Best Of: Kate Hudson / Stellan Skarsgård

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Today, Kate Hudson. She's up for an Oscar for her role as Claire, and the film 'Song Sun Blue', starring opposite Hugh Jackman, as one half of Lightning and Thunder, a Neil Diamond trippy band, and she can sing.

We'll also hear from Swedish actor, Stella and Skarsgard. He's won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film 'Centimental Value'.

“He'll talk about his many roles over the years”

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My first guest is Kate Hudson.

She's up for an Oscar for her role as Claire in the film "Songsung Blue," starring Opposite Hugh Jackman, as one half of Lightning and Thunder, a meal diamond tribute ban. Here they are together, singing Neil Diamond's 1971 hit, Solomon. It folks could see you just started singing, as you were listening to yourself.

Such a joyous song. Yeah, yeah. Kate Hudson landed the role of Claire Sardina after Hugh Jackman first saw her, singing on CBS Sunday morning. He had already committed to the movie, and he was so taken by her performance that he texted director Craig Brewer and said,

"I think I just found your Claire." She was on TV promoting her debut album "Glorious," which she began writing during the pandemic. And while Hudson is primarily known for acting, as I was preparing for this interview, I was struck by just how often she's used her voice over the years,

singing on screen and nine performing cinema, Italiano, and on television in Glee, where she played the demanding dance instructor, Cassandra July.

This latest Oscar nomination for Best Actress comes 25 years after she first earned a

nod for playing Penny Lane and Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous." From there, she became one of the most recognizable romantic comedy stars in the 2000s, starring in films like Hada Luzegai and Ten Days and Bride Wars. Most recently, she starred in the Knives Out sequel Glass Onion and the Netflix series Running Point, about a woman who inherits ownership of a professional basketball team.

The show has been picked up for a second season. And Kate Hudson, welcome to Fresh Air and Congratulations on your Oscar nomination.

Yes, well, I just had a chance to look at this Oscar nomination luncheon. Yes. We're all of you all are on bleachers and it's like a class photo. It's almost like a graduation.

“It is. I remember it the first time. It's actually one of my favorite experiences,”

because I remember the first time feeling like, oh, you know, we all got to be in one room,

and it's really just a bunch of people who love to make movies. It's, you know, there's not a lot of other people there. It's just sort of celebrating this class, this year of movies. And when you're a part of that, it's really fun. It feels really nice. You mentioned the first time. It was in 2001 where you would nominate it

for your role as Penny Lane in almost famous. I put both of those photographs side by side when I saw those most recent photograph. I mean, you're ravishing in this red outfit and you're smiling ear to ear. You're also, you have that same energy from 25 years ago. But there's sort of a pensiveness there, and you, you know, you're the

“young kid on the block at that time. How did it feel with that 25-year separation being in that room?”

And really sitting with the fact that you're there again. Well, it feels different. I've been comparing it to like having my third baby. You soak in everything very differently. You take it in differently. And you have so much knowledge. I mean, that was one of the great things about the Oscar nomination luncheon was I've worked with two of those costume designers. I've worked with so many people in the room. I, I just, you look around so many producers. Like a reunion almost. Yeah,

the person that was in front of me is Dee Dee. She was the executive on how to lose a guy in 10 days. Like, you realize that you create a family that, that, that, that, in this industry. It's a, and like in family, you see all of it. You see the good. You see the bad. You see the ugly.

And it's an amazing, incredible dysfunctional family. Yeah. And then every once in a while, you get to

celebrate the best of the best of the year. Well, let's get into the role that you have been nominated for. Your character, Claire Sardina, she's a real person, a hairdresser from Milwaukee, who performs as a patsy client impersonator by night. And she and her husband might create a Neil Diamond tribute band called Lightning and Thunder. There every day, people with real battles, we watch them as they recognize that within themselves and each other. And in this scene,

I want to play the two of you are on a date. It's before that you're married. And you're sharing your hopes and dreams. Let's listen. More is going to be an alcoholic that I've been sober 20 years. At the other day, it was, well, they call it a sober birth thing. Happy bulleted sober birth thing.

“Here's the thing. We're subriding. You got to face up to certain truths.”

Wait a go. I need 20 years. All right. I'm not a songwriter. I'm not a sex symbol, but I just want to entertain people. And I want to make a living. I don't want to be a hairdresser. I

want to sing. I want to dance. I want a house. I want a garden. I want a cat. So here's what I'm thinking.

