The Verge: Édgar Ramírez Brings the Jackal to Life in Carlos

That said, how much do you really want or need to know about Carlos when approaching him on this scale? How much freedom do you want to inform him yourself?

Actually, I was discovering things about Carlos as I was portraying Carlos.

Really? Like emotional things?

Yeah. It's not that I knew everything about Carlos, and then I portrayed whatever preconceived ideas I had. I think it was the same way for Olivier. For some reason we were not sure -- we just did. It was like a soccer game. Of course I did my homework; it was actually kind of academic in comparison to other experiences. I learned and tried to read about as much political history as possible in order to understand the time the characters lived in. I watched and I read as much documentation as was available on Carlos to understand the media perception around this character. I tried to have interviews with people who were close with him -- including his family -- to get a grasp of that input and a grasp of that dimension. Then I poured all of that into the character Olivier had already written, full of complexity and contradictions, and just went, "Go."

Didn't Carlos himself disavow the project?

Yeah, he wasn't pleased. He wasn't pleased about the whole project -- people making a movie about him. Which I can't blame him for. I can understand that. He's entitled to an opinion; he's entitled to argue against it.

It's interesting to hear you say you understand that. If he views the project with suspicion, does that increase the pressure to do it "right"? Or does it affect you at all?

Absolutely not. No. Because his life -- or what could have been his life, because in the end we'll never know the real and total truth -- and the events that might have happened are public knowledge. They're our history. They're there. It's available. It's on the Internet, it's in the newspapers of the time. It's just there. And this movie is based on very accurate research, but also on speculation and invention and fiction. It's not a biography.

Going through his life during your research, what was the one scene or situation you most looked forward to portraying?

That's interesting. [Long pause] I haven't thought about that. [Pause] By telling you this, I don't want to be unfair to other moments. It's hard.

You're entitled to a favorite!

It's not a favorite! There are so many favorites, but I can't get into details with all of them. I think that when he joins the Palestinian movement -- the PFLP -- that was really interesting. Not only was it pivotal to tell the story, but it also happened in the country where it happened in reality. It happened in the neighborhood where that really took place. And not only that, but the actor who was playing [PFLP radical Wadie Haddad] was a guy who knew Wadie Haddad, and who had fully lived the struggle of that time. We were surrounded by them. We could even see the holes of bullets in the building where we were doing that [scene]. Apparently there was a bombing going on in Beirut on the exact day. That kind of stuff.

That's intense.

It's intense! Or the minutes prior to the OPEC General Conference. It took place in Vienna, and we were actually in Vienna. So we would probably take the same streetcar these guys took. Actually, the meeting prior -- the scene where he's planning all the details? -- that happened at the Intercontinental in Vienna, which was the actual hotel where that meeting took place. The party where he celebrates his 30th birthday? There were waiters in Hungary -- in Budapest -- who waited on his party. The party took place in the exact spot within that hotel. So... you know? You can imagine. I knew we were going to go to those places, so I just thought, "Wow."

Filmmaking is exhausting by any standard, but when you're traveling to all these locations and doing the kind of globetrotting you guys were doing, how does jet lag impact you?

You go beyond jet lag. You live in another state beyond jet lag. Actually, the extraordinary state would be the non-jet-lagged state. You just live on jet lag.

How does it affect psychology?

It's exhausting. But it's part of the job.

You've been acting for a while, obviously, but I think it's fair to call this a professional milestone.

Oh, definitely. Definitely.

How do you follow something like Carlos?

I have no idea. No idea. I'm excited, though. I'm excited about what might come my way.

Is this your role of a lifetime?

It's definitely an amazing experience for me. In all ways -- professionally, personally. I cannot deny the impact that this movie has had on my life. I lived three months in the Middle East, just to begin with. The amount of information and understanding transformed all of us. You're there. Although you're shooting a movie, you're not indifferent to what's going on around you. You take a lot of input and information, and it helps you to understand the world better -- to deal better with the world. Shooting a movie in nine countries and five languages in a year was an experience that has the ability to transform everybody's life.

[Top photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images]

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