Samuel L. Jackson Says He’s Never Let the Oscars Determine His Success: ‘Wasn’t a Big Deal’

Oscar Isaac has just flown in from New York, where the
Scenes From a Spousal relationship
and
Moon Knight
star was enjoying some much-deserved fourth dimension off, and
Succession’s Brian Cox volition soon head to Miami for a documentary shoot.
Loki’southward Tom Hiddleston is nearly to become dorsum into production, and
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grayness’s Samuel L. Jackson has just wrapped a motion picture shoot. But for a few hours on a Sunday in belatedly May, half-dozen of Hollywood’south leading men — an esteemed group that besides included
Dopesick’due south Michael Keaton and
Winning Time
breakout Quincy Isaiah — convened in Los Angeles for
The Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actor Emmy Roundtable. The conversation whipped from deeply funny to deadly serious, equally the sextet doled out a mix of stories and advice.

Allow’s start easy: When a fan comes up to you on the street, what do they typically recognize you from, and what do they commonly say?

OSCAR ISAAC
On the airplane here, I felt a lilliputian letter autumn on my seat and so someone walked away. I looked at it and it was in this blue highlighter with the footling moon on it for the
Moon Knight
show that I’d just washed. It was like, “My mother would’ve disowned me if I didn’t say something, equally a person of color, about how much information technology means to me that you’re out in that location doing these things.” Information technology was really sweet.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON
You were on a regular plane with other people?

ISAAC
Oh, yeah. I mean (nods to Jackson), one day … (Laughter.)

MICHAEL KEATON
What a nice thing for somebody to lay that on you. Have you always washed that? If I see somebody I like, other actors, I’ll slide them [a note]. I’ll know a thing someone did and I’ll say, “Killed me. Unbelievable,” and and so I’ll merely [vanish]. I don’t desire to be around when they read information technology. I’ve washed it a few times considering people accept done it [to me], and you experience so grateful. Also, I call up you tell people, man. If you see somebody do something great, just tell them.

Who accept you done that to?

(Jackson lifts up his hand, points to himself and smiles.)

KEATON
I call up Maggie Gyllenhaal was the final one.

ISAAC
Simply information technology is dainty, just to requite something and not be asking for anything.

KEATON
Right. A woman came upwards to me the other day and she was so cool about
Dopesick. She was on her style out and she just stopped and said, “Thank you for doing that.” Boom. Finish of it.

TOM HIDDLESTON
Well, I’ll say this, Quincy and Oscar, I don’t know how you guys feel, but sitting with you 3 gents (to Keaton, Jackson and Cox), I grew upward watching you lot, so information technology’s an honour to be at the same table.

BRIAN COX
I grew up watching Sam.

JACKSON
Information technology’southward piece of cake to practice. I do way too much.

KEATON
And I haven’t grown up yet.

COX
My thing [since
Succession
began] is people ask me to tell them to fuck off all the time.

Does that get bad-mannered?

COX
Well, it’south not the easiest thing to say to people. I hateful, it started when I was playing L.B.J. in one of those theaters in New York. I came out 1 night and there was this young couple, very sweetness, virtually 17, and they had a video and they said, “Could you lot tell u.s. to fuck off, please?” I hateful, it’due south unbelievable. But the worst was here in 50.A. when I went to a meeting for Ronan Farrow, a #MeToo thing. He was launching the book and all these Hollywood women were there and information technology was very intense. And I was continuing at the back and and so [the women] all turned around and saw me and they [pointed a] camera and said, “Tin you lot tell u.s.a. to fuck off?” I was similar, “This is a #MeToo meeting, is this really proper to be asking me to tell you to fuck off? And does that mean that I get canceled?” (Laughter.)

What practise you get, Sam?

JACKSON
These days, “What’s in your wallet?”

And how do you respond?

JACKSON
“My wife’s hand.”

KEATON
What does that hateful?

JACKSON
My wife’s manus is in my wallet. (Laughter.)

