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Even Andrew Scott was startled by his vulnerability in ‘All of Us Strangers’

By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) ā€” On a recent winter day in New York when the sun was shining, Andrew Scott rushed into a coffee shop between recording sessions for an upcoming series.

ā€œIā€™m scheduled tighter than a teenage pop star,ā€ he said, beaming.

The interview had been postponed once, and the location was switched at the last minute to save Scott some time in traffic. But he sat down fully engaged and eager to start talking. Immediately, though, a passerby tapped on the storefront glass and asked for a photo. Scott, without a grumble, sprinted out to oblige, even though the gesture seemed more like a command (ā€œYouā€™re under arrest,ā€ joked Scott) than a polite request.

Scott, the 47-year-old Irish actor, is in demand like never before. Thatā€™s partly due to accrued good will. A regular presence on stage in the West End, Scott is known to many as the ā€œHot Priestā€ of ā€œFleabagā€ or the cunning Moriarty of ā€œSherlock.ā€ Soon, heā€™ll play Tom Ripley in the Netflix series ā€œRipley,ā€ adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel.

But the real reason Scottā€™s time is short right now is Andrew Haighā€™s new film, ā€œAll of Us Strangers.ā€ In it, Scott plays a screenwriter working on a script about his childhood. The film is gently poised in a metaphysical realm; when Adam (Scott) returns to his childhood home, he finds his parents (Claire Foy, Jamie Bell) as they were before they died many years earlier.

At the same time, the movie, loosely adapted from Taichi Yamadaā€™s 1987 book ā€œStrangers,” balances a budding romance with a neighbor ( Paul Mescal ), a relationship that unfolds with profound reverberations of family, intimacy and queer life. In a dreamy, longing ghost story, Scott is its aching, shimmering soul.

ā€œThe challenge of it was to try to go to that place but not gild the lily too much,ā€ Scott says. ā€œAs an actor, I have to be in touch with that playful side of myself and that part of you thatā€™s childish. I was actually quite struck by how vulnerable I looked in the film.ā€

Scottā€™s acutely tender performance has made him a contender for the Academy Awards. He was named best actor by the National Society of Film Critics. At the Golden Globes on Sunday (Scott wore a white tux and t-shirt), he was nominated for best actor in a drama.

Scott has long admired actors like Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep ā€” performers with a sense of humor who, he says, ā€œare able to understand what you feel and what you present.ā€ Scott, too, is often funny on screen (see Lena Dunhamā€™s medieval romp ā€œCatherine Called Birdyā€ ). And even in quiet moments, he seems to be buzzing inside at some discreet frequency. Something is always going on under the surface.

Heā€™s been acting since he was young; drama classes were initially a way to get over shyness. Scottā€™s first film role came at age 17. He has often spoken about seeking to maintain a childlike perspective in acting. In that way, ā€œAll of Us Strangersā€ is particularly fitting. On Adamā€™s trips home, he sort of morphs back into the child he was. In one scene, he wears his old pajamas and crawls into bed with his parents.

ā€œSo many of the things that are required of you as an actor are a sense of humor and some ability to be able to put yourself in a situation. Because itā€™s all down to imagination,ā€ says Scott. ā€œFor me, thatā€™s the thing you need to keep. Thatā€™s the thing ā€” because I started out when I was young ā€” I donā€™t want to move too far away from. Like when kids go, ā€˜OK, you be this and Iā€™ll be this.ā€™ That ability doesnā€™t leave us. What does leave us is a lack of self-consciousness. Our job is to hold on to that.ā€

Haigh, the British filmmaker of ā€œ45 Yearsā€ and ā€œWeekend,ā€ began thinking of Scott for the role early on. They met and talked through the script for a few hours.

ā€œHeā€™s a similar generation to me. Heā€™s a tiny bit younger than me, but heā€™s from the same generation,ā€ says Haigh. ā€œHe understands that experience.ā€

Scott came out publicly in 2013, but his natural inclination is to be private. ā€œI feel like Iā€™ve given so much of myself in the film, you think you donā€™t want to give it all away,ā€ he says. He describes ā€œAll of Us Strangersā€ ā€” which Haigh shot partly in his childhood home ā€” as personal, but not autobiographical in its depiction of the alienation that can linger after coming out.

ā€œMercifully, I feel very comfortable for the most part. But it stays with you that pain, and it actually makes you more compassionate, I think. Because we shot in Andrewā€™s childhood home, that sort of threw down the gauntlet in relation to how much of his own personality he was giving,ā€ says Scott. ā€œI wanted it to be sort of unadorned, unarmored and raw. Thatā€™s why I think thereā€™s such tenderness in the film.ā€

Scott has sometimes recoiled from how sexuality is talked about the media and in Hollywood. He recently said the phrase ā€œopenly gayā€ should be done away with. As of late December, Scott hadn’t yet watched ā€œAll of Us Strangersā€ with his parents, though he planned to.

ā€œThe best way to express it is to say Iā€™ll be very sensitive to how they watch it and how they feel about it, and how it makes me feel them watching it,ā€ Scott says.

The tenderness in the film is also owed in part to Scottā€™s chemistry with Mescal. On-screen chemistry is an amorphous quality that the film industry has long tried to turn into a science with camera tests and marketing that flirts with real-life romance.

But for Scott, itā€™s something different. He and Phoebe Waller-Bridge had chemistry, overwhelmingly, in ā€œFleabag,ā€ but that didnā€™t have anything to do with sexual attraction. Pinpointing that quality is something Scott pondered during Simon Stephens and Sam Yates’ recent staging of Chekhovā€™s ā€œUncle Vanyaā€ at the National Theater. Scott played all eight roles, meaning he essentially had to have chemistry with himself.

ā€œChemistry isnā€™t just about sexual chemistry. Itā€™s something to do with listening, and I think itā€™s something to do with playfulness,ā€ Scott says. ā€œYour ability to listen to someone and take note of what someone is doing is chemistry. You have to wait and see what the other actor is doing.ā€

A few moments later, Scott will have to rush out just as quickly as he arrived. But before that, he leaned back, naturally lit by the winter sun, and pondered whether ā€œAll of Us Strangers,” in the nakedness of his performance, had taken him somewhere he hadn’t before been as an actor.

ā€œYeah, I think so,ā€ said Scott. ā€œOr else to return to something that perhaps Iā€™ve been before.ā€

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

Article Topic Follows: AP National

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