Set against the backdrop of Iraq's '80s- and '90s-era wars with Iran and the United States, Double features Cooper as both the sadistic Iraqi scion Uday Hussein and his war-veteran doppelganger Latif Yahia, whom Uday enlists ("kidnaps" might be the more apt term) as his bodyguard/decoy/"bullet catcher." Thus commences Latif's witness to some of the most depraved decadence and savagery of the 20th century -- a "gangster regime" led with black-eyed portent by Saddam Hussein and stirred mercilessly below the surface by his cigar-chomping, virgin-defiling, torture-deploying eldest son. Under direction from Lee Tamahori, Cooper plays both men as utterly separate beings melding into the same paranoid psyche; that they share a lover (played by Ludivine Sagnier) only compounds the intrigue and intensity of Latif's quest to break free from Uday's crazy-making grip.
The characters took their own toll on Cooper as well, belying the ease with which he seems to disappear into each. It is one -- or they are two, really -- of the year's best performances, and you'll be hearing about Devil's Double well into awards season. For now, though, Cooper is enjoying his ride to the top. Movieline met him en route -- literally, on the roof deck of the Soho House in Manhattan -- to talk it over.
How are you?
Really good! It's exciting. You never really have any idea what people will think, so...
Let's go back to the beginning at Sundance, which was quite the coming-out party for this film.
It really got people to see it. You never know how people will end up seeing these films. You work on them, and they're chaotic independent film sets. It's exhilarating, but it's never in your head how it's going to work out. You're just in the moment, trying to make it the best you possibly can.
What did you think the first time you saw it?
[Pauses] I was quite amazed by it, actually. I'd watched very few rushes, and again, it was so chaotic on set that you could hardly ever see playback. We had to try and see something, because we had to figure out where I stood in one of the scenes, and where I needed to react to and get eyelines. But seeing it all put together -- there was a lot of post -- it was quite incredible. What I feel most proud of is that I did what I set out to achieve, which is to make two distinctly different characters, so the audience was always aware of who they were watching. When people who've seen the film thought it had been two actors, that, for me, is the biggest compliment. To me, it means I met the goal I set out to achieve. To actually see it played out, though? It's very hard watching yourself under any circumstances, in any film. Seeing yourself twice is really disturbing. But I was very pleased that I could see who each one was.
What was your first awareness of the real Uday Hussein?
I think this is what excited me about the project in the very beginning: I remember, growing up as a kid, the war being very present in my life but feeling very removed from it -- it had very little effect. But I was scared by it, and I knew that the people around me had very little voice or say in it. Therefore you heard the rumor before the war that removing Saddam was a dangerous thing because this guy who was his son was even more dangerous. And I remember being scared by that as a youngster. Genuinely scared! "Someone worse than Saddam?" That's all I knew of him. And so to discover this story about this man's life -- this man who was thrown into this hellish world that he had no choice of getting out of? I found it completely mesmerizing and compelling. All these issues it brought up: disguise, deception, and the true horror of this man who was capable of carrying out these atrocities against fellow human beings. Which also raises the question of how on Earth I could ever play someone who I thought was such a monster.
We've heard all the comparisons to Scarface, at least when it comes to Uday's madness. But I'm particularly interested in how you modeled Latif, and in turn, Latif playing Uday.
Well, I met Latif. I know early on that we weren't making a detailed biographical account of him or his life, which gave me an immense amount of freedom. That's the most important thing, because I didn't feel responsible -- a responsibility to have studied him and watched him and gone into the Method space where I spend time with him and his family. That could have been the pace, and I'm sure I could have done that. But it didn't seem essential. It didn't seem like I need to pry too much with aspects of his recent past. There were horrific experiences that I didn't need to know about. So I just got a real basic understanding of him as a person -- what he stood for, and what he should stand for in the film, how different that is. Actually, it was about making distinct separations between the two.
So then I started thinking about very basic things that Lee helped me a lot with or the dialect coach helped me with. The way they speak was different; they have very different upbringings. Uday would speak very, very quickly. He was more educated; he could formulate sentences more quickly. On the other hand, Latif was a military man. Much more still, much more considered. Regarded everyone carefully. It was the complete opposite end of the way a man like Uday would behave, where he's completely in charge, and it doesn't matter what he says or what he does or how he's perceived. A vocal tone to separate them both. A physicality: There are images of Uday, who was very proud. He stood in a very particular way. He was a very menacing character. Latif I wanted small, focused and considered. Then there was the mindset of the men. I had to find something in Uday I could respond to. Not "like," because I despised him. Everything I found out about him I hated. But I had to understand the root cause of why he was who he was. It gets Freudian. You look at his parenting: He had deep love for his mother. He hated his father's treatment of his mother. He had this dictatorial father who didn't consider him capable of taking over his leadership. That's humiliating in that culture. He witnessed horrific scenes at a young age; at that age of 4, his father showed him videos of torture.
