访谈 | 《卫报》荞麦200229

原题： George MacKay: ‘Playing Ned Kelly was exhausting – I felt very vulnerable’

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/29/george-mackay-actor-1917-true-history-of-kelly-gang-exhausting

highlights（X）：荞麦的成长往事和让人意难平的恋情&常被简中网友说有脆弱感的荞麦亲自为自己的脆弱感盖章

俺的翻译（虽然水平有限，但是考虑到各种因素还是得说，未经许可请勿转载）：

“再也没有这种吊事了，”荞麦咆哮道，眼睛瞪得像年轻的Iggy Pop：“我要给你尝尝我28厘米的大X，让你知道知道这是什么滋味！”他青筋凸起、口沫横飞。激动过头的荞麦打翻了我们所在的摄影工作室内为他准备的柠檬姜茶，溅到了地板上。“哦天呐，”他说着，眼前的Iggy Pop迅速转变成了一个充满歉意的礼貌青年：“我打算用我的屁股擦掉它。”他也的确照做了——一路滑过地板让他的黑裤子吸了一屁股茶。（我看不懂但我大受震撼.jpg）

荞麦或许只是个礼貌的年轻人，但年仅27岁的他早已尝试扮演过其他各种类型的角色：《骄傲》中的深柜同志活动家，《阳光利斯》中载歌载舞的苏格兰士兵，还有最近和我们见面的，门德斯的一战巨作《1917》中的一等兵Will Schofield。他很快又要扮演《凯利帮的真实历史》中臭名昭著的澳大利亚匪徒Ned Kelly，这也是今天那出人意料的朋克开场白的来由：导演Justin Kurzel想让这些年轻的演员们在这个澳洲好汉的故事中加入一些朋克元素，所以他预定了演出场地让演员们像朋克乐队一样上台表演。麦凯刚才给我演的就是他自创的桥段。

“我们乔装打扮，眼睛涂上灰，”他回忆着他们演员乐队Fleshlight的演出。乐队名是麦凯想出来的：“意思是一个…就是一个…你可以，呃，旋转，还可以呃，做X的性/玩具。”他说着，脸上的腼腆进一步证明了刚才的Iggy已经不复存在。

麦凯很喜欢这种沉浸式的工作方式——不只是研究角色，而是真正作为角色生活。为了准备凯利帮，他在丛林里生活，通过砍柴骑马变得强壮。悲催的是，不是所有外形转变都是那么容易的：法外狂徒Kelly有着标志性的男人味胡子，但娃娃脸的麦凯留起胡子就难了。“我真觉得我要失去这个角色了，”他说。

他尝试留出的胡子是啥样呢？

“看起来像一个大ginger眉毛，我在Skype上和Kurzel说了，当然那时候他的胡子就很好看，就和Ned的一样——”他用手比划着：“他说：‘好吧，也不用完全还原，但是…就像，你没胡子可长？’”

他们试着粘个胡子上去，但是Kurzel觉得不满意。随后导演开了个脑洞——有啥比一脸光滑稚嫩地扮演澳大利亚胡子拉碴的匪徒更朋克呢？他指示麦凯：“留个鲻鱼头代替吧。”

所幸1917不需要留胡子，其中麦凯扮演的角色——搭档是另一位也比较糊的演员（Dean-Charles Chapman）——是一位卷入了老人们战争的年轻人。故事跟随着两位士兵深入敌占区传送重要消息的任务展开。麦凯再一次投身于角色塑造当中：新兵训练营、六个月的排练、事无巨细地了解每个老式装备的功能。这部奥斯卡获奖作品以“一镜到底”而闻名（实际拍摄中，是把很长的一段段镜头——有些几乎长达10分钟——拼到一起），大家最不想看到的就是拍了七分钟，最后却因为来复枪卡住而白费了。

然而有时候错误也是值得鼓励的。在一幕宏大的场景里，麦凯在联军翻过战壕冲锋时在前线上狂奔，他被一名士兵撞到了，而剧本里本没有这一段。“所有人血脉喷张，炸弹此起彼伏轰鸣，这时我却被撞翻在地，”麦凯说道：“Sam想让影片看起来更自然鲜活，所以他保留了这段。”

