By James Mottram
“I always think that my brain makes the wrong choice,” Steven Spielberg laughs when asked about his knack for casting young actors in his films. “I always have to fight my brain and say, ‘Stop thinking! Start feeling! Play your hunches!’ I play hunches, and I take chances on young people when I have a hunch that they are right for the part, and I could be wrong. But I’ve been lucky. I’ve been more right than wrong. I’ve been more right in casting young people. But I just knew when Ruby came along and I saw her in her reading, that she was right. She was so honest. I felt like it wasn’t Roald Dahl writing, but rather it was Ruby making up the words. That’s how realistic she sounded. So I immediately flew her to Germany where I was making Bridge Of Spies, and that was the first time we met.”
Twelve-years-old, Ruby Barnhill’s only previous credit was on the UK kids’ TV programme, 4 O’Clock Club, but as the daughter of jobbing actor, Paul Barnhill (Topsy-Turvy, Rescue Me, Coronation St.), she was familiar with the entertainment industry…and with Steven Spielberg. “I watched a lot of his films before meeting Steven,” the young actress smiles at The Cannes Film Festival. “I had watched all of the Indiana Jones films…well, nearly all of the Indiana Jones films, and E.T: The Extra Terrestrial obviously. Those were the main ones that I knew Steven from. But I never quite realised [how important he was]. When we were on set, I always thought of Steven, and still do, as a really, really close friend. But then yesterday I realised how many people appreciate him and his films. So it’s an honour to be working with him. But yeah, I was very nervous when I first met him.” Sitting next to his young star for press duties, Spielberg smiles. “She didn’t act nervous,” the filmmaker says. “She didn’t seem nervous to me.” Was it scary meeting him? “No! Not at all,” Barnhill laughs. “Nobody that I knew had ever met Steven Spielberg, but he didn’t feel scary at all.”
Already demonstrating an engaging brand of sensible charm (“I don’t ever read reviews, and my dad doesn’t read reviews either because he always remembers that they’re just opinions from different people”), Ruby Barnhill could be Steven Spielberg’s next great discovery, sitting alongside the likes of Drew Barrymore and Christian Bale. “Casting is 100% intuition,” the director says. “It really is. The second that I start really thinking about it, the whole reason that I was interested in that actor in the first place just evaporates. It’s all about not thinking. The biggest internal struggle that I have is getting my brain to stop shouting down the whisper in my ear which is always right. The brain is usually wrong and the whisper is always right. That’s the internal struggle all the time, and it really comes across in casting. I’ll see somebody, and I’ll just know that this is the right person for the part, and a week later, I start to doubt and question my choice. I waste so much of my own time, bringing the person back in, reading them again, and realising that I was right the first time! Why did I waste this person’s time? I should have given them the part in the room! That’s the big struggle.”
The BFG is in cinemas now.
