Inception - Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy interview

CILLIAN Murphy and Ken Watanabe talk about getting to grips with the mind-bending nature of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, and working with him for a second and third time. They were speaking at the London press conference for the film, ahead of the world premiere…

Q When you first read it, did you understand it?

Cillian Murphy: I’d agree with what everybody said. The movie is so visual that when you read that on the page it’s quite difficult to get your head around it. Once you understand the rules of it, they’re actually quite simple and they’re tools to understand the rest of the script and once we had that it was all very clear really.

Q. And Ken?

Ken Watanabe: Yeah, when I read the script it was so confusing I had to go back and read it again… three times! It was so complicated, and there were so many types of different situations that I appear in. So, what and where is my character? He’s a tourist… But when I started shooting I realised the huge scale of the story, so I needed to prepare for that as well. I had to bring a lot of luggage to take to six countries. But I really enjoyed the shooting of the film. Chris doesn’t want to use green screen, so he built up the whole sets. I was always surprised by what he did.

Q. This movie is about dreams, so what are you professional and personal dreams?

Cillian Murphy: The professional dream? Well, they tend to be about anxiety generally. There’s an anxiety dream that I think actors tend to dream a lot where you’re sort of pushed on stage in a play that you have not rehearsed, or know the lines for before. But everyone’s telling you ‘you’re fine, you’re going to be great’ [laughs]. But there’s a thousand people right in front of you, so you wake up sweating. As for the personal one, I don’t know… they’re personal I guess?

Q. What is it about Chris’s work that makes you want to work with him again?

Cillian Murphy: I think if you ask any actor working today if they want to be in a Chris Nolan film they’ll just drop everything and go for it straight away. So, it’s been a great privilege to work with him a couple of times. I don’t want to embarrass the man but he has so many talents wrapped up in one – to be able to do movies of this scale that have that emotion and to be able to be such a brilliant writer.

The thing about working on Chris’s set is it feels really intimate, it doesn’t feel like a big huge movie and you feel really secure and safe and able to experiment and he really makes time for all the performers. He allows you to find stuff and for the seed to grow organically. There couldn’t be a more conducive set to try and do your best work.

Ken Watanabe: Well, we worked together before on Batman Begins, but it was for a really short time… 10 days, I think. But he knew my skill as an actor and so called me again. It was my first experience of working with the same director I’ve worked with before. He’s one of the biggest directors and one of the most intelligent directors in the business. I had no reason to decline his offer.