I assumed you’d exist asked to evangelize a profanity likewise.

JACKSON
People enquire me to call them motherfucker all the time. Or they’ll inquire me to put information technology on their answering machine. They’ll literally say, “Would you do my answering motorcar? ‘This motherfucker’due south not home right now. And the motherfucker volition phone call you back.’ ” (Laughter.)

COX
You know, you can charge them.

JACKSON
I don’t want to gouge the public. I charge them plenty to come up to my movies.

KEATON
You lot could say, “That’s $50, motherfucker.”

JACKSON
Yep, exactly, they’d be like, “Huh?” But the people who want to make videos [with me, I tell them], “I’ll take a photo with you, but I get paid to make movies. So, we’re not making videos.”

Quincy,


Winning Time


is your very get-go projection. I’ve heard you say that before production began on the series, yous went to therapy to “get your head straight” and brace for what was about to happen. What did that entail?

QUINCY ISAIAH
Yeah, I knew beingness on HBO with Adam McKay and playing Magic [Johnson], a lot of eyeballs were going to exist on me, then it was similar, “OK, get everything out now then come back and but be smart nigh the way you’re going to move through the world.”

KEATON
That’s very smart.

ISAIAH
Yes, and just understand that people are going to be coming upwards to you. How is that going to make you feel? Are you going to be comfortable with that?

JACKSON
You went to therapy for that?

ISAIAH
Yeah, human.

ISAAC
That’s very mindful.

JACKSON
I didn’t fifty-fifty know that kind of shit was available. When it happened, it only happened.

KEATON
Such a smart idea, though. Somebody tell yous to practise that?

ISAIAH
No.

KEATON
Salubrious, man.

ISAIAH
I dear to practice the work, but I didn’t desire to accept people coming up to me. Then I started agreement that it’due south part of the gig and also, people are excited most your work. It’south cool. So I merely tried to flip my mindset on it.

JACKSON
Have you separated them liking you lot and them liking your piece of work?

KEATON
Good question.

ISAIAH
Yeah. I think fifty-fifty with all these meetings and stuff, I know that I’m at that place considering of the piece of work I’ve done. Everybody’southward like, “They love you. We honey y’all.” They don’t know me.

JACKSON
Ordinary people do, though. Girls looking at you on social media like y’all. They don’t give a fuck virtually your piece of work. (Laughter.)

Do the rest of you call back the project from which you lot went from bearding to recognizable, and were you prepared for it?

HIDDLESTON
For me, all the answers and then far are Loki. That’s what people come up up to me in the street and [reference], and absolutely that was the thing that changed everything.

What exercise they say when they do?

HIDDLESTON
Oh, there was a hilarious one. I was walking the dog ane Wednesday in a park in London. It was the summer after
Avengers: Infinity War
came out, and a group of school kids were playing nearby and in that location were heads turning, and I thought, “OK, well, they’ve seen the moving-picture show.” And and so as they were walking away, I heard this shout: “Loki!” I was similar, “Yep. Hi, that’due south me.” “Are you really expressionless?” I was like, what an extraordinary existential question to be asked on a Midweek forenoon. Am I really dead? Well, not right at present.

How nigh the rest of yous?

COX
I valued my anonymity. People would say, “Were you …?” And I’d go, “No.” I mean, I used to go confused with Albert Finney all the time, but I loved the fact that people didn’t know who I was. Since I’ve been playing this role [on
Succession], it’s been incommunicable. And I’ve been in this business organisation for, Jesus Christ, I’ve been in this concern since 1961.

KEATON
Since Jesus Christ, actually. (Laughter.)

COX
It’s very hard when yous’ve prized yourself on bobbing and weaving with the profession. And back home in the theater, in that location was a certain reputation, but at the same time I shifted centrality whenever I could, which I enjoyed. That’s what I like, reinvention, which I call up is a cardinal thing for actors, to reinvent themselves. And and so suddenly you come up with a function like I’m playing at the moment and yous go, “Well, OK, at that place’due south no going back.”

