Anthony Minghella: The Talented Mr. Minghella

Q: That's quite an endorsement.

A: I felt like I had another filmmaker working with me. He was such a compass. He had no fear of the material. He reinvented himself for the role. Matt is a sturdy, very male, very contemporary figure. He conjured this character. It's the most nuanced and delicate performance from a young actor that I can remember in a very long time.

Q: Did you have any concerns about the emotional well from which he draws?

A: He's such an interesting choice because he doesn't have a dark recess, so far as I can tell, and there's nothing calculating about his character. Matt's essential emotional temperature is a warm one and that makes Ripley's fell all the more painful.

Q: How did you come to understand Tom Ripley?

A: Everybody is Tom Ripley. The reason why that character has held a 50-year fascination for people is that Highsmith managed to identify or create in that character many of the secret preoccupations of most individuals. We all feel alienated, locked out of a world we'd like to belong to, phony, dispossessed. Ripley is such an outsider character.

Q: Listening to and looking at you, these things seem very close to you.

A: All of these things strike a very big chord in me. I came from an immigrant family, was raised on a small island off the coast of England-- there are so many membranes between me and what seems to be the place where clever and successful people belong. In England, particularly, where those striations of class are so keenly observed and marked, I felt like I was tattooed with all of the wrong identifying marks. That seemed to me a great key into Ripley, not the elements of him which are in some ways pathological and sociopathic. From the get-go, I was trying to investigate what the moral rhythm could be without disturbing the intention of the novel. It seemed to me that what was implicit in the morality of Ripley's story was that if you have in some ways annihilated yourself to get where you need to be, there is no reward. It's a very empty world. American film is preoccupied with public morality, with being "seen" to he punished when, actually, the important moral rhythms in life are spiritual, internal.

Q: So you're not comfortable thinking of Ripley as merely a gay or bisexual psycho killer?

A: No more than I was when reading a press release or something that called Ripley "the Hannibal Lecter of the '90s." It's all so reductive.

Q: How do you treat Ripley's sexuality in the film?

A: I'm very disturbed by the reductiveness of how films are described these days. The very first interview I did about the movie awhile ago, I was asked about "this gay psychopath" and I thought, if that's where we are, we're lost. It's neither about a gay man nor a psychopathic man. It's about that time in your life when teams are being picked in high school and the team captains go, "I'll take Freddie, I'll take John" and you're just standing there hurt at not being picked. I've neither dodged nor become preoccupied with the issue of Ripley's sexuality. He's looking for love wherever he can find it. He's intoxicated by other people, always looked up to somebody, male or female. In many ways, he's a virginal character. He hasn't had a relationship with anyone and so he's just obsessed by everything Dickie is because he represents all the things Ripley wishes he was. He wants to possess Dickie in every possible way and, in his mind, that means he's in love with him. It's actually the reverse of what love is.

Q: What sold you on Jude Law to play Dickie Greenleaf, the friend Ripley kills?

A: It was a process not unlike what Redford went through on Quiz Show, trying to find an actor who could essay the class issue. Redford chose Ralph Fiennes. Similarly, I'd met any number of really wonderful young American actors for Dickie, but I kept coming back to Jude, When I know who I want, I get obsessive and there's very little that will distract me. Jude will speak so loudly for himself in the film that the film is, rightly, delivered a terrible sideswipe when he leaves it. He makes such an indelible impression that he continues to be an object of speculation and nostalgia right up to the late frame.

Q: Was Gwyneth Paltrow your first choice to play Dickie's girlfriend?

A: Peculiarly, I felt I knew who "Marge Sherwood" was from the beginning. If Gwyneth had said no, I don't know what I would have done. As I was writing, I kept hearing her voice. I kept seeing her. The great thing is that there are some fantastic young American actors right now, but they're very contemporary actors. Because there's very little stage tradition here, they're not so used to the journeys actors make inside the clothes of another world, another time. Gwyneth seems to be able to evoke period so effortlessly, to take on not only the externals--the accents of other people, of other places--but also the characteristics. Her accent and carriage in Sliding Doors are a more extraordinary achievement than people realize. She also has a bearing of class and of privilege. She's such a "kissed" girl, you know? If I had to tell you one thing about the film, it is that it's about class. This is Gwyneth very much demonstrating that she's a character actor. It's not an ingenue part, not a romantic lead.

Q: What about Cate Blanchett as Ripley's friend?

A: Ralph Fiennes had called me from Australia to tell me how good she was in Oscar and Lucinda. I thought she'd been terrific in Paradise Road, We're with the same agency and I was saying to them, "I'd love somebody like Cate Blanchett in the part, so help me start thinking of people," when her agent said, "Why don't you ask her?" I couldn't imagine she'd play this part, but they told me she was a huge fan of Truly Madly Deeply. When I met her in London, I was so absolutely convinced that she was there under false pretenses that I didn't know how to broach the subject. I said, "I don't know if you know who else is in the movie," and she said, "Well, I know Gwyneth is playing Marge." I went back to the material and now Cate's is a very significant role in the movie. Cate is a musical instrument with absolutely boundless possibilities. She's like having an entire orchestra in from of you with all the instruments in one.

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