of the scenes. It’s funny, because I can ride a horse bareback, galloping across the park, I can sword fight for hours, I can run across the frozen lake. But I had to smile, and it was so weird, smiling on screen. I hate smiling in photos, so I never smile. I find it posing, like I’m not really being spontaneous, I’m just posing… James said to me, ‘If you take up the posture in your face, your mind follows,’ and then he trained himself to do that. He was telling me that he couldn’t smile on camera or he couldn’t laugh or cry. He had to train himself to do. And so, they were both very interesting people. Even the mother, Mrs. Macready, I learned some things from, like the way she would just come pumped up… Really bringing out something and just shaking everything up, just going for it. That was a really interesting aspect as well. I found, for me, I have to go back and think, like, what happens to me before, what are my feelings now. With all these people trying to help me, I felt I really progressed as an actor.