Is The Devil's Double ultimately kind of a backdoor way of making an Uday Hussein biopic? It's just called Latif's life story because Uday is so unlikable that no one could possibly care about him?
I suppose it is, yes. That's a clever way of looking at it. I think it's interesting for us to understand the inner workings of that gangster regime and how that family operated. And you're right: You can't just make it about him, because he's too vile.
Did the technical and technological frustrations of acting opposite yourself influence the performance as either man, both of whom have a certain level of volatility?
No, it didn't. That's a really good question, actually. Frustrating as it was in certain moments, I knew what we were doing. I knew how difficult it was. Yes, things couldn't be achieved quickly. Yes, I was exhausted all the time. But I was so passionate about making it, and I was so involved with the creative input in a way I never had been before on a film set. It was such a collaboration of minds, though no one really understood what we were dealing with. It should have been a much bigger budget. There was one guy there operating our motion control camera. It's a big piece of equipment -- it's a complicated piece of equipment. And it didn't work! We couldn't get playback quick enough. So yeah, it was frustrating, but I didn't allow that in because it would be the wrong sensibility. His anger is fueled by deep-rooted, extreme mental issues. We were constantly trying to come up with new ways to understand what we embarking upon.
I much preferred doing the scenes without somebody else trying to do the other lines. They were asked to do it very neutrally, but that wasn't helpful. It also wasn't helpful with [a double] impersonating the scene the way I'd just done it. So I'd have to try to remember. It was difficult because I didn't have a sense as Uday of what my performance as Latif was going to be and how it would change the dynamics of a scene. The dynamics of a scene change completely if you're working with another actor.
I would think that singularity adds to the character as well, just because he's so imperious.
It does. Yeah. It would have been impossible if I'd had to play -- and sometimes this was the case -- Latif before Uday. You really didn't know what he was going to do. But you're completely right: He takes nothing in.
How fun is it to play a guy like Uday? As despicable as he is, everyone loves playing a villain.
It's incredible.
Do you feel like you're allowed to acknowledge that, considering the nature and history of the character?
I think I can, yes. It depends on how you say it. I never forgot how much I despised him and how disgusting he was. It doesn't make it any less exhilarating to play him as a character -- to have that freedom and that ability to have no restrictions. He had no restrictions, so therefore, I'd say, "This is what I've come up with. If it's too much, let's turn it down." But ultimately what I learned about him is that nothing is too much, so I could just be ferocious.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but you've spent the last few years playing characters who occupy various spots on the spectrum of vanity: Entitled thief in An Education. Smug rock star in Tamara Drewe. Swaggering corporate baron in Captain America. Uday freaking Hussein!
A hideous resume!
Not to conflate any of them, either, but what is it about this character element--
They're not very likable?
Well, Howard Stark is a nice enough guy.
Look, it's much more fun. They've got more depth to them. You play a likable guy -- the boyfriend, the romantic lead... It's enough to make me want to eat my toes. Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray. I am often fascinated by watching people like that. I hope you're not assuming it's got any of my own character traits in common.
Not at all. I just met you.
It might be how other people perceive me, perhaps. I hope I'm not like any of those. But it's fun to have those characters and try and make people have a fondness for them. That's what's fun. And [actors] have all sorts of guises and give off totally different aspects of a personality that's not true to them. And with almost all those people you just mentioned, I think there's something more challenging about making them -- in some way -- believable. That rock star was so verging on caricature, but they exist. They're people I know! They exist -- people who are that full of themselves and don't think anything exists beyond their world or their band. I don't know. Those are just the roles that have come my way, more than anything.
Finally: That poster. Did they actually paint you gold, or...
No!
What do you think of it?
I was quite shocked by it. I had very little in the way of input. But it's just creative genius. It says an awful lot about the film without any words. It says: Opulence. Danger. Gangster. It kind of sums the film up in a very clever way that posters rarely do.
But you're disguised -- concealed, for all intents and purposes, in this opulence, in this decadence. Does that undermine the sense of character -- or characters -- that runs so deep through The Devil's Double?
It's impossible. How would you do that?
I don't know how you'd play up the character angle, or if you'd even want to. I guess that's what I'm asking.
It's interesting. Well, let's think of what else it could be. Seeing them both on the poster? What message does that then send across. Without seeing them physically move and speak and hear, you'd probably just look at the poster and say, "Oh, they're just the same bloke." It might not be that effective. I'm just saying. I'm not a poster designer. I'm sure they tried it. My image of the poster -- which you always do in your head when you're making a film -- was... I don't know. You come up with all sort of things. It was them looking at each other, I suppose. But then it's still the same guy. In a still shot, it might not be as effective.
"Dominic Cooper is Latif Yahia is Uday Hussein in... The Devil's Double."
Yeah! [Shakes head] No.
The Devil's Double opens today in limited release, with added cities to come throughout August. Read Movieline's review here.
[Top photo: WireImage]