"Blink and you'll miss me," said Matthew Goode, describing his ill-fated, longtime partner of Colin Firth's devastated college professor in A Single Man. On the one hand, Goode does occupy a minimum of screen time in Tom Ford's directorial debut, a stirring '60s-set drama currently in the awards-season hunt. On the other, the striking, versatile 31-year-old Brit is pretty hard to miss in any of his films, from a romantic lead in Chasing Liberty to an ambitious Midwestern cutthroat in The Lookout to the social-climbing confidante of Brideshead Revisited. Single Man is Goode's return to indies after his bewigged antiheroics as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias in last spring's Watchmen; he'll be back to the majors next year opposite Amy Adams in Leap Year. He spoke recently to Movieline about discovering A Single Man for himself, what scared him about Tom Ford, and how a small part can sometimes make all the difference.
[Minor spoilers follow]
What was your familiarity with Christopher Isherwood's source novel?
I've been aware of Isherwood -- I remember The Berlin Stories, which obviously went into the movie Cabaret. But I didn't know this particular novel. The screenplay itself is fairly different from the novel, because the novel is told from first-person throughout. I read it, and I didn't have a tremendous amount of time from when Tom offered me the part to going to L.A. and starting filming. You can only really work with the script. And considering that I die on page one, you just kind of think, "Oh, crikey. There you go." But I really loved it. I really enjoyed what Tom had done, and I think one of the reasons I was quite honored to be in it was because there's a huge amount of Tom and his own personal life in the movie. Like the [attempted] suicide? I think the use of a sleeping bag was his brother-in-law, unfortunately. And the relationship that Tom has with [his partner] Richard [Buckley] in real-life sort of mirrors the love of Jim and George. In essence, the movie is kind of a love poem to Richard. So with all of those criteria, I couldn't wait to start.
Did you know Tom at all?
No, we'd never met. It was just one of those things. He said, "I'd like to meet you." So we went and met at Claridges, and I was fairly nervous. He's quite famous. [Laughs] And we sat down, and he's just the most gorgeous man in every which way. He really is. He's far too good-looking for his own good, as far as I'm concerned. But he spoke incredibly passionately about it, and he said, "Look, I can write you another scene if you want." But I didn't think that was necessary; most of my scenes aren't particularly dramatic. He did say that Jim is quite central to the story even when he's not on-screen, because he's talked about and he's the catalyst for George to want to end his life. He doesn't think he can go on without him anymore. When you look at the scenes I have on paper, nothing jumps out. They seem quite banal. But actually there is a beauty in the banality of George's remembrances of Jim. It's not some sort of sweaty clinch on a beach -- which would have been fine.
When you have that little time in the script or on screen, what does that change in your approach to the character -- making every second count?
There's not really much you can do. You can't really push. "I know what I'm going to do! I'm going to reveal a rabbit from a hat in this scene. What did you think, Tom?" We discussed it, and we didn't even have enough time. The whole film was shot in 21 days, which is rather extraordinary. Colin had to work extremely hard. So we just went with complete simplicity. That's what Tom wanted, really, and I'd like to think I'm a director's actor.
How is he with actors?
Well, I remember the first scene we did, in the desert. There are a couple minutes of dialogue and various camera movements. It felt like quite long takes. But certainly the first take, we did it and Tom came up and said, "Remember, guys, to keep your chins up. Nobody likes to see a big double [chin] on a screen 50 feet high." And I was like, "That's it?? That's all you're going to give me?" And he said, "Yeah, it is. I love everything you're doing. Don't change it. Just keep your chin up." I think in the beginning we thought, "Christ, he's just going to be solely involved with the aesthetic." Which we hoped that it wasn't going to be. Obviously, he comes from fashion, and we thought, "Ah, that's all we're going to get?" But he just comes across with these very simple actions that he wants you to do. He keeps it very, very simple and let's us get on with it. He delivers a sort of mission statement and then gets out of your way while you do your work.
Did you ever feel like you were working with a "first-time director"?
No, not at all. I've worked with directors who are prepared, but rarely to the level that Tom is prepared. And I think that's because he had to be that prepared because we had such a short amount of time. But what also makes him really great is that we never felt harried or rushed. It seemed like we had an adequate amount. He's just a very, very eloquent, intelligent and gentle person n the set. I'm sure there were times he was quite stressed, but he never showed it. He just sat there, impeccable, in a three-piece suit.
When you say, "Colin had to work extremely hard," can you elaborate a little more on observing that? How did he change and/or evolve?
I wasn't on set every day, but I'd go back to the hotel and see Colin in the evenings and he'd be exhausted. Obviously I saw some of the other scenes he shot. But look: I've loved Colin for a long time -- ever since Another Country -- and I think he's an extraordinarily subtle actor. And I don't think he's had an opportunity to shine in a film, or been central to a film, for quite a long time. And when I read this script, I thought, "Surely, he's just going to knock this out of the park." It's extremely intelligent, which Colin is in real life. We really got on, too. We met on the plane, and the minute we got off the plane we had to go to the hotel and have a spray-tan together in Colin's bathroom. So I'm standing in only my pants, standing there for 45 minutes, drinking a couple of vodkas with Col. I can't think of a better way to get to know an actor -- it was embarrassing at the beginning, and by the end we really didn't notice.
Also, he obviously didn't have to do an accent. Which I know he can do, for sure; I've heard him do it when he's telling jokes, and he's spot-on American. But I think that allowed him to get even closer. An accent can hinder you when you're trying to get closer to the emotion of the part. When he picks up the phone and is told about Jim's death, that's one of the finest pieces of acting I've seen on film in a really long time. Super subtlety, and there's not a moment that goes past that you're not 100 percent convinced that this guy's world has been ripped apart.
You've played several Americans yourself over the years. How has that accent affected your relationship with those characters?
Well, there's a different rhythm. That's what you're always worried about when you're playing someone American against someone who's English: You're worried you're going to lapse into the same rhythm and not be able to keep your accent going. That's one of the nice thing that's happened to me so far in my career; you rehearse a lot more how you'll say [lines]. It doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes there are moments when you'll stop thinking about the accent, and you'll just do it and something new comes out of it. Or you're really listening and responding to the other person because they changed the way they say it. You automatically go into saying yours differently to keep up the equation or the balance of it all. I didn't really get a coach again, except for a little bit on my own back in London. I'd done it in The Lookout, but what was good about The Lookout for me was that I had long scenes. There was one particular scene that was just me talking for 12 minutes nonstop. When you have large chunks of text, that really helps keep you in the accent. Whereas when you have one line here or one line there, it makes me nervous. But as I say, it all worked out quite nicely here.
With the gay-marriage battles going on around the country, to what degree does A Single Man feel like a piece of political activism?
It definitely wasn't intended to be. Tom read the book when he was younger, and it really struck home with him. Then he met Isherwood and [the author's longtime partner] Don Bachardy. He was looking to do his first feature about 20 years after he read the book, and he came across A Single Man again and thought, "Oh, well, that would be a really beautiful film to make." If you ask him, he'll say no -- it's not because it's gay. It's because of the tones and because of his relationship with Richard; there's a mirroring of his own life, and he had a story to tell. He just wanted audiences to watch this film about love and loss. It's certainly not a political movie about how hard it still is to be gay. The Prop 8 thing was an irony that just came up: We'd come a long way, but we haven't come far enough.