JACKSON
I’ve known Michael (to Keaton) forever considering I’ve been watching his career forever. Before I was even this person who could say, “Hey, Mike, how you doing?” I felt like I knew him because I knew his characters. But he’due south besides been this person that doesn’t get stuck in that character. He can go from Beetlejuice to something else to something else to something else. And he’s very different, simply he’s still Michael Keaton. Only some people get stuck in a matter and they tin’t interruption that, because they didn’t let themselves suspension information technology.

But Michael, y’all fought hard to have that versatility, and had to turn down a lot of things, no?

KEATON
Yep. And thanks, by the way.

COX
You also went reclusive for a while there.

KEATON
I’m a block-and-consume-it-too guy. I desire it all. I want to live a normal life, but then I want to piece of work. And so everything that everyone was saying, that’s just what comes with it. In terms of the opportunities to play everything, yep, I created it. I did, and I’one thousand proud of the fact that I rode it out and said no to things. I fix information technology up early so I could possibly accept the opportunity to play dissimilar things; and had I not, had somebody said, “Yous know what? Not for nothing, we really don’t care what else you lot want to play. We want you to exist that guy.” I probably would’ve done that and made a living. I just don’t recall I would take been very happy.

Oscar, I’ve heard yous say that saying no to projects is more than stressful for you than waiting on yeses one time was. What has that looked like?

ISAAC
Yeah. My therapy sessions were more near that. It’s similar, how do I get off the set of piece of work? And it’s connected with approval and wanting to be included. Also, the biggest window of my life as an role player has been wanting to go opportunities, wanting someone to say yep, and it’s been a very small window of being able to say no, having the luxury to say no. And then it takes building those synapses to be able to say no in my brain and not feeling like I’m destroying my life in some way. And I’ve got immature kids and this is the starting time time in 20 years that I’ve taken the year off, by not being on a set, and information technology’southward weird. I’m also so happy to be able to do that.

JACKSON
Y’all can afford to take a year off. Information technology’southward a huge, huge deal to be able to do that. But the fifty-fifty harder thing, like, for you, Quincy, is going to be, what exercise you exercise next? All of a sudden you’ll have iv scripts sitting on a desk and you have to make a choice. That’s when things get difficult.

ISAAC
They get really hard.

JACKSON
That’s when things get difficult, because you tin can make a wrong choice and exist like, “Oh. Shit.”

ISAAC
And suddenly you’re getting exterior of yourself and having to look at, “What do I want to be?”

How are you thinking nigh what’south adjacent, Quincy? Do you want to exercise something that’s totally different?

ISAIAH
Yeah, I can’t smile every bit much this side by side time. Information technology’due south so much smiling. (Laughter.)

JACKSON
That’south who he is!

KEATON
Two things. (To Isaac) Good for you for [taking time off] because you take kids. One of the reasons I laid low was that I ever wanted to be a dad. And then I got the opportunity to be a dad, so I thought, “Homo, if I lose money, I’thousand skillful with it.” I was having this chat with Nib Hader the other day, he was going through something and I said, “Dude, trust me. Hang out with your kids as much as you can for equally long as y’all tin can. You will never regret it. Yous’re going to lose some jobs. It’s OK. In the long run, that’s the thing [that matters].” And (to Jackson, off of his hard-choices comment) yous’re right, human. In the one-time days, I remember I was in London with Jack Nicholson, we were doing
Batman,
and he was going somewhere, and he said, “Come up forth with me,” which is an experience in and of itself. (Laughter.)

I’d love that story, too.

KEATON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, we’re in the machine and he’due south talking about the moving picture. And nosotros all knew it was a huge gamble, and if information technology goes down, [I’d be] going downward in flames and that’south going to be a large, hard recovery. But I also knew if information technology worked, it could change my landscape. So Jack says, “Keats, if this affair’s a striking, you can get out and do iv or five flops and not even worry about it.” And maybe it wasn’t iv or five, but it used to exist you got away with three and it didn’t affair. Not at present, man. You’ve got one miss, which is fucked up.