作为演员，麦凯已经是战场的常客了：他参加了三次一战，两次二战。对他而言，这意味着埋身于大量历史资料当中，其中也包括一些痛心的自述。“我们总从精神或者比喻的层面说去看一个人的内在，”他说：“但是这些人是真的看到了别人的内里。看到了他们的内脏，或者飞出来、折出来的骨头。捡起友人断掉的腿…”他颤抖道。

同时，他也强调说做演员和做士兵全然不同：“我希望这么说不会很有误导性，”他一方面解释道：“这只是我非常置身事外的战争体验。”另一方面他的确也总结了一些相似性：片场也具有兄弟情谊；都是在一段其他人没有经历过的体验之后返回家中；那种逼自己突破界限的感觉。麦凯在1917中的角色Schofield是很寡言少语的，他通过忘记家庭生活来压抑自己的感情，麦凯觉得在拍摄凯利帮的时候他也有和Scho类似的做法。

“那部电影是最耗心耗力的，”他说：“我记得拍到尾声的时候我想着，我真是没精力了。如果当时有人来关心我的话，我会绷不住的。那是最有意义、最有趣的拍摄经历之一，但是到最后我真是摇摇欲坠，也很脆弱。”（忍不住多嘴：就和我出个大长差的感觉一样，到最后真的撑不住了，回过头看又感觉每天都有收获）

麦凯成长于巴恩斯，位于泰晤士河畔上伦敦西南部的村郊。他的父母（他妈妈是戏服设计师，爸爸是灯光舞台指导）送他去了私立的哈罗德学校，在那他培养出了对戏剧的热爱。到了10岁的时候，麦凯有了第一份演戏的工作，他远渡重洋到澳大利亚待了八个月，扮演了Curly，也就是PJ Hogan 2003版彼得潘中lost boys的一员。返回伦敦后，他又重归一名普通青少年的生活轨迹。“我其实真不怎么谈论这个经历，”他耸肩道。

他的演艺生涯并非一帆风顺。他没申请上英国皇家戏剧艺术学院，但被拒绝并没有使他心灰意冷：“我定下来了下一份工作，我打算积极学习和聆听，然后寻找能更有助于我学习的工作。”所以他敲定了能让他驶向新境地的一些角色。他最想扮演的莫过于2013年的后启示录青春片《我的生存之道》中的Edmond——因为他想向导演Kevin Macdonald和当时冉冉升起的新星Saoirse Ronan学习。“我当时20岁了，有一年都没工作，我知道她是个很棒的演员，”他说：“即使在那时候她就是个领路人了。”

结果两人在片场就产生了恋情（“我怀疑有这么回事但是他们都没有声张，”Macdonald后来如是说），这一定使他们更容易在影片中产生化学反应。

“嗯，”他说：“我就是太喜欢她这个人了，她是个很棒的人，但是我能说的就是这些。”

他总会倾心于共演者吗？“很明显，如果那就是你与之共度时光的人、你逐渐了解的人的话，人们就是这么邂逅彼此的，”他岔开了话题：“没有恒定不变的线路，但是我们都是通过某种方式与人相遇的，要不就是工作，要不就是酒吧。”

他目前单身吗？“我不能说。”

谈论起角色，他就没这么警惕了。比如说女装的Ned Kelly很富有性能量：他和Nicholas Hoult之间擦出了火花，后者扮演了一名对Kelly妹妹感兴趣的年轻警察；同时她和她荧幕母亲（由导演的妻子Essie Davis）的关系会让Freud脸红。正如麦凯所说：“这段关系美好而奇异，他对母亲来说是个小男孩，但他又是她的男人，而她则是他拥有着最伟大的爱的最了不起的女人。”

两年前，麦凯扮演的Lutz遭遇了一定的争议，角色出自Amma Asante执导的电影《触碰的双手》，是一名与受困于集中营的黑人女孩（Amandla Stenberg饰演）相爱的希特勒青年团成员。这一爱情元素引起了许多网友的不适，但麦凯说他毫不知情，因为他不玩社交媒体。今天（谈及此事），他非常认同Asante，他认为这些批判的声音是有问题的。“让我们不把纳粹当人更容易，就假定他们是一个不同物种、一个特定时代…但是这部电影告诉我们：做出那些暴行的纳粹其实就是人。”

