Beards, sheep and brotherly hate: All in a day's work for two 'Rams' actors

These two veteran Icelandic performers won the award for "the darkly comic urgency and sense of shared past with which they imbued their performances and for the graceful way in which they guided their characters from animosity to interdependence."

"I chose them because they are very different, like the characters in the film," he said. "They are different types mentally and physically."

Neither actor had worked with H᫯narson before "Rams."

"He sent me the script and said to me, 'Siggi, my friend, read the script and stop shaving,"' said Sigurj󮳳on. "I read the script and gave him a call after three hours. I said, 'I've stopped shaving now.'"

When H᫯narson began writing the script, he thought the brothers' story was "typical for Icelandic people, because we are a bit stubborn, independent. We are an island. I thought the story represented some kind of national character."

But the film has been embraced internationally -- it was Iceland's entry in the foreign language film Oscar derby and won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year.

During the production, the two actors shared a small cottage. "It was nice for us to talk to each other in the evening and then go to work in the morning and stop talking to each other," noted Sigurj󮳳on. " It helped to stay together. "

H᫯narson also wanted his actors to room together so they could relax after a grueling day's shoot -- in one scene, the actors are naked in minus-15 degree weather during a blinding blizzard.

"The film doesn't have many characters," said H᫯narson "It's mainly these brothers. It was quite a big and challenging risk to play these brothers. They were dedicated. They were ready to do anything for me."

Because the actors both live in the capital of Reykjavik, H᫯narson had them spend a lot of time with farmers and "let them learn how to get used to this agricultural life. I spent more time on this kind of practical rehearsal with sheep and animals than rehearsing the dialogue scenes."

"It was not really a cinema, but a small country theater, very primitive," said Sigurj󮳳on. "It was touching. It was the right move to premiere the movie there."

susan.king@latimes.com