I need a hook. I need something bigger, I need something new. And as you put it, the stounge of pains. That was my guest Kate Hudson with Hugh Jackman in the film "Songsung Blue." What was it about Claire's arc that you felt you understood? Well, I think part of what's fun about what we get to do is that there's some things we don't understand. And we have to delve into it. And try to portray something that seems further away from your real life than

maybe other people would think. It's like there's not much about Claire's life that I really would personally be able to understand. The one thing that I do understand about Claire is her longing for love and family. Her strong desire for community and her love of music and her love of singing and performing. Everything else became about honoring her story and really trying to portray that as successfully as I could and respectfully. She has ups and downs, but I mean she

really, there's a moment where she actually loses her leg. And so you had to learn how to kind of move even your body with the idea of wearing a prosthetic. She deals with depression, ups and downs, all of those things as well. Addiction as well. You chose not to meet with the

those parts of her by not meeting her? I chose not to research her personally, right? So I

have met Claire and I've spent time with Claire and she's amazing and I love her and it was great.

So when we started filming, I did spend some time with her. But in the beginning, it was important for me and for Craig that, you know, Craig's story, you know, Craig Brewer, Craig Brewer, the director where we're making this film that is an adaptation of the documentary. And he took eight years of their life consolidated into two. And my job as an actor is to give Craig the movie he wants. His relationship

“to Claire and the family is the intimate one. And for me, I think it would distract me from being able”

to give Craig what he needed. You know, I don't want to challenge him because I had spent so much

time with Claire. I want to trust my director and what his vision is for his version of their

life story. And then Claire came to set and then we got to meet each other and hang out and I'd already done all of the work, you know, and getting to know Claire after that became the validation that we were that you were on the right track. You know, Kate in the intro, I mentioned that Hugh Jackman saw you singing on CBS Sunday morning. And I know you taking on this role, the stories much more complicated than that. But the fact that he saw you and then text it to Craig Brewer,

“the director, I think I just found your Claire, had anyone in the industry ever chosen you”

for your voice before that moment? You know, I think it wasn't about my voice as much as it is about what I was talking about. And what I was saying was talking about why I had to make an album and Hugh to speak for Hugh, you know, he would he would reiterate when he saw it. I was talking about my kids, I was talking about COVID and what happened when I was sort of reflecting on if I was going to die and my happy with my creative output. I'm very happy with myself as a mother. Like I

feel like I've hit, I've made all the right mistakes and all the all the wrong mistakes. I feel like I've done been really great when it comes to parenting. I'll tell you, Kate, it's so refreshing

“to meet a woman who says that because don't we so often like we're always stopping for a moment”

to say I'm not sure if I was a great mother. Yeah. But I like who my kids are. And so as I get to know them, I got one and a dull as I get to know him as his own man and as an adult, I'm really proud of myself for the work I put in for him and I am in it with my teenager right now in the best possible way and my young girl seven, like mom is everything to me and I'm proud of that output. Like I put a lot into that and so I could say, you know, during COVID, if this was it,

I felt confident in what I've given my kids so far, but I couldn't say that about my art and that would be my own personal sadness and regret is that I didn't share my writings as a musician. I weather people like them are not. I just really was not happy with the fact that I was in brave enough to put it out there. If you're just joining us, my guest is Kate Hudson. She's nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in song sung blue,

where she plays Claire Sardina, one half of a real-life meal-time-intribute band in Milwaukee. We'll hear more of our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is our applause. On this American life, we look for stories that are surprising and you won't hear anywhere else. Like, for example, this one astronaut and went to the moon, you know what he's not into? Space. Was it cool to float around weightless? No, no, no.

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Kate, your breakout role for which you earned your first Oscar nomination in Golden Globe when

was as Penny Lane in almost famous and I actually want to play a scene from near the beginning of the film. So the young teen journalist William played by Patrick Fuget is at the back door of a concert and the guard is not letting him in and a few young women including your character, Penny Lane come back to the back door and start talking to William. Let's listen. Honey Lane, man. Show some

“respects. Who are you with? What band? Oh, I'm here to interview Black Sabbath. I'm a journalist. I'm not a, you know.”

You're not a what? You're not a what? Not a, groupie. We are not groupies. This is Penny Lane, man.

