As well as trying to perfect my fathering skills, this year has very much been about finding good work.
This is going to be a quick entry I’m afraid and will cover the whole year.
2017 started off by arriving back to Europe after our lovely time over Christmas in Australia. We came back to Amsterdam in February and I very quickly started shooting Catcher was a spyin Prague with the hilarious Pauls - Rudd and Giamatti. Wow, those guys are brilliant. I don’t think I stopped laughing for the whole 3 weeks.
It’s a fascinating true story about Mo Berg, the pro baseball player who turned secret agent and goes deep under cover into the occupied areas of WW2 with his high intelligence and language skills to uncover the details of Hitler’s Nuclear program.
I then quickly headed over to LA in April to work with Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver on Simon Kaiser’s Spinning Man, a thriller about a school teacher who, may or may not be guilty of the abduction of one of his students.
ThenWhen We Rise, the show I’d done for ABC last year about the gay rights movement was invited to the San Francisco Mardi Gras. We went and it was incredible. There were many locals who’d lived through that period and so it was very emotional, not only for us to be telling that story but for them to have us back there to share their stories directly. It was a very moving experience.
In July I did some brief work on Domino, the Brian De Palma film Carice was doing about a pair of cops trying to uncover a terrorist plot. I think, as I was going to be in Spain and Copenhagen looking after Monte anyway they thought I may as well jump on board. I was very happy to work with Brian of course. I’ve been a huge fan since Scarface.
I very quickly followed that up in August with a few weeks in England on Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scotsplaying Sir William Cecil opposite Margot Robbie. She is one talented lady. I think this film will be amazing. Playing Mary is Saoirse Ronan, who is also utterly brilliant, as we know. Sadly we had no scenes together but it was lovely to catch up after 11 years since our time on Death Defying Actsin 2006. It did mean however I missed Monte’s 1stbirthday. Is that bad??
Then I got to delve in to the Netflix world of The Innocentsin Norway and London. This really is going to be fantastic! It follows a young couple who discover that the girl, ‘June’ possesses a genetic malfunction that means she and it’s other victims (all women) transform into those around them during any dangerous or stressful situation. Treated all very real and not Sci fi it is incredibly disturbing and unusual. I play Dr Halvorson, who’s trying to understand these women and their condition.
I primarily worked opposite a couple of wonderful Scandinavian actress’ – Laura Birn and Ingunn Beate Øyen, who were spectacular. It should be out in August 2018.
Then I headed back to Oz late November to start on Series Two of Jack Irish, which is always a treat.
So a pretty grueling year work wise, but fun at least and really varied. I did get to work with some wonderful people and thankfully Facetime meant Monte and I could be in touch with each other every day. I certainly don’t want him thinking I live inside a computer of phone screen though.
Hope your year was exciting and full of love…….
XX Guy