Looking dorsum, what felt, at the time, like the biggest risk?

ISAAC
Moon Knight
felt that way. Like, “Human being, I’chiliad going to go down hard with this affair.” Just the level of embarrassment that it would be, once you throw on a cape, y’all know what I mean? And you’re out in front of it. It’due south similar, “Holy shit, I’yard actually doing this thing.”

KEATON
And you’d better commit.

ISAAC
And commit totally to it.

JACKSON
The interesting thing well-nigh all that, though, was that you had a little path from
Star Wars
to this next thing to
Dune, which was fucking amazing, by the way.

HIDDLESTON
Amazing!

ISAAC
Trivial to do with me.

JACKSON
Oh, it’due south little to do with whatsoever of us. I was talking to Tom about that very same affair. When I signed that nine-moving-picture show bargain to exist Nick Fury, it was like, “How long do I got to stay alive to do ix pictures?” Not knowing they were going to make nine pictures in, like, a twelvemonth and a half. Only when you choice a path or you find a way to get into these franchise things that are huge successes, they requite you the opportunity to do these other things that give you that creative satisfaction while you’re doing that movie-star satisfaction thing, the big cheque, the take-care-of-the-family unit, the I-can-accept-some-fourth dimension-off-and-chill.

ISAAC
And the trick with this one was, like, “Tin I do both?” Can you lot smuggle in the thing that matters to me, the reason why I like doing it, then every morning when that alert goes off, I could be excited to get to work and not just be like, “I’ve got to get through this to get that bank check or whatever.” And information technology seemed similar this was an opportunity, possibly because of the TV landscape, where there seems to be a lot more hazard-taking, to do this bizarre thing that happened to be in the case of a superhero genre picture.

Typically, Marvel calls and actors say yes immediately. Y’all were hesitant, presumably for all those reasons?

ISAAC
Yeah, information technology was so much about, like, “Is this the stupidest thing? Is this a smart thing?” It was such mental torment only to brand the decision.

COX
But don’t y’all find that nosotros all are in positions where we’ve constantly subsidized ourselves for the adjacent job?

What does that mean to y’all?

COX
That you earn a bit of coin from one job and so y’all go off and do lunchtime theater. And in movies, you practice the same: That ane wasn’t so good, but I earned enough from that 1 so I tin go on to that one. I think that happens more than we acknowledge.

JACKSON
The wonderful discovery for me was longform TV and the satisfaction of delving into a graphic symbol in a style I didn’t have in an hour and a one-half. I saturday home and I did information technology in my head, and in that location was stuff I wanted people to run into well-nigh me that I couldn’t show them.

COX
I call back that’south [created a claiming for] movies. Because in movies, it’south three acts: offset, 2nd and tertiary. Whereas in longform, information technology’s an countless second act, and you can do so much in the second act. As actors, it serves us brilliantly.

KEATON
Yes.

COX
And American television set has caught upward. Tom and I are lucky considering we come from a good tradition of television. The only time that tv was bad in the U.Thou., and he was probably a nipper then, was in the ’90s, and it was really shit.

JACKSON
Stop, my married woman loved all that shit. What is that niggling town where people have died every calendar week for the concluding 30 years?

HIDDLESTON

Midsomer Murders.

COX
That’s neat, merely that came at the end of the ’90s. At that place was a really dour time. And that’due south i of the reasons I thought, “If I’m going to become paid for crap, I’d rather go paid for crap in America than crap in the U.K.” And that was my decision, because I’d been a leading theater role player and all that. And I came and I did five movies, which were tough going. And I could observe how difficult it was for people similar you (to Keaton) and Andy Garcia on the film that we did [Desperate Measures]. And we (to Jackson) were in a slightly ameliorate film together [The Long Kiss Goodnight]. But y’all could run into how that opening weekend was marking people’s careers. And I just thought, “I don’t want anything to do with that. I don’t want to be in that situation where my whole life is depending on that opening weekend. So I’m going to stick to just coming on and doing ii scenes and and then buggering off,” you know what I mean?