Show some respect. Groupies sleep with rock stars because they want to be near someone famous. We're here because of the music. We are bandits. She's sort of school for bandits. We don't have intercourse with these guys. We inspire the music. We're here because of the music. She was the one who changed everything. She was the one who said no more sex. No more exploding our bodies in our hearts. Right, right. Just that's it. That was my guess today Kate Hudson in almost

famous. That is one of the most famous scenes because of course you really lay out who they are and what you do and

“what you do. We are bandits. Right, right. One of my favorite things I did this show in San Diego and”

you know, girls coming in like had these little signs that said we're where your band is and it was so cute. I loved it so much. I was like, oh, that was so fun. Yeah, Penny Lane, man. I mean, you've said that you didn't have to reach very far to get to Penny Lane. But what's a memory that you come back to the most and the filming of that that iconic move? Oh, there's a million memories. I mean, there's no most. The whole entire experience of making that film was not only

has it never repeated itself in terms of like experience and what that felt like but it was it was

so special for multiple reasons. Number one, Cameron Crowe is brilliant and an amazing person to wear amazing director to work for as an actor. Like I couldn't have asked for like how lucky was I that I got to work with Cameron Crowe. Like so young on a role that was so layered. But it was his life story. So we were all again like song sung blue. There was this very like strong intention to get it right for Cameron and everybody was in on it. We're all wanted to get it right for him. And so

that made it very different than it was six months. It was a long shoot. We all got to know each other very well. We had rock school. Like there was what's rock school? Rock school was about a month before we started shooting. The band was learning how to play all the instruments, all the songs, the fixtures and the girls were band-mates. You know, we were hanging around and we'd like, you know, get them food and like, you know, I was like bringing you know Billy, like, you know,

Billy Cruda. Billy Cruda, but we were just like hang and we'd all like smoke and live this alternate universe that we hadn't experienced yet. Kind of like method acting, preparing rock school, preparing you for the real thing. It's kind of what it was. Yeah. And we were all so young and so fun. So, you know, we were having a great time together. And then the work was intense. You know, it was big set pieces, long days, big crew. So as much fun as we were having, then we like anything else,

like it's a job. And hard, great work. You and your mother Goldie Han, you're known for your

tension about building a career following your mother? Like, did you ever have a moment of rebellion when you felt like, maybe I want to be or do something else?

Oh, as always, like a young person. Oh, I didn't, I honestly, there was nothing else to me.

I don't know. That had nothing to do with like performing. But when I say nothing else, I mean performance, like singing, dance, song dance, acting, like those, those three things were

“just like, that's what I do. Like, from very early on, if someone was like, you'd be a very good”

lawyer, I'd be like, in a movie, you just always know. Yeah. I always knew, yeah. And then when you grow up in a house with parents who are incredibly incredible performers, but like, amazing producer, my mother's an amazing producer, trailblazing producer. My dad is one of the great process of an actor I've ever witnessed, Colonel Russell. Yep, Curt Russell. Let's just call him, Curt Russell, because it's a fun name to say. I have a friend who only calls him Curt Russell,

it's really funny. No, I can't pas. Yeah. He's my pas. But his process and what I learned from my

dad growing up, I mean, he's got an incredible process of a very caring process when it comes

to storytelling. So when you grow up like that, and it says something that there's only one of us who's not an actor. You know, my other two brothers are actors. They're also very much in to storytelling, developing, writing, producing like that comes from what we were modeled as kids, which was people who really care about telling stories. That's so when you see that and you're like, oh, so fun. I mean, we were just kids making movies our whole life. I just wonder how it is to

reflect now you're in a complex actor and a multitude of other things. There's a generation that knows you and they don't even know your mom or your dad. And so for you to come up during this part, you know, with this person who is so well known as your mother, you all also look just like, you know, you look so similar to now being at a place where we could have had this entire conversation

and I never talked about your mom. You know what I mean? Like, was there ever a moment of growing

where you could see a future where that would be the case and was that ever tension for you, having a having such well-known parents and then stepping into a career like this? I never thought of

