by james Mottram
When British actor Josh O’Connor first discovered Alice Rohrwacher, it was through the Italian director’s 2018 fable-like film Happy as Lazzaro. “I sat in a screen in London. And I cried. I thought it was the most magical film I’ve ever seen,” he recalls, when FilmInk meets him at the Cannes Film Festival. “I called my agent and I said, ‘I have to meet Alice Rohrwacher. I think she’s a marvel’. And he said, ‘Get in line. Everyone wants to meet Alice Rohrwacher!’” So, O’Connor decided to write her a letter, expressing his admiration.
When they Zoomed, Rohrwacher admitted that she didn’t have anything for the 33-year-old O’Connor, who leapt to fame across the globe when he played the young Prince Charles in Netflix’s British royal family saga The Crown. But then she decided to re-write the lead role of her new film La Chimera for a younger man, tailoring it for O’Connor. He plays Arthur, a young archaeologist in 1980s Tuscany, who meets a group of thieves stealing Etruscan artefacts from graves.
“I think Arthur is very spontaneous,” says O’Connor, who paid particular attention to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1961 debut Accattone during his prep work. “He has a deep intelligence, but he is also naïve. And he has a sense for the unseen, I think – which is the kind of key. I think everyone has a sense for the unseen, but he has a kind of a consciousness that is aware of things that maybe we don’t perceive. And he’s angry and he’s pained, but joyful and spiritual. And everything in between.”
Partly, he’s left haunted by his lost love, Benjamina, the daughter of an aristocrat (played by Isabella Rossellini). “I think he is searching for something,” says O’Connor. “Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s searching for. But I think he has a pull. The ribbon’s pulling him along. There’s a purpose to him. So, in that sense, he’s not lost. And he has a family. These guys are his family. I think he has a purpose, but he’s just not aware of what it is. Maybe that’s the naïveté.”
For O’Connor, the experience of making La Chimera was an absolute joy. Not least because he was able to live in his own camper van, which he drove over from England. “It was great,” he sighs. “Alice helped me with a friend of hers, Maria who has a beautiful restaurant there… she has some land next to Lake Bolsena, so every morning I pulled the doors open and I had a lake to myself and a plum tree next to me, which I’d pick and eat from and it was bliss, to be honest.”
He also spent time learning Italian. “I did lots of work on the Italian before I arrived, and thought I was in a reasonable place and then learned that I wasn’t! I think you have to be there… I wanted to be able to converse. How successful I was in that, I’m not sure. I mean, ultimately, he’s an Englishman who speaks Italian and I embrace the fact that I got things wrong. And we played with that a lot, getting words wrong and having different meanings.”
Luckily, he had time to really dive into his character. “The intention is always to go as deep as possible. I was very fortunate with this because I had a good period of preparation. I wasn’t working and I’d taken some time to not work. And I was focused on this film. And then I went to Italy, and we shot the first half. And the way Alice works… there is time. And so, I really could enter into it. And I lost some weight for the second half, and I threw myself into it. And in an ideal world, I would do that for every film.”
O’Connor admits that time on La Chimera was exactly what he needed. “I think I’d come out of the chaos of The Crown. And that period was very life changing and busy. And I found it quite difficult. I think I just needed a bit of space. Just to think of what I wanted to do next. I didn’t know it was going to be this. I’m glad it was.”
In truth, even before The Crown, it’s been a crazy period in O’Connor’s career, ever since his breakout role as the sexually repressed farm hand in 2017’s God’s Own Country.
After completing La Chimera, he’s also filmed Challengers – due out the following week – in which he stars as a tennis pro alongside Zendaya and Mike Faist. It marks another film made with an Italian – in this case, Bones and All’s Luca Guadagnino. “That was in America. So, slightly different. But yes, he’s very Italian,” says O’Connor, who has also recently worked with Kate Winslet on Lee, about war journalist Lee Miller – in which he plays British photographer Antony Penrose.
“I like to surprise myself,” he says. “To me, it’s like, how do I trick myself and challenge myself and do stuff that surprises me and surprises other people and ultimately keep an anonymity of Josh and keep that separate? I don’t know… try and fool people every time. That’s a real challenge, particularly nowadays… where we have so much access to actors. We feel like we know them, and we can get to know them. There’s a way of resisting that and keeping myself on my toes a little bit.”
O’Connor has even seen his first script – co-written with Mike Gilbert – filmed. Titled Bonus Track, it’s all set around a school talent show. “That film I wrote years ago. I was 18. It was amazing – it’s taken that many years to get made. That’s new for me. I don’t know… always there’s other things that interest me.”
And when he’s not writing scripts? “I’ve been making pots for the last few months – ceramics,” he reveals. So, does he have his own kiln? “No,” he cries. “I’ve been working in a friend’s studio. The dream is to have my own studio with a kiln.” Spoken like a true creator.
La Chimera opens in cinemas 11 April. Challengers opens 18 April 2024