KEATON
I know exactly what you mean.

JACKSON
I was trying to effigy out how you lot kids (to Isaiah) are going to measure what your success is in terms of how you motion the comma on your bank check in a streaming world, because we had a barometer: Asses in seats. What’southward the barometer now?

ISAIAH
It feels like social media is a large matter for our generation.

JACKSON
Meet how many followers y’all got before you can get the chore?

ISAIAH
Before I booked this, every role that I went out for, information technology was like, “How many followers do yous take?”

KEATON
Wow.

Between


Loki


and the upcoming Nick Fury series


Secret Invasion

, Tom and Sam, you’ve both gotten those Marvel calls. Did either of you have any of the same hesitation equally Oscar?

And what were y’all excited to explore with a show that you couldn’t do in the films?

JACKSON
Well, I can accept a whole life equally Nick Fury that’due south not Nick Fury at piece of work. You lot know, we get to go home with me and run into what happens with me at home or when I’m alone or when I’thousand not so strong and Nick Fury, or when I take off a back brace because Nick Fury is former. (Laughs.) Some things that you can do that you can’t commonly practice [in the films] because the character has to present this (trumpeting heroically)
duh-dunna-duh
kind of front, and that’southward what the movies are for. And when you lot get to do information technology in longform, you get to prove even superheroes accept their down moments.

KEATON
Not me. (Laughter.)

JACKSON
A down moment for you is an up moment. But all those things are there and you have an opportunity to do information technology, and they requite you that leeway to experience your manner into that. Once they see you and know who yous are, that gives everybody an opportunity to come and bring a personality. That was the thing about the Avengers movies, they all had unlike personalities and they were able to blossom in one case nosotros got through the initial film. The initial film was to introduce these people to who they are and these are the things they can practise. Now, this is how they collaborate and they’re not all nice. And I fussed at them, I still fuss at them, about
Ceremonious War
because I’m like, “How could the kids fight and Nick Fury not evidence upwardly?” Similar, “What’due south going on here? Everybody go to your room.” But they didn’t need me for that. They did, but they didn’t.

HIDDLESTON
Loki wasn’t in that i, either.

COX
But nosotros’re as well at the mercy of the manager and the script. When you’ve got a not bad script, at that place’s no trouble, that gives you all the mystery that y’all need to create the part that you want to create. When you have a piece of shit, and we’ve all done shit and nosotros know what nosotros take to do to make shit work, we have to compensate and information technology’s non very satisfying.

ISAIAH
In that location’due south not a world where you accept it and you make it something where it feels more satisfactory?

JACKSON
There is that earth. Merely it’s more than work.

COX
Harder work.

JACKSON
But you get to a indicate where if a director says some shit to you lot, you go, “I’m not going to do that because that’s not what you know I would do.” And that sounds like one of those, “Well, my character wouldn’t do that.” And it’s not that. It’s merely that I don’t get to go to the editing room with you. I’ve done what I wanted to practice and you go to the editing room and if yous want me to exercise something different, you’re going to sentinel the thing yous want to watch first, and if I don’t give information technology to yous, you have to do what I did.

COX
I think where nosotros, as actors, get completely underestimated is our literate sense. We are actually, surprisingly, intuitively literate. We know near bailiwick, verb and object. We actually practice. Nosotros deal with that every day. And a lot of directors haven’t a fucking clue about that. They’re concerned about a visual matter, which is office of it.

JACKSON
“Frame composition.”

COX
But they don’t understand what the meat of the task is, and it’due south in the script. If you don’t have a script, y’all’ve got nothing.

Tom, I wanted to get back to the original question nigh your comfort level when Curiosity approached you about making a Loki serial. What assurances did yous need?

