The actor on nailing Rupert Murdoch’s accent, working with Stanley Kubrick and missing old-fashioned dinner parties
Your new film The Partisan is about spies during the second world war. Would you make a good spy?
I honestly believe I would be a total disaster, because I do love to gossip. I would be going: “You know that guy? I think he’s working for the Russians.” I went to Russia in 1990 to make this wonderful film, The Assassin of the Tsar, and it was still very closed, even though it was glasnost and Gorbachev was in power. I was driving with my wife to the next location to Vladimir, which is an old capital of Russia, and we went past these missile silos. I turned to my wife and said: “If we’d have been doing this a year ago, we’d have been shot for seeing this. I think they’re all pointed at America.”
It has been suggested by conspiracy theorists that Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landings. Are you disappointed that he cast Neil Armstrong instead of you?
No. I’d be better off playing Louis Armstrong! It’s been put about that he directed the moon landings, which … well, we now live in a world of fake news. It’s so incredible, the bullshit. The AI on YouTube is mindboggling, isn’t it? I suppose it could have been anyone in that spacesuit. One of my favourite Kubrick movies is 2001. It’s a masterpiece. It’s one of those films that, when you first see it, you think: what the hell was that? It’s very poetic. Stanley could control the astronauts because they’re hidden in spacesuits. He could get away with anything because he hated ceding power to an actor.
