Mark Rylance says he never imagined that he would be in a movie like The BFG.
Mark Rylance
Rylance's star has rocketed in the last eighteen months - thanks to an Oscar-winning performance in Bridge of Spies.
Now Rylance is teaming with Steven Spielberg again for The BFG and they are going to work together on Ready Player One.
Rylance was best known for his theatre work and says all this has taken him a little by surprise.
Speaking to Collider about the new direction of his career, the actor said: "No, I didn't imagine I would be in films, at all. I'd made a lot of films in England and in Europe, but I didn't picture myself being in films like this. I certainly never pictured myself even attending the Academy Awards, much less winning at 56.
"I was very happily settled into a theatre career. I did more than that, but I let all of my agents and people go. I said, 'I don't want to be promoted in film anymore. I have enough to do in the theatre, so I'm just going to carry on.' And then, all of this started to happen. It was Sean Penn first, really."
The BFG will be Rylance's second collaboration with Spielberg and the British actor will take on the title role in the film, which is a mixture of live-action and special effects.
Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Rebecca Hall, and Bill Hader are some of the other names on board while Melissa Mathison - who penned ET - has written the screenplay.
The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is set to be one of the biggest films of the summer.
As for Rylance, he has been filming Dunkirk with director Christopher Nolan - which also stars Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Kenneth Branagh - and is set to take on the role of James Donovan Halliday in Ready Player One.
The movie is based on the book of the same name by Ernest Cline and is set for a 2018 release.
The BFG is released 22nd July.
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