HIDDLESTON
Having played Loki for half-dozen movies, doing the show, it was a risk in a way, like what you (to Isaac) were saying. I was similar, “I just don’t want to break it.” But as well, in that location was this extraordinary opportunity to break him open, take him away from all the things that people knew he was associated with, away from his brother, away from his begetter, away from his home, and put him through this kind of Kafkaesque nightmare where he’south confronted with all his cycles of terrible, destructive behavior. And to show this very together, controlled character who’due south always thinking 10 steps ahead every bit completely vulnerable and full of doubtfulness, and and then build him back up through the story, was an amazing gift.

ISAIAH
Do you arroyo each grapheme the same? Similar, a lot of you have played superheroes, is [the approach] different at all?

HIDDLESTON
If you stood outside it for too long and thought nearly what it looks similar in the earth, I find information technology just too terrifying. You just footing information technology in what you know. So, when I first started playing Loki, I was like, “OK, he’s a son. I know what that is. He’s a brother. I know what that is. He’s got all this internal kind of pain but he’southward masking it with something. I know what that is.” Y’all find your own manner through it. You build the mask, equally it were, and and then you fill the mask with life.

ISAIAH
You observe the human parts of information technology. I feel similar that’due south what I did for Magic. I couldn’t play this icon. I had to meet how to play a kid at 20 years old and figure out what that looks similar.

KEATON
That’south very smart.

JACKSON
Did you lot watch [Magic’due south] Apple tree serial?

ISAIAH
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

JACKSON
It was kind of out there, right? (Laughter.) To exist that big a personality when you’re that young.

ISAIAH
Yeah, at 14, xv you’ve got grown men coming up to you calling you Magic. That’south crazy.

JACKSON
Or to have the principal of the school coming to you to tell you you’re in accuse of the racial unrest at the school. Like, “Have intendance of it.”

ISAIAH
And so be similar, “Cool.” What confidence does that have in yourself to be similar, “I got this? Or maybe I don’t, but I’m going to figure it out.” It’south a fun part.

Oscar, your


Scenes From a Marriage


co-star, Jessica Chastain, has said she doesn’t desire to go to equally nighttime a place as the show required ever again. Do you lot experience the aforementioned way? And take your own
boundaries shifted over fourth dimension?

ISAAC
Before, I’d be like, “What limb do I take to cutting off to make this scene 3 per centum better? I’ll do it.” Only I call up that information technology’s well-nigh inspiration. The whole reason procedure exists is to inspire, and sometimes yous don’t need a wild process to exist inspired by something. Sometimes the words themselves will practise it. Sometimes the graphic symbol is enough. Sometimes the situation is so harrowing that that’s enough to inspire a whole history of a graphic symbol. And sometimes you’ve got to go, “OK, what did he consume for breakfast?” in order to try to inspire some imagination and some sense of truth, or some emotional, interesting thing. But boundaries are becoming more than of import for me now. I take kids, and time is the most valuable article. And I call back with
Scenes From a Marriage, the scenes themselves, that was what was so harrowing about it, non and so much the character. And I recall I took information technology for granted a fleck, and it did get-go to live in at that place a little likewise much.

What does that look like?

ISAAC
I just got a piffling chip down, I recall. As well, it mirrored a lot of things in my own life. Literal things, like I’d be reading a bedtime story to the young actress that’due south a 5-year-old with a little bunny lamp and and so get home, arrive just in time to sit in the bed with the aforementioned verbal bunny lamp and read a story to my 5-year-old. And it just starts to fuck with your head. Going back, I probably would’ve been a little more mindful most [having] clearer boundaries. And the truth is, fifty-fifty if it wouldn’t have been quite as real or skilful, I’m OK with that. I’m getting meliorate with that idea that I don’t take to cut off a limb just to make information technology slightly improve.

