Ali Cook
Ali Cook returns to the big screen this week as he stars in new sci-fi action film The Anomaly: which is the latest offering from director/actor Noel Clarke.
We caught up with Cook to chat about the film, working with Clarke for the first time, and what lies ahead.
- You will be back on the big screen this summer in The Anomaly, so can you tell me a bit about the film?
The Anomaly is directed by Noel Clarke; he also plays the lead character Ryan. It is set in a dystopian future - around twenty years from now - and Ryan wakes up in the back of an armoured security van and in chains and handcuffs. He is just trying to figure whereabouts he is.
Every nine minutes and forty-seven seconds he loses his memory and wakes up somewhere completely different: usually a few days later.
Throughout the hold film, he is trying to find out why he is being held captive. Also, he is in this van with a young boy and he is trying to figure out who kidnapped the boy and why.
- You take on the role of Agent Travis in the film, so what was it about this character & Simon Lewis' script that drew you to the project?
To get to play a secret service agent is a little thing that everyone wants to do (laughs). Obviously, he is an American character, so to get the chance to play an American is always fun. There was quite a lot of action in this film.
He is a very stoic, hard-nosed, no nonsense character. Agent Travis and Agent Elkin, who is played by Luke Hemsworth, are really stern, no nonsense kind of guys.
They are basically trying to track down terrorists, so they are interrogating people, shooting people, waterboarding people. They are not nice (laughs).
Every time you see Agent Travis he is waterboarding people (laughs), I imagine him to be very down the line and stern. Noel was always saying 'stoic, stoic, stoic.'
I suppose he is not too unlike Agent Smith from The Matrix: maybe a slightly younger version of him. He is also handy as well and does quite a bit of fighting.
- The movie sees Noel Clarke star in and direct, so how did you find working with him? And what kind of director is he?
Noel is the hardest working man in show business, but I like people like that because they just get on with it. Noel was great.
With him being an actor, it makes him a lot better than most directors because he knows what an actor need to know in order to do the scene.
A lot of modern directors come from commercials now rather than the theatre, and so they are not always use to working with actors. Noel is an actor and so that makes that process a lot better.
Back in the day, people were one thing of another. Now, because it has got cheaper and cheaper to make films and short films, everyone does their own projects now. I just think that Noel is one of the first guys to latch on to that.
I make my own short films and all of my friends make their own short films as well. If you do enough of them, you just pick up all of the different skills: you make one, figure out why it wasn't that great, and take it from there. The next time you write something you improve it etc. etc.
Noel also has a great team behind him: his agent is a very good agent.
- Noel Clarke understands actors because he is one, so do you prefer working with directors that do have an acting background?
Yes, I do. I like someone who is precise and knows what they want. I you have precise directing then you get precise acting.
If the director doesn't know what he wants then no one has a chance: that is how I see it (laughs).
- How collaborative a process was it between the director and the actors as you were developing your characters?
It is not like a play where there is months of rehearsal. Normally, you go through a fairly rigorous audition process, and it is really at that point where you get a lot of the pointers and what they are after.
If you get through that process... I chatted to Noel quite a lot and had to send various tapes to him before it was really what he was after. Once you get to that point that is the rehearsal in a sense.
You are shooting the same scene over and over and over again from all different angles: you tend to start on the general view shot, and that is where everyone warms up.
It is also where you figure out if there are any problems. So, by the time you get the medium shots and the close ups, everyone knows exactly what they are doing.
- A great cast has been assembled as you star alongside Clarke, Ian Somerhalder, Luke Hemsworth, and Alexis Knapp, so how did you find working with them?
You do your bits with certain people: so I worked with Noel, Niall Greig Fulton and Luke. Everyone was just great, really nice guys.
- Away from The Anomaly, you have also completed work on Welcome to Karastan and Peterman, so can you tell me a bit about those projects?
I just saw Peterman for the first time the other day at a screening at the NFT. Peterman is a low budget drama by new director Mark Abraham and is a great little project.
Joe Cole takes on the lead role in the film - he is in Peaky Blinders and is a great young actor. It is a geezer film, in the sense that it is a gangster film, but it is more of a kitchen sink drama rather these ridiculous geezer films that you have seen over the years.
Instead, of it being stupid and heightened, it is very real: if someone is shot, it is very scary. It was much more like a play than a film.
The movie follows a load of gangsters who are unable to open a safe. In a bid to solve their problem, they kidnap a guy who can open the safe.
They take him to an abandoned house in the countryside, and he has two days to open this safe. The problem is, he is a heroin addict, and they don't have any heroin for him.
He is coming down whilst they are all falling out with each other over the contents of this safe. It becomes a horrible blood bath as time goes on.
- You kicked off your career as a magician on the likes of Monkey Magic, so how have you found the transition into acting and the big screen?
It is really very similar. A magician has to do lots of very precise skills - like holding a dove up your sleeve - while acting casually.
Many of these skills are transferable to acting: you have to hit your mark and it can't look like you are hitting your mark. You can't move your head sometimes because there is such a small depth of field on a camera you would be out of focus.
You are having to do exceptionally technical things that you have to remember, whilst making it look completely natural. Bizarrely, screen acting and being a magician are very similar skills: you get used to being able to do technical things without thinking about them.
- How much is acting where you wanted to be? How do you see your career panning out over the next couple of years?
I was in a comedy club originally when I was spotted by a student of Stephen Frears, who asked me to be in a short film. That is really what led me to do my first short film. I never intended to be an actor as I was happy performing on the comedy circuit.
I was very happy when I did magic shows on television because it was a huge thing that I had always wanted to do. It was something that came along the way, but I do really enjoy it. I would love to do a very serious play; I would love the challenge of it.
- Finally, what's next for you going through the second half of this year?
I am writing a lot at the moment. There are two films floating around, but there is nothing confirmed at the moment.
With film, when they do actually happen all of the planets have to align (laughs), then boom they are happening.
There are two films that have been bubbling away since January, and I just really hope they will happen this year. However, you don't know until they do happen, so many things can go wrong (laughs).
The Anomaly is released 4th July.