Jim Sturgess Q&A

16 September 2009

It was movie Across the Universe in 2007 that was to be the breakout role for British actor Jim Sturgess.

Since then he has starred in the likes of The Other Boleyn Girl and gambling drama 21. But his latest movie Fifty Dead men Walking sees him star as as Martin McGartland, an informant within the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

How did Kari develop the idea for the film and how long has it been in the making?

I just got a call saying 'did I want to read this script' then I went and met Kari and it all happened really quickly and I think I met Kari in a week or so and I was flying off to Belfast.

When you read the script and went off to do the dreaded research work, did you find in your own research work a kind of divergence at all between the scripts other aspects of the story and did that ever concern you at all?

Well I mean, all the time we were being fed all this information so the minute we got into Belfast and you start speaking to the people this actually happened to and all these news stories would arise and all these great stories from the pubs and just chatting to the local people and the people that were looking after us and er yeah, Kari would come and all the time 'I'm gonna re-write this scene because I heard this great story the other day and we've gotta put it in the film' so its basis was Martin McGartland story but it really became the stories from the streets we were a part of while we were there and that was exciting and it was changing and developing all the time up until days before we would shoot the scene

As a whole it was very positive, there was mixed feelings in certain areas depending on where we were filming, certain areas you were film and you would realise there were certain members of the crew that were missing that couldn't go to that particular area, or didn't want to go to that particular area for various reasons, but as a whole we filmed around the same street where it all took place and we'd re-visit a lot of the streets and a lot of the areas time and time again and we got to know the people of the community really well to the point where if I had a quick costume change we'd knock on their door and they'd invite us in, make me a quick cup of tea and a biscuit and then send me back out to start filming again, so it was that when I was there that blew me away about Belfast, more than anything was its sense of community and they all sort of look after each other, but then there were times when I know that there was a bit of trouble or a bit worried about me in certain situations because it was very raw for some of these people but as a whole we were pretty well looked after by these people and the people of Belfast.

Can you give us some clues how you found the West Belfast accent?

We were just kind of thrown in at the deep end really, I remember driving around with Kari very early on in various areas of Belfast and she kind of kicked me out of the car and said 'go on go and try your accent in that part', it was sink or swim so we just integrated with people as much as possible, that was my take on it and just, you know, and make the point of the minute I arrived I would hold on to it as much as possible and when you first start your mouth feels about this big and as the more whiskey you drink and as the time goes past you start making it feel as though its your own accent and me an Kevin did things like, we joined a local boxing club and we sort of stayed in, not so much as in character but we sort of stayed in voice, you know we sort of came with the bravado of Martin and Sean rather than Jim and Kevin and we just got really good friends with a lot of people from the area and we'd just go out to the pubs and we'd go to house parties and we'd go and feel a part of the city and become a product of our environment and the more you do it the easier and the more believable it becomes.

That must have become more of a balancing act with the people that you were learning off and not feel that they were being used but felt that they were actually helping you in the process. That must have been difficult at first, not to mimic them?

A lot of people didn't know that I was putting it on, I guess most people just believed that that was how I spoke and then you'd have that terrible feeling of 'where are you from?' ...erm...that place round the corner.

You were playing a real person, was it perhaps a frustration that you did talk to the person involved in terms of your character?

I didn't speak to mine, and I guess you kind of approach it the same way whether he's fictional or whether he's real, you're just trying to being that character from the page you're trying to bring him to life and make him real how you perceive it I guess, I was fortunate I didn't feel weighted that I had to copy him or mimick him or be like him or use his mannerisms because thankfully for me he was a kind of hidden character and no one really knows exactly what he's like so it wasn't like playing an iconic figure where you really had to get his characteristics down so it was liberating in that sense but yeah it was more historian his situation I was focussed on rather than what he was like as a person.

I wonder what Martin McGartland would make of this movie if he saw it?

He has seen it yes, I believe he likes it. There were, for him he's so close to it and of course there were scenes in the film which didn't happen to him specifically and I think once it was explained why those things were necessary within the film to help tell his story, when you have two hours to tell a cinematic version of the truth and I think once he understood, I believe the scene that he was slightly concerned about was the torture scene because he said 'I was never involved in something like that' but it was really important to show a scene like that because those scenes really happened, things like that really did happen.

But it just helps the audience and it helps everyone understand how dangerous it was for him and how brave and how difficult circumstances were for him so once he understood these little bits that came into the film that may not have been specifically part of his life.

Do you think a film like this will help the peace process?

It's a story about conflict in any scenario.

You presumably see it beyond a specifically dated story and one that speaks in a bigger way or do you think it is specific?

No to me it illustrates in a time of conflict its not just black and its not just right and wrong, when I was younger and growing up in England and given imagery of the IRA and what that stood for it was just presented to me as thuggish terrorism until I got to Belfast and I met some people from the IRA and they were some of the nicest, infectious people I’ve ever met so then I was confused and I was just 'how is this possible'?

That really just helped with my struggle in the film because if I could feel so confused and so pulled by these personalities and these great characters that I was meeting while I was there then how would Martin have felt growing up with these people and that strong sense of community that he was having to go against in that way so it's just about the mass grey area that lies in between the black and white of any conflict really.

When you were shooting in Belfast did you get stories you didn't read in your script about Martin McGartland, were your ears bent on the matter?

We were filming in a predominantly Republic, Catholic area so he wasn't looked upon as a hero for a lot of those people but I was told that I was too good looking to play a tout.

Was the love scene a bit of light relief?

It was very romantic, another classic Kari moment. Originally this scene was meant to be in the back of a car but she goes 'no Jim I've got this great idea we're going to do it on the top of the Europa Hotel in the pissing rain'.