扮演像Lutz和Kelly这样的角色使他对社会结构“想得更多了点”，他说道，尤其是那些使他受益的角色。“我发现作为白人男性，我从来没想过我被哪个地方禁止入内，”他说道：“感到自信是件好事。所以发现这个问题其实很有意义，就像，哇，原来这不是每个人都能感觉到的吗？原来不是每个人都觉得自己能演这个角色？为什么我潜意识中这么自信——而其他人潜意识中没有这份自信呢？”

在去年的一次采访中，麦凯说他想在生活和工作中带入更多政治色彩，但是他内心深处的谨慎以及对冒犯行为的恐惧都意味着他大概短期内不会取代Joaquin Phoenix的突出地位（不了解Joaquin Phoenix，貌似是获奖感言引发过争议，原文说的是不会取代他在the wild outburst charts的位置）。当我问及他会给谁投票时，他脸红了，看起来有点惊慌，犹豫了一会之后，他将手放在胸前说他还是想保密。他也想谈谈关于好莱坞的多元化、同工同酬的问题，但是我们试图谈及这些的时候总是出师不利——一连串的嗯嗯啊啊——他努力回答每个问题的样子看着让人感觉几近残酷。

“对不起，我没表达清楚，”他说：“我就是想小心一点。我自己应该比任何人都清楚这些问题的答案。”

诚然，这些问题使许多新星挣扎不已：他什么时候才有资格去评论？他的私人生活应该透露多少？说到底他能有自己的观点吗？除非他确信能说到做到。“我想100%诚实地做每件事，”他解释道，对待政治和对待他的电影作品一样。（想吐槽：既然记者也知道，那就别问这些奇奇怪怪的问题了呗）

几周后我们又碰面了，1917在BAFTA大获全胜，横扫七项大奖，包括最佳电影、最佳导演和颁给资深制作人Roger Deakins的最佳摄影。麦凯和Dean-Charles Chapman一起出席，后者在这几个月遍布全球的紧锣密鼓宣传中都基本常伴他身旁。两位演员在人群前显得很紧张，直到麦凯问道：难道现在在拍Deakins长镜头中的静止戏吗？与多数出席者不同，他们两人收获了真诚的笑声。

一周后，麦凯又出现了——这次是在奥斯卡——他在登上返回英国的飞机时联系了我。看不出他是不是筋疲力尽了。“太庞大了，”他对奥斯卡充满了热忱：“我看着颁奖礼长大，所以真的身处其中很有压迫感。离我大概不到10米就是Brad Pitt或者 Beyoncé，又或者是Scarlett Johansson——再看看，Tom Hanks也在！”

但是他难忘的是BAFTA颁奖后1917剧组的重聚：“我们拍电影的时候，大家都被甲持兵——要不就是军装军靴，要不就是雨衣。所以最棒的事莫过于走进派对，看到精心打扮的全剧组同事在一起说笑。”

听起来他对这类事有经验了。他笑着否认说，能参演到一部成功的电影是他的荣幸。但我怀疑麦凯又谦虚了。而且我也觉得，将来他会得到更多赞赏——也许要早于他长出一把漂亮胡子。

原文：

There’ll be no more of this shit,” snarls George MacKay, eyes bulging like a young Iggy Pop. “I’ll give you the full 11 inches of my dick, just so you can know how it feels to get shaaafted!” His temple throbs. His mouth froths. He gets so excited that he spills some of his lemon and ginger tea on the floor of the photo studio we’re sitting in. “Oh dear,” he says, Iggy Pop transforming rapidly into an extremely apologetic, polite young man. “I’m just going to wipe that up with my bum.” And so he does – sliding across the floor while his black trousers soak up the drink.

A polite young man George MacKay might be, but at just 27 he’s had plenty of practice trying on other personas: a closeted gay activist in Pride, a singing Scottish squaddie in Sunshine On Leith and – most recently – Lance Corporal Will Schofield in Sam Mendes’ first world war smash, 1917. He is soon to play the notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly in True History Of The Kelly Gang, which is where today’s unlikely punk outburst comes in: director Justin Kurzel wanted his young actors to put a punky spin on the tale of the Aussie folk hero, so he booked a gig venue and told them to perform their own songs live as a punk band. MacKay is treating me to one of his self-penned numbers.

