Tom Sturridge didn't get to rehearse for The Man I Love because of director Ira Sachs' "unique" method of working.
The 40-year-old actor appears as Dennis - the boyfriend of AIDS