With awards season in full swing, Movieline has launched a new recurring feature called "For Your Reconsideration," where we speak to the talented people whose contributions to the year in film are worthy of a second look. This week: Ben Foster from The Messenger.
For years, directors have counted on Ben Foster to add verve and nerve to a host of supporting parts in films like 3:10 to Yuma, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Alpha Dog, but Oren Moverman's The Messenger affords him a different opportunity: the chance to harness all of his skill and become a leading man. As Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, Foster expertly illustrates a man who's unmoored upon his return from the war, yet pulled into the gravity of two very different people: his new partner in a casualty notification unit (Woody Harrelson), and a young widow (Samantha Morton) who Will becomes consumed with after being forced to give her the bad news.
Foster had some bad news of his own to report when he called me last week to discuss the role. Once we'd gotten past that, the 29-year-old actor opened up about the effect of playing so many emotional parts, the way he reconciles his tattoos with his character, and how his feelings on the war are forever changed.
Hey, Ben.
Hey, Kyle. I'm just leaving a hospital and getting into a cab. Excuse me if I start muttering to a cab driver in just a second.
Were you shooting in a hospital?
No, I was injured in a stunt and came in for an MRI. This is often how we spend our days in movieland!
Have you injured yourself doing a stunt before?
Yeah.
So this is old hat for you.
[Laughing] The hat is done! I injured myself in the boot camp for Black Hawk Down. On the last day, I tore my abductor muscle in three places, then got to set and I couldn't do it. I lost a job in Morocco. On this particular job, I'm almost done, so I'm not losing any jobs from me being too physical.
You wouldn't normally think of acting as a profession where you need to get a lot of MRIs, but I guess you never know.
You never know. Work hazards, man!
Anyway, The Messenger. You know, when your character is first assigned to be a part of this casualty notification unit, he's not looking forward to it, he knows how emotionally taxing it will be. Obviously, it was going to be taxing for you as an actor to play out those scenes, too. Did you have any similar reservations that the part would take a lot out of you?
I wouldn't say they were "reservations" necessarily. It's what we're interested in as actors -- we're interested in the qualities of experience, and some of those experiences are difficult, particularly in dramas when conflict is the engine. I was excited to ask these questions with these people. How do we really deal with grief in our own lives? More importantly, when we have to deliver this news to strangers and we haven't dealt with the traumas of our own lives, we get sick. The hope is that it would be a cathartic experience.
Do you find that to be the case, that when you finish shooting a film like this, you feel like you've satisfied something?
To lesser or more degrees. When it's the opportunity to ask challenging questions, rather than prove a point, there can be healing in life. Sometimes, the time frame of the picture doesn't allow for a complete flushing, but that's why, ideally, you take time off after and reevaluate and consider and rest.
I just think it's interesting that most people try to keep their emotions on an even keel, yet actors seek out roles that put them through the wringer. How does it shape a person to pursue the opportunity to go through these intensely emotional experiences?
It must shape us, I imagine. Just being a person living in the big bad world, all experiences shape us -- it depends on how available we allow ourselves to be to the experience. I'm sure there's some level of masochism involved, but I'd like to take a more positive approach, which is just that we have an interest in people who experience these things and a great love for people in all of our clumsiness and good intentions to connect. There's nothing more rewarding than going to those scary places and sitting with them. At the end of the day, I didn't get blown up by an I.E.D.; I'm trying to blur the lines of the day and do the homework and allow myself to experience that it's true at the moment, but that my intention is in service of the experience, particularly with this project. It's in service of the people we're playing, not in service of showing you how emotionally wounded or charming or frightening we are. That was certainly the case on both sides of The Messenger: it was a humble group of people coming in.
What was it like to shoot in so many long takes?
The current of filmmaking is cut, cut, cut, cut. There has to be some level of controlled schizophrenia to experience something and shut it down and start it back up again. With longer takes, it just allows you to fall into the experience of it and get lost -- there's less in your way of continuing to channel.
I know that the actual notifications were unrehearsed -- how was that done technically?
Well, the script was the script, and that was written by Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, who directed the picture. With Oren, we knew the corners we were gonna play in, we knew what was on the page, but we were encouraged to go off book. He would speak with us separately and he would speak to the other players separately, and he would clear the set so we could shoot in 360 degrees. The people we were notifying, they hadn't met us, and it just created this really intimate frequency on set where we had to listen to each other. We couldn't act at each other, we had to share space and whatever happened in that space, we were gonna be together. The structure of the scene was in place, and the words were so beautiful as written, but there were circumstances, physical actions, and lovely accidents that were surprises for me.
Of course, you had to have a lot of trust in Oren.
Oren is a great director, certainly one of the most intelligent, sensitive, and insightful human beings I've ever met. He is going to show himself to be one of the great filmmakers. The experience, I imagine, is what it must have been like to work with Hal Ashby at the beginning of his career. There's such a confidence and love for his characters an the actors playing them. He's an extraordinary director, and not just an actor's director -- his understanding of the craft and his courage to play with it and push it and respect the emotions of the actors, it's unlike anything I've ever experienced.
How did you view the soldiers before you made the film?
I suppose I viewed them as icons, as these brave men and women on the level of myth. No one directly in my family served -- I have a very close friend who was a four-year P.O.W. in Vietnam, but no one who served in these last two wars. They just seemed like unbelievably brave, but I also associated the politics with them and felt conflicted and distanced, I suppose. It gives me chills now when I see someone in uniform in the airport or in the street. I just want to bow down to them. They're human beings first and foremost, and I suppose I didn't think of that at first, I thought of them as numbers, as variables in this war.
So many of them are so young.
Oh, they're kids. They enlist for so many different reasons, and I suppose I didn't think about it, you know? I just didn't understand. The awareness that we need to take much better care of the soldiers, and this silly thing we tell ourselves about how long the war is going to last...in my opinion, it's going to be one of the great failures of our country if we don't step up and take better care of our returning soldiers. We could win the war and lose, because they're coming back and they're gonna need a lot of love.
Obviously, you really immerse yourself in a character, and yet many of the tattoos in the movie are your own. I'm curious: Do you rationalize those through your character, and try to see him getting those same tattoos through his point-of-view? How does that work?
If they suit the physicality of the character, whatever works. I don't operate with a single thought. If they suit the picture, some will stay in, some will disappear, and new ones will appear. It's sort of what feels right. [Laughs] Yeah.
I always wonder about actors who get tattoos, since you're asked to play so many different roles. Is it about putting something permanent on yourself in a profession where you're so often inhabiting someone else temporarily?
It's hard to say, growing up in a tattoo culture. When I see somebody who doesn't have ink, I'm always excited for them. At the same time, I don't regret this body mapping. We build our own narratives, and it's a permanent expression of where we've been and where we're going. They're little talismans of our experiences. In terms of what works for a role, that's something you figure out role to role. They can go away just like that.
So this film that sent you to the hospital is Simon West's The Mechanic, right? Tell me about that.
It's a remake of this assassin picture from the 70s: this assassin has to kill his boss, a father figure, and there's guilt and remorse. He sort of adopts his mentor's son, who doesn't know his father has been murdered, and he trains him in the art of the hit.
What I like about you, Ben, is that your work in big studio movies like 3:10 to Yuma is just as interesting as your work in indies. You don't just coast through it.
Well, thanks. You've got to love the character. I've never approached something as strictly a paycheck, nor am I pretentious enough to believe that you can only explore the deepest corners of your soul and survive. I'm a movie fan, and I like going to the pictures. [Pause] I love and hate what I do.
You would say that on your way home from the hospital.
[Laughs] Yeah, well. It's all in fun.