“We put on dresses and rubbed ash in our eyes,” he recalls of the performance by the resulting band, Fleshlight. MacKay came up with the name: “It’s a… it’s a sort of… sex toy that you can, um, unscrew and, er, make love to,” he says, his bashfulness further proof that Iggy has left the building.

MacKay adores this immersive way of working – not just researching but living his roles. To prepare for True History Of The Kelly Gang, he lived in the bush, bulking up by chopping wood and riding horses. Sadly, not every aspect of physical transformation was as easy to achieve: the outlaw Kelly was renowned for his manly whiskers, yet baby-faced MacKay struggled to grow any facial hair. “I honestly thought I was going to lose the part,” he says.

What did his attempt at a beard look like?

“It looked like a big ginger eyebrow. I spoke to [Kurzel] on Skype, and of course at the time he had this amazing beard. just like Ned’s out here –” he gestures with his arms. “He said, ‘Well, no need for the whole one, but… like, nothing?’”

They tried a stick-on beard but Kurzel wasn’t convinced. Then the director had a brainwave – what could be more punk rock than playing Australia’s hairiest antihero with baby-smooth cheeks? “Just grow a mullet instead,” came the instructions, which MacKay managed.

Fortunately, no facial fuzz was needed for 1917, in which MacKay’s role – alongside another relatively little-known actor (Dean-Charles Chapman) – was to be a young man in an old man’s war. The story follows the two soldiers on their mission to carry a vital message deep behind enemy lines. Again, MacKay threw himself into the part: army boot camps, six months of rehearsals, understanding the function of every bit of archaic military kit. The Oscar-winning film was famously shot in “one take” (in reality, very long takes – some of them almost 10 minutes – stitched together) and the last thing anyone needed was to get seven minutes into a take, only for the safety catch on a rifle to jam.

Sometimes, though, mistakes were encouraged. In one epic scene, MacKay hurtles down the frontline while allied troops emerge over the trenches; he gets floored by one soldier, something that wasn’t scripted. “When everyone’s blood’s up and the bombs are going off, that happens,” MacKay says. “Sam wanted it to be natural and alive, so he kept it.”

As an actor, MacKay is already something of a war veteran: he’s fought the first world war three times, and the second world war twice. For him, this has meant delving into an awful lot of history books, including harrowing first-person accounts. “We talk about seeing the inside of a person in a spiritual or figurative sense,” he says. “But these people would really see it. To see someone’s organs, or their bone split and poke out. Picking up a friend’s leg and it coming away…” He shudders.

At the same time, he is keen to stress that being an actor is nothing like being a soldier. “I hope this isn’t a terribly misjudged thing to say,” he caveats at one point, and, “This is only my extremely cushy version of it.” But he does note some parallels: there is the sense of brotherhood on a film set; the returning home after an experience that nobody else has been through; the sense of pushing yourself beyond normal limits. MacKay’s 1917 character, Schofield, is a quiet soul who bottles up his emotions as a way of forgetting his life back home, and MacKay thinks he did something similar while working on True History Of The Kelly Gang.

“[That film] was the most exhausting physical and emotional time,” he says. “I remember at the end of it thinking, I’ve no energy left. And if anyone asks me about it, I’ll break. It was one of the most profound and joyous experiences. But by the end, I felt very wobbly and vulnerable.”

MacKay grew up in Barnes, a villagey suburb of south-west London on the bank of the Thames. His parents (his mother is a costume designer, his father a lighting and stage director) sent him to the independent Harrodian school, which encouraged his love of drama. By the time he was 10, MacKay had his first acting job, and was whisked away to Australia for eight months to play Curly, one of the lost boys in PJ Hogan’s 2003 version of Peter Pan. Back in London, he got on with the business of becoming a normal teenager: “I didn’t really talk about it much,” he shrugs.

His career hasn’t been all plain sailing. He failed an audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but refused to be disheartened: “I decided the next job I got, I was going to actively learn and listen, and look for jobs that could facilitate the learning I would have done there.” And so he picked roles that pushed him to new places. The part he wanted more than anything was that of Edmond in the 2013 postapocalyptic teen drama How I Live Now – because he wanted to learn from its director Kevin Macdonald and then rising star Saoirse Ronan. “I was 20, had spent a year not working, and I knew she was this amazing actress,” he says. “Even back then, she was a trailblazer.”