“it like that. I think because we all love each other like we so much the only thing for me that was”

really important was that I really wanted it on my own terms. So and my son, I see my son feeling similarly right now. I think that there is a responsibility to say opportunity does come when you grow up in Los Angeles. You got a lot of privileged kids who work in this industry who have a lot of parents with a lot of power and a lot of access. So to say that there's not opportunity is to be lying and but but there's something else that comes with it when you grow up in it which is

you also as an actor as a performer you have to be you have to honor the craft and be good enough to have other people actually want to watch you. So that part requires like a different type of um for the two. Right like like it's like going into it it was like okay I just want to do this on my own terms. I know that when I walk in the room everyone's going to know or maybe some of them maybe they won't. I have a different last name thank God. I was so happy about that when

I was younger to not have to walk in the room and be a Russell or a Han. It was nice to not have that be something where you know people went oh so that the pressure wasn't didn't feel as intense

“right but you know when they do know that you have to be on your game you know you can't like”

walk in and not know your lines or you can't you know which is why I worked so discipline and everything else that I did like I just wanted to do a good job and when you grow up with parents like that like there's so much modeling that they did that I take with me right like right now I look at this Oscar nomination and I look at my mother and it's a total it's an absolute

these moments are extensions of their parents and the gifts that they give but I have a mom that sees

“me sees all of that differently she knows what it is she knows what it feels like she knows the”

work that goes into it the time away from your kids that it takes she knows how deeply I miss my kids when I'm doing these things she knows all of it right and she knows that I know that that's

it she went through so there's this amazing connection that I get to have with my mom at this

time she's 80 I'm 46 like how lucky am I that I get to really share that experience with her in that way um I feel very very blessed to like have my mom and Kurt be the people that like really behind you and he'll set the model for you yeah and yeah Kate Hudson it's been a pleasure to learn more about you and to have this conversation this is so nice Kate Hudson is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film Song Sunglue Sir Paul McCartney is

the subject of a new documentary on prime video but unlike recent films this one isn't about

his years with the Beatles instead it's about his first decade without them our TV critic David

being coolie has this review yes there have been plenty of Beatles related documentaries in the past decade or so and yes I've reviewed most of them but in my defense the Beatles were a great subject musically and biographically and the best filmmakers are drawn to them Peter Jackson gave us to get back documentary mini series and the latest installment of the Beatles' anthology Ron Howard directed eight days a week about the group's touring years Martin Scorsese directed

living in the material world his two part biography of George Harrison all of them were terrific

and all of them were made by Oscar winning directors documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville

who won an Oscar for his film about backup singers 20 feet from start him has joined that club he's already directed outstanding biographies of everyone from Johnny Cash and Anthony Bourdain to Steve Martin and Fred Rogers and now prime video is premiering his latest documentary

“man on the run about former Beatles Paul McCartney and the word former is key here”

while brief art full montages encapsulate the frenzy and impact of beetle mania man on the run is focused on the decade immediately afterward the 1970s specifically it spans the period from when McCartney left the Beatles to when his former bandmate John Lennon was shot and killed. Neville conducted many lengthy new interviews with McCartney but uses only the sound virtually all the footage in man on the run is vintage so there are no

white-haired rock stars in sight but because McCartney is an executive producer and has provided a stunning amount of previously unseen private footage there's lots of fresh stuff to see here the danger of McCartney having such input though is of man on the run becoming too sanitized as a personal biography but it's not the decade covered includes McCartney announcing the breakup of the Beatles his very public musical feud with Lennon the formation of McCartney's post Beatles

band wings even the Paul is dead rumor and in these new interviews McCartney seems to be

“speaking honestly not only about what happened but how he felt about it all on the Beatles break up”

for example it was McCartney who announced it publicly but it was Lennon who already had left the group John had come in one day and said he was leaving the Beatles he said it's kind of exciting it's like telling someone you want a divorce but I was thinking what do I do now because it'd been my whole life really you know I'd had growing up going to school and then becoming the Beatles says a puzzle I had to kind of unravel pause reaction at age 27

was to retreat with his wife photographer Linda Eastman and family to a remote property he owned in Scotland in a vintage interview she recalls his out of the blue suggestion he said I've got this far I know you want like it but it was so beautiful up there away at the end of nowhere civilization dropped away that was quite a relief man on the run does rely on other

John Lennon's son Sean for example excuses Paul's stunned understated reaction to John's death

when asked by reporters Paul called it a real drag as having been in shock and John himself in an interview filmed years after the Beatles break up admits that Paul was right in hating and suing the manager that John had brought in to handle the group at the time John and Paul even attacked one another in song and in a new interview Paul is very open about how much that's stunned

