Tori was in my film "Life Back Then (2011)". He was not yet as famous as he is today. He was a promising actor, so I cast him as a bully, the villain* role.
*Tori's first villain role. He won Kinema Junpo Film Awards Best New Actor with this role.
I believe Tori himself had doubts about the role so we worked together to create the role. For that reason, I feel a strong emotional attachment to him. Whenever we pass by each other at film festivals, he'd smile at me with a broad smile on his face. It makes me happy. As I also told him, this time, I think he has become a truly wonderful actor. He had also worked with Lee Sang-il on "Wandering (2022)" and I thought he was really magnificent there.
His role this time is the "storyteller" of the film. I made him a quiet character because he talks a lot in the narration. I didn't want him narrate and then say a lot of dialogue in the film. So, he is an "observer" of the film. I asked him to play like Morgan Freeman in "The Shawshank Redemption (1994)". But I feel his performance is specifically like Morgan Freeman in Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby (2004)". He's not villain this time because he is silent for the entire film (lol).
As an actor, I think he must've gone through a lot of hardships. I saw that he was unfazed by the difficult situation. Also, he always keeps an eye on the overall balance of the film. I felt that he knew very well that a film is born from the chemistry between the actors when they interact. I think this is something that he has cultivated through his experience of observing the filming scene from many different positions.
No comments:
Post a Comment