Q: This is a bit of change of pace for you…

Cillian: Well, it was very interesting because I finished The Wind That Shakes The Barley and then I had like two days off and it was on to the sun.

Q: From the past to the future.

Cillian: Yeah, yeah, it was very interesting. But that's what's kind of nice about being an actor because you get that crazy polar opposites of environments and parts and all that and that's great. And they're both brilliant directors so I was very lucky.

Q: How did you do your accent for The Wind That Shakes The Barley?

Cillian: I don't know if you're an expert on accents...ummm no I think it probably becomes less pronounced as you spend time because you want to be understood a bit more. When I go home to Cork it becomes much more pronounced. In The Wind That Shakes The Barley it's very pronounced.

Q: All the actors that we talked to before were all excited about working with Danny Boyle for the first time. This is your second time around so how was your experience in working on 28 Days Later?

Cillian: Well, I feel as if... I was very young when I did 28 Days Later and it was my first kind of big role in a big film with an established director. It was very courageous of Danny to cast me in that role when I was that young with so little experience. I learned a huge amount on that movie working with Danny. I mean I was a fan of his since I was a kid, you know Trainspotting and Shallow Grave were very important films to me. so then to get to work with him was a big deal. Then it was the first movie that I made that people actually saw and like uh you know made a bit of money and was a breakthrough thing for me and opened a lot of doors in America and everywhere else. So... I hope that in the interim I went and did a lot of other films and got to work with some great directors and hope that when I came back to work with him in this that I had more confidence and more experience and more maturity and hopefully was a better actor.

Q: Obviously, he liked you because he cast you again. How was his working style from film to film? Has it changed any?

Cillian: No, Danny's always the fiercely passionate, committed and visionary director that he was when we did 28 Days Later. The difference was the size of the budget and the fact that it was so effects heavy. That was not [the case] before and I think that was the challenge to everyone involved. It was a long shoot, I think it was like four months. I mean he had done a huge budget movie with The Beach but that was not as technically tricky as this movie.

Q: As an actor, is it important to be connected to L.A.?

Cillian: Because I'm European and I love London and it's close to my family in Cork. I come over here to work and to have meetings and there's no need for me to live here.

Q: Danny says the scientific advisor Brian Cox looks like you. What do you think?

Cillian: I think he was on the project way before I was. But I spent a lot of time with him. I did kind of study him a lot and ask him a lot of stupid questions. He's a good advertisement for a physicist I think.

Q: What do you think about that topic for a movie?

Cillian: Physics?

Q: Exactly.

Cillian: During school I never would have been good in math or physics or any of those things so for me it was very revelatory just talking to him and trying to get my head around why we're here and how we got here and where we're going and how did the planet become what it is and what caused the Big Bang and why did the Big Bang happen...all of these profound questions. It was very challenging to kind of keep in your brain all the time but also very stimulating and very interesting. And because Brian is also such great company it was easy to hang out with him and talk to him.

Q: We heard that you went to karaoke.

Cillian: We went to karaoke?

Q: I thought some of the others said they went to karaoke nights?

Cillian: Oh, they did. I wasn't there. Thank God.

Q: What other movies have you got coming up?

Cillian: Well The Wind That Shakes The Barley is coming out in America next month. I did this movie called Watching The Detectives, that comes out...I don't know when.

Q: Who is the director?

Cillian: Paul Soter. It's me and Lucy Liu, a romantic comedy.

Q: Did you just finish it?

Cillian: No, this summer. In August. [this interview took place in February 2007]

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the costume? You're so lucky (sarcastically) to get to wear this huge spacesuit... what was that like?

Cillian: Yeah, I'm lucky. There's a kind of a mold, they kind of mold you like a big, nappy kind of thing and then they mold you big legs and arms. But mostly what I was in was this helmet rig that you see there. There was a camera right there and it's in a big like rig and that was very, very tricky. That was like ...weighed a huge, was very heavy and so a lot of it sort of exertion and sweat and effort that you see is actually real because carrying this thing around was very tough. But that's what Danny wants, he always pushes you to that extra level of nth degree and it's great because it's very character act adrenalized.

Q: You're doing some plays, too?

Cillian: I just finished a play in London last Saturday. I had been doing it for three months.

Q: (something about whether the film had changed his perspective of science)

Cillian: Certainly I am (more interested). I've forgotten a lot of it because it's, as they said, it's so hard to retain but no I went to give a talk for him at one of his conventions or something but he wrote the speech. It does make you realize the fragility of the world and it makes you realize how little we actually know. It makes you realize that the quest for knowledge is such a noble endeavor.