“the only thing you did was yesterday was apparently out of science suggestion”

but the back on my mind I was thinking for all I ever did was yesterday let it pay long one a road another agreed we made it with Donna you John how do I sleep at night well actually quite well that same refreshing honesty extends to other key moments

the formation of his group wings and recruiting Linda as its first charter member

his jail time in Japan for bringing pot into that country even the time Lauren Michaels on Saturday night live jokingly offered the Beatles a ridiculously small check if they would reunite on his show now here it is as you can see a check made out to you dot beetles for three thousand dollars all you have to do is sing three beetle tunes she loves you yeah yeah that's a thousand dollars right there me and Linda were over to John's apartment at the Dakota he said oh this is a big show over

“he's out there in our life in my book the Beatles are the best thing that ever happened to music”

it goes even deeper than that you're not just a musical group you're a part of us we grew up with you we don't kind of excited we just go down we show up hey but it was like why you know I mean be great for them would it be great for us we've come full circle and now we're off on another journey so we just decided to just have another cup of tea forget the whole idea man on the run is more about the man than it is about his creative process but his music runs all

through the documentary and it all adds up to an impressive inspirational second act

David being coolie is fresh air's TV critic he's currently working on a book about the visual artistry of the Beatles coming up we hear from Swedish actor Stella and Scar's guard he's been

“nominated for an Oscar for his new film sentimental value this is fresh air weekend greenland has”

said it is not for sale Denmark has said it can't even legally sell greenland and whether Trump can or will or should try to control or purchase a territory that does not want to be sold is one question but on planet money we're more interested in how we even got to this moment and how we might gracefully get out of it listen to planet money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts this week on consider this president Trump says that he's thinking about a possible

strike on a run in Congress Senator Tim Kane of Virginia is moving to ensure that president cannot do that alone succeed or fail we shouldn't be at war without a vote and so members of Congress should be held accountable listen for more on consider this on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts Dave Davies has our next interview our guest today Swedish actor Stella and Scar's guard has had a long and interesting career which only seems to get more interesting with age now in his

seventies he's just earned a golden global award and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in the widely acclaimed film sentimental value from the Danish Norwegian director Joachim Trier this surge in scar's guards fortunes comes four years after he suffered a stroke which left him struggling to memorize his lines he found a workaround which we'll talk about and that enabled him to continue to play roles he'd begun and the science fiction movie series

dune and the star war spent off TV series and or as well as the film sentimental value scar's guard began acting as a teenager and has appeared in more than a hundred movies from independent european films like breaking the waves in melancholia to commercial Hollywood fair such as the hunt for red october pirates of the Caribbean and Mamma Mia he's also found time to raise eight children from two marriages five of those kids are also professional actors

of he's an Oscar winner at the award ceremony march 15th he spoke to me last week from a studio in

“London still in scar's guard welcome to fresh air thank you very much in this film sentimental”

value you play Gustav Borg he's a famous director and it's about his family relationships he's the target of a lot of anger from one of his daughters because she says he wasn't around being in the movie business can mean your way a lot and this daughter is also a successful actress herself there's an obvious parallel here to your own life i mean you're in the movie business and a lot of your children are actors i know you've been asked this a lot but to what

extent when you read this script did you identify with this character not at all it's uh he's he's from a different generation he's a different kind of father than i am of course the conflict

“between working as an artist and and combining that with with a personal life is difficult”

and those problems i have but that goes for every artist but uh i didn't think i had anything to do with it roll at all so i did the entire film as if it was a stranger i was doing but then

my my second son Gustav said to me uh after having seen the film that he liked very much that he said

to me do you recognize yourself and i went no and he said look again and even if i was at home basically eight months of out 12 i only worked four months a year since nineteen eighty nine if i was at home eight months a year i wasn't enough home for him so i started to thinking about what what it became clear to me is i mean i have eight children so i have eight different needs right uh some of some children need me a lot and some some don't need me at all so you can't get

to get it right as a parent i read that the the director you're came to your um you talked about this i guess a year before you started shooting and he kind of crafted the script for you as a story yeah he wrote it for me yeah not as a service to me but he was thinking of me when he was writing he and uh and the writer uh asking foot he he says that it was the the role was such a bad guy that he needed someone nice to do it uh so it was a it was a it was a flattering uh uh way of putting

