Timothy Spall paints his own Mr. Turner

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      TORONTO—Improvisation is generally thought to be a comedian’s game, as if the Seth Rogens and Will Ferrells of the day have taken up in a wooden treehouse and crudely thrown a sign on the door that reads “NO DRAMA GEEKZ ALLOWED”. Meanwhile, improvisation has also quietly been a trademark of Mike Leigh’s films since his start in 1971.

      The British filmmaker operates without a traditional screenplay, instead spending months with his actors, sometimes years, working on their characters and crafting their dialogue with the most skeletal of scripts. This style has spawned a slew of critical hits like Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies, and Naked. The films have been so highly acclaimed that Leigh’s lowest score on Rotten Tomatoes is 83 percent. Seriously.

      Along for the ride for about 34 years, give or take, is Timothy Spall. Known best to audiences as the ratlike Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter series, Spall has steadily been building a career as a character actor, with performances in films like The Damned United, The King’s Speech, and Still Crazy. But his creative partnership with Leigh has also landed the actor in five of the director’s 12 major theatrical features.

      Never, however, has the veteran actor been in the spotlight quite like he is with this year’s biopic Mr. Turner (opening Christmas Day). Already, Spall has taken home the best-actor prize at Cannes and early critics’ awards (including the New York Film Critics Circle) for his portrayal of the embattled but brilliant English painter J.M.W. Turner.

      “There was no doubt. I didn’t ever ask any other actor to do it,” said Leigh in an interview at a downtown hotel during the Toronto International Film Festival. “Tim is, first of all, the consummate character actor, and I’ve worked with him lots. Secondly, he’s a Londoner from a working-class background and I knew he could get that sort of grain that’s in Turner. And thirdly, Tim, he’s read his Dickens, he can do 19th century.”

      Spall’s Turner is a warthog of a man, grumbling and spitting as he paints brilliant and elegant pieces of art, a walking paradox of sorts. It’s a character that he’s completely immersed in, which makes sense, because he’s been preparing to play this role, off and on, for a very long time.

      “Well, I bumped into Mike about seven years ago in London and he said, ‘Don’t tell anyone but I’m thinking about making a film about Turner,’ ” said Spall in a separate interview. “Cut to four years later, and I was walking around London. I sat down in this pub and I looked up and I remembered seeing this plaque that said Turner was born here. And I phoned him up and he said, ‘Come in, what a coincidence.’ And it was 2010, and he said, ‘Don’t get excited, we’re talking about 2013, but we’re going to pull the trigger on this film and are you up for it?’ And I said, ‘Of course I am.’ And he goes, ‘The other thing is, would you please start learning how to paint now?’ Which I did, for two years.”

      Spall stressed that he has no problem with actors who don’t take that long to internalize a role, but that’s just never been him. “There’s a difference between having eight months or, in my case, three years to prepare, and having three minutes,” he said. “If you can turn it on without having thought about it, you feel a little bit like you’re cheating. There’s nothing wrong with people who do that. Some people can get by on their amazing charm, or some people just don’t do it and they have something the camera likes.”

      In the end, even though Spall is receiving so much credit for his performance, he throws it all back at Leigh and the way that the director works. “It’s glorious, astounding what he’s done,” said Spall. “Also, what’s great about it is a lot of the people—for instance, [costume designer] Jacqueline Durran, [makeup designer] Christine Blundell, Oscar winners—were assistants of the original people that he [Leigh] employed. So he’s very, very faithful to the people that he trusts. Everybody comes back. It’s a real—for want of a better term—massive spectacle. And it’s tough as fuck, it’s really hard work. It’s not a walk in the park.”

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Hazlit

      Dec 27, 2014 at 8:40am

      A perhaps minor point about the movie--I don't know Turner's biography well, and it seems obvious that he was working class, but I'm thrown off because back in 1799 Turner did a self-portrait--Google it to see, where he seems rather pleasant looking and quite elegantly dressed. Spall's Turner is so slovenly and so physically repulsive that it's hard to believe that the man of 1799 turned into someone at all like Spall's portrayal, even 30 or 50 years later. The other problem, is that however true to life, Spall's Turner isn't really isn't that moving. I'm willing to give Leigh credit for showing us the truth of Turner, but in this case truth turns out to be much less interesting than fiction. Spall's Turner is both a bit of a boor and a bit of a bore.