Q: (unintelligible...something about the condition of cinema)

Cillian: Well, I mean he would know more than I would but I think that its honestly healthy because these movies are getting a lot of recognition and awards but I think its still very tricky to get films made, the mid-budget films like 10-12 million dollars, it's very hard to get independent films like that made. You think it's easier to get the big, big studio pictures made but I think it's harder...like Neil told me that we, Breakfast on Pluto, if we tried to make that now we couldn't do it. So it's very hard, even for someone as talented as Neil so he went to make a big movie at Warner Brothers.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about squaring off with Chris Evans? You had some adversarial scenes together. And did you prepare for those?

Cillian: Chris is a bigger guy than I am, so he had the advantage. We wanted it to be like not choreographed, we wanted it to be kind of messy like you know when men fight it's never pretty. So we wanted it to be kind of like that so we'd just go for it. It's kind of fun doing that stuff.

Q: Which kind of science fiction do you prefer?

Cillian: I'm not a big science fiction aficionado. I loved the first Alien. I loved Solaris, the Tarkovsky one not the remake. I love the Kubrick 2001 and movies like that. You know, the classic science fiction movies. I'm not a big Trekkie fan. I love the Star Wars films.

Q: All?

Cillian: No, the first three.

Q: We heard all the actors had to live to together for two weeks before shooting began.

Cillian: To live in the dormitory? It was great. The objective was to kind of create that familiarity with your fellow actors so that when you meet them the first time with everyone sitting around the table having dinner that there's something again that you can't really act...that tension or whatever. That's a very rare thing to get the opportunity to do that. Most films you don't get any rehearsal time, you're just kind of thrown in the deep end. But with Danny, again he's a very different and unique director and he always puts aside a lot of prep time. He did the same in 28 Days Later. I think that's because he comes from theater as well and so he recognizes how important, not necessarily rehearsal but just being together before you start a project is.

Q: It must have been difficult to be away from home like that.

Cillian: Yeah, my wife was pregnant at the time and we were like moving house sort of stuck in this... so that was a bit difficult. But you have to do these things

Q: Are you Catholic?

Cillian: No, I'm not religious but I was baptized.

Q: We heard that every character for Sunshine was given a backstory revealed only to the actor and Cliff Curtis.

Cillian: Alex [Garland] had written a backstory for everyone of where the character came from and their backgrounds but we didn't know each other's backstories.

Q: Do you think movies can change lives?

Cillian: I think they can nudge people to be look at bit more closely at the world around them. I think some people make political movies, but nobody will look at them unless they are entertaining, unless you were invested in the characters and you cared about the characters. I think then you can think about the political message. That's why his films are so beautiful because first and foremost they are so touching and so wonderfully made and so wonderfully acted and then you take the political message. I don't think Scorsese would have won the Oscar based just on politics.

Q: For his career?

Cillian: No, no he didn't win that for his career. He won it for a movie. He had been selected many times, but I don't think it was a tokenistic prize.

Q: unintelligible

Cillian: I think its a very interesting debate and for me I'll be very much on the science side of it. I think nowadays its a very interesting debate given you know like intelligent design and all that stuff, particularly in this country and also like religious fundamentalism and religious extremes versus science. It's a very interesting debate.

Q: Has Sunshine changed your perspective on anything?

Cillian: Well, it would have confirmed my atheist… or you know, I would be an atheist. I think we're searching this movie and spending a lot of time with scientists makes you...none of them believe in God. They're not compatible. So that was interesting.

Q: The end of the film seems a little ambiguous.

Cillian: Yeah, it is. And that's when it's meant to kind of blur and that's what makes it sort of ambiguous. That he has this kind of communion with this star or this whatever you want to call it.

Q: When you're looking at the sun now, maybe walking in the country with your child, what are you thinking now?

Cillian: I just think that I recognize how fragile the world is and how brief we're here on this planet and we should do the best we can to sustain it because kids are our like message for the future and I want him to live on a beautiful planet, as well.

Q: I'm curious to know what you might take with you if you had to spend some time out in space? What would you do to entertain yourself?

Cillian: I don't know.

Q: What songs would you take? What books?

Cillian: You'd just get bored of everything wouldn't you?

Q: Yeah, eventually.

Cillian: I don't ever read a book twice.

Q: Photo albums? Things like that?

Cillian: I suppose... so but I find these questions kind of difficult to answer because they're so hypothetical.

[end]

= = =

Staci Layne Wilson reporting