KEATON
But what y’all figure out is yous don’t have a choice. You say, “I’m going to cruise on this i.” Beginning of all, information technology’s impossible. Y’all go there and the work’s the same, man. Fifty-fifty if y’all’re going to practise a 15-second advertising for Vaseline, you lot say, “OK, man, I’m all in.” Because for that minute, I don’t know how to not be all in, non because I’thousand and then fucking groovy, because I probably have a fear of lying down, of going, “Well, don’t exist a dick. Do the work.” Yous know what I mean? Every fourth dimension I call up I’m going to prowl on this i, I tin can’t. Yous tin can fight it all you want, just it’s in yous somewhere.

JACKSON
Yep, yous retrieve, “Piece of cake. I got this.” So you get there and before yous know it, y’all’re pissed at the fucking director because information technology’s taking also long to do some shit and you’re like, “Goddammit, this is of import.” (Laughs.)

ISAAC
That’s like what the late, great Neb Hurt said to me. He was similar, “Before every accept, I tell myself, ‘Yous’re going to die.’” And then …

COX
He did. (Laughter.)

ISAAC
And eventually he did, but he knew it. He reminded himself earlier every take, “This is my run a risk to be live. I have to be alive.”

Almost of you are at points in your careers where you tin can be picky. What are the easy nos?

COX
I’ve just done a affair where I had to be nude.

And?

COX
I had a body double.

KEATON
Really?

COX
I’m 76, for Christ’south sake. Heed y’all, the guy who was … oh, I shouldn’t say annihilation. (Laughs.) But that was something where I thought, “I don’t know.” I kept saying to the director, “Practice I really have to be nude?” And not only am I supposed to exist nude, just I’thou too supposed to have an erection.

KEATON
Oh, in that location you go. In that location’s some acting.

JACKSON
On cue? Pw. (Laughter.)

COX
I was working with Lisa Kudrow and Edie Falco, and I said, “Permit their reaction tell you what happened.”

KEATON
And if they’re weeping, then you lot know. (Laughter.)

JACKSON
That’due south where your experience comes in, on things like that. I think the biggest departure, at least in the movie concern, [happened] once film stopped existence used. Information technology’s a whole other business organization. I work with kids at present who have no idea how much it costs to make a moving-picture show, because they don’t take to transport a motion-picture show out to be processed every day or go to dailies the next day and promise that your pic came out all right because there’s no monitors.

HIDDLESTON
Was there a greater sense of stakes when the camera was rolling?

KEATON
That’s a really good question.

HIDDLESTON
Because you know when it’due south digital, yous can keep the camera running, reset, do 3 in a row. But when at that place was film in the photographic camera, did you feel that elevation of, similar, “OK, we’re going at present, we don’t have rolls and rolls of picture show out the back.”

COX
Well, it depends on the director. I hateful, if y’all work with somebody like David Fincher, who does 38 takes, he’s simply noticed the acting by have 12, and by then the actors are saying, “What the fuck’southward going on here?”

JACKSON
“What’s actually wrong?”

COX
Marker Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards had that trouble on
Zodiac. They couldn’t believe it. We’d go through 38 takes and they kept maxim, “What’southward happening?” I’d say, “He doesn’t notice yous until take 12.” And and so he says, “What’s happened to the actors?” Well, they’re bored. (Laughter.)

Unfortunately, we’ve come to the end of our time, so hither’s my concluding question: What’s the part that you haven’t yet played that you’d notwithstanding actually beloved to get a shot at?

ISAIAH
I want to play a menstruation king similar Mansa Musa. I desire to give a big speech to the unabridged kingdom.

KEATON
I want to play a queen.

HIDDLESTON
And I’ll play the fool. At that place’due south always a fool in the king’southward courtroom.

ISAAC
I think we’re making a movie correct now.

COX
I just want to laugh more. I’m fed up with drama. I really am. When I switch on the tube, I’m looking for a laugh, especially at my age, when the end is nearer than the beginning.

KEATON
Can I say something?

COX
Mm-hmm.

KEATON
Fuck off. (Laughter.)

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in the June 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.