The two ended up dating while on set (“I suspected what was going on but they kept it very quiet,” Macdonald would later say), which must have made finding the onscreen chemistry a bit easier.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just admire that woman so much. She’s an amazing human being, but that’s all I can say.”

Does he make a habit of falling for his co-stars? “It seems obvious that, if that’s who you’re spending time with, and who you’re getting to know, that’s how we meet everyone,” he deflects. “It’s not a constant through-line but we all meet people some way, either at work or in a pub.”

Is he single at the moment? “I can’t say.”

He is less cautious when it comes to picking his parts. MacKay’s cross-dressing Ned Kelly, for instance, is charged with sexual energy: there’s a homoerotic frisson between him and Nicholas Hoult, who plays a young constable interested in Kelly’s sister; and his relationship with his onscreen mother (played by the director’s wife, Essie Davis) would make Freud blush. As MacKay puts it, “It’s a beautiful, weird oedipal relationship where he’s the little boy to his mum but he’s also her man, and she’s his greatest woman and greatest love.”

Two years ago, MacKay encountered a degree of controversy when he played Lutz, a Hitler Youth member who falls in love with a black girl (Amandla Stenberg) imprisoned in a concentration camp, in Amma Asante’s Where Hands Touch. The love story was one element many online commentators were uncomfortable with, although MacKay says he was oblivious because he has no social media presence. Today, he is fiercely loyal to Asante and believes the criticism was misguided. “It suits us to assume that the Nazis weren’t human, that they are a [different] breed, era… But the film is saying: these were humans who did this.”

Playing characters such as Lutz and Kelly has made him “think a little bit harder” about social constructs, he says, specifically ones that have benefited him. “I am recognising that I have never, as a white male, felt like I couldn’t walk into a room,” he says. “It’s a wonderful thing to feel confident. So it’s been a brilliant realisation to be, like, wow, that’s not a feeling that everyone feels? Not everyone feels they could get cast for this? Why, subconsciously, do I feel that confidence – and other people subconsciously feel inferior?”

In an interview last year, MacKay said that he wanted to be more political in his life and work, but his innate caution and fear of offending means he probably won’t usurp Joaquin Phoenix in the wild outburst charts any time soon. When I ask which way he votes, he flushes, looks panicked and, after a pause that seems to hang in the air, puts his hand to his chest and says he would prefer to keep that private. He wants to say the right things about diversity in Hollywood, and equal pay, too, but when we try there are so many false starts – an avalanche of ums and ahs – that watching him try to answer each question feels almost cruel.

“Sorry, I’m not really articulating myself,” he says. “I’m just trying to be careful. I should know the answers to these things, for myself more than anyone.”

And, to be fair, these are issues that many rising stars struggle with: when is it his place to comment? What personal life should he hold back for himself? Can he have an opinion at all, unless he’s certain he can back it up with action? “I want to do everything truthfully and 100%,” he explains at one point, applying the same approach to politics as to his films.

A few weeks after we meet, 1917 wins big at the Baftas, scooping seven awards including best film, best director and best cinematographer for veteran film-maker Roger Deakins. MacKay presents an award with Dean-Charles Chapman, who has been by his side almost constantly over several intense months of publicity-blitzing around the globe. The actors look nervously out at the crowd before MacKay asks if this is still part of Deakins’ continuous take. Unlike most presenters, they get a genuine laugh.

A week later, MacKay is presenting again – this time at the Oscars – and then he is back on a plane to the UK, where he calls me. If he’s exhausted, it doesn’t show. “It was huge,” he enthuses of the Academy Awards. “I grew up watching the results, so to be part of it was overwhelming. Just being in physical proximity, just 10 yards away from Brad Pitt, or Beyoncé, or Scarlett Johansson – and look, there’s Tom Hanks!”

But the memory that will stick in his mind is of reuniting with the cast and crew of 1917 at the Bafta after-party: “When we were making the film, everyone was in their gear all the time – either war costumes or boots and rain macs. So to walk into that room and see a huge number of the crew all done up and smiling was the best thing.”

It sounds as if he’s got a taste for this kind of thing. He laughs and shrugs off the notion, saying that it was a privilege just to be part of a successful film. But I suspect this is MacKay being the polite young man again. And I suspect there will be plenty more plaudits coming his way – probably before he’s managed to grow a proper beard.

（我一直以为Mackay是这么写的，原来是写作MacKay吗）