it yeah is he a bad guy Gustav your character i don't believe in that guys no no i mean the monster that i did in uh in dune was a bad guy you might say that but uh in like human beings we have problems because they are nuanced real new real humans and they're they are they're flawed are they're they're they're sad and they're comic and they're everything right and the golf between Gustav and his daughter is is bridged as the movie eventually reaches its climax it's it's quite

well done um i wanted to talk about this stroke that you had that sort of you suffered i guess in 2022 right um if you're comfortable you just tell us what happened when this occurred well i just just got a stroke i mean my wife sort of noticed something on me and my my son who was a doctor he said that he should go to the hospital and uh it was a stroke he was uh rather mild stroke i lost uh some muscles in in my right side of my body and uh i lost something some part of my

brain uh have a bigger problem with uh if i'm presenting a long thought chain like if i'm having a political discussion or anything i mean i lose my bearing in the middle of it and just go quiet uh but other than that maybe some bad as problems but other than that i was fine well of course the the problem i was i understand it that you faced with your career was that you couldn't really learn lines as you did before and you found a way to kind of work around this

tell tell us what you did how you got there what the thing is uh i've always had difficulties learning

lines in a way because if i if i didn't sort of uh have them uh tailored to to my feelings but the the way i totally forgot lines immediately now uh and and i discovered that i i sort of was

“lying in bed in a hospital and i was trying to test myself if i could remember the lines and i”

sort of uh took a book and i read something and i closed the book and i didn't remember it

writer of of uh ander i was in the middle of that doing them i i'm i had done the first uh episodes

and i hadn't done the second season and i also had owed uh Denise Villeneuve who was going to do June 2 of a phone call and i i talked to them and i said i i i cannot remember anything any lines and uh they said don't worry we'll fix it and they said they said uh take it easy come in and do

“what you need to and uh i did and there's a lot of actors that are actually using this technique”

which is an earpiece and a and a prompter um but i found it rather difficult if you wanted to be precise in terms of of rhythm yeah and and uh of the rhythm of the scene and to me rhythm is

very important because uh you you you use it as a tool the the way the rhythm you make in the scene

and i had to have the guy the prompt to put these lines on top of of of the my fellow actor so just so we understand this i mean you have a little earpiece right and you know it's not a recording of the lines it's a live prompter who is saying these lines as you're in the scene often speaking at the same time is your fellow actors yeah that's true he has to speak at the same

“time or she has to speak at the same time as the other actor for me to be able to put the cue”

where i want right so so so he i'm listening to him and i'm listening to to the fellow actor and then i react to the fellow actor's line i don't react to the prompter but i i take the text from the prompter and say it well so it's uh it's it's it's it's quite a complicated in terms of simultaneous uh work it's it's kind of complicated but but it's it's feasible and we did it so i don't think there's any trace of uh the stroke in in my work mm-hmm are you surprised by the

tremendous response to sentimental value this fellow i mean the power of the response i am surprised by you you can't you can't anticipate that because it's fantastic i mean with the audience response it appeals to obviously everybody from children to old people because everybody has a family member or are in a relationship to some family member that is sort of reflected in the film but it's also it's a very light film it's uh it deals with with with serious problems and it deals

with them seriously and don't take them light but the film itself is very very light it's like you're light as a feather let's talk a little bit about your life here you you um i understand

you you're did your first acting as a teenager a sweetest TV series called bombee bit and me

you played a character named bondi who have i've seen a little video of this i i fortunately there was no translations so i don't know what you were saying but it's kind of like a huckleberry fin character a guy with a straw hat uh with a lot of moxley it's more or less right and it was a hit right you were well known yeah i mean we had we had it was a TV series and we had one channel to choose between everybody choose it but but but so everybody saw it so uh it was uh we became very famous

as a 16 year old but i i've done a theater before and i've done a sort of amateur theater and i've done also a professional theater before i did that okay so what did being famous at 16 i assume this meant people would recognize you on the street and that kind of thing had what effect did that have on you on your life well you can say that child actors they can either succumb through the pressure and and the sort of loss of anonymity uh you can turn out really bad

or you can survive it and it turns out pretty well and i had very very thoughtful and brilliant parents who sort of made sure that my head didn't get too big and that i was grounded uh a

“person do you remember how they did that well the pointy doubt to me how different i was from”

the my persona my public persona and and the the important thing is don't get that different between your public persona yourself too big because that's when it happens when it goes wrong right

written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and i wanted to play a clip here i mean the story people

“will remember is about these young friends in Boston who were working class guys they're kind”

of brawlers they don't have to drink at bars but one of them the Matt Damon character is a janitor and a college and is also a savant brilliant at math and whatever you stone scars guard play a math professor who want to get this brilliant young man to work with you but he's in jail because he got into a fight and punched a police officer and you've gotten the court to read a release him to study math provided he sees a therapist so in the scene we're going to hear

you have come to a psychiatrist played by robin Williams who you have a history with to see if he will agree to see the young man and the psychiatrist is is reluctant and he speaks for us let's listen

i've got a full sketch on i'm very busy it's not this boy is incredible i've never seen anything like

“it makes him so incredible jerry i've ever heard of Ramana job yeah it's a man”

lived over a hundred years ago he was in jail i'd lived in this tiny hot somewhere in India get no formal education you'd no exist in a scientific work but he came across this old mathematics and from the simple text he was able to extrapolate theories that had baffled mathematicians for years yeah continued fractions yeah he wrote it with a why he emailed it to harley yeah and he came back and it already immediately recognized the brilliance of his work

and brought him over to England and they worked together for years creating some of the most

exciting math theory ever done this is Ramana johnny's his genius was on parallel show this boy is just like that but his um he's a bit defensive and i need someone who can get through to like me hey i like you why well because you have the same kind of background what background are you from the same neighborhood you're from southy yeah poor ingenious from southy i'm going to shrink you go to before me five me yes Barry yeah Henry yeah not really sorry

please just meet with him once the way please and that's our guest still in scar scar did robbing Williams in the film goodwill hunting but was it like working with robbing Williams on this set yeah i was fantastic i mean he it was a very nice man and a very gentle man but he also he had like three brands going on at the same time wildly and and he was very funny and he was improvising he improvised every scene we had to do some extra takes because he had to get the his versions

on of his system but but the improvisation was also good for us all i mean we you had to follow him but wherever he went and also he would follow you wherever you went and everything became very different from the previous take because of robbing leading it to somewhere yeah that you didn't expect to end up but what Gus van Sandcard out of it was he got extremely vivid takes and different temperatures in the takes and he got aggression in some takes and sort of

niceness in some takes and he could cut those takes into any kind he wanted when he was editing he could take the film where he wanted did you find a challenging to to deal with that kind of fast paced improvising from robbing Williams had you done that before no i'm i'm not good at improvising yeah i'm so i did once once i was in Toronto at the film festival and Mike figures come up to me and it says still i'd like to do a movie with you yeah yeah cool and it will

be improvised in one take and that is my worst nightmare so i said yes and he's called time code

“it's a very interesting film you should see it if you if you can it says something about you”

that you pits this idea and you it kind of terrified you and you said sure let's do it that's like with mama mia well i was just gonna bring that up that's that's the musical where you sing and dance with uh Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth um did you have any singing and dancing experience no i can't sing i can't dance but you did yeah i had you and were you happy with the result the thing is that mama mia they don't need those three men to be able to sing or dance

all the girls are good at singing and dancing and and they just want three bimbosts to look

these other two men in the studio singing these songs which are songs by Abba which are you know

“not the easiest and just throwing yourselves into them and it's a lot of fun to watch yeah”

a lot of them i haven't seen them so but i mean i was terrified and we were all all three of us were

terrified of we got to that studio and we met Bjorn and Benny that had made all this all these songs

and they were very good musicians and they were so nice to us but we were so uh frightened we

“we didn't know how to get it uh started but the encouraged us and we threw ourselves into it”

we felt that they can always fix it afterwards right trust the director trust the processor

alright still in scars court thank you so much for speaking with us thank you very much she's been a pleasure still in scars guard is nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film

“sentimental value he spoke with Dave Davies fresher weekend is produced by Theresa Madden”

fresher's executive producer is Sam Brigger our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with Terry Gross I'm Tanya Mosley this week on sources and methods president trump on the brink of striking Iran what would that look like and what could go wrong one retired general told me the Iranians have more missiles than we have interceptors listen for more this week on n_p_r_'s national security podcast sources and methods on the n_p_r_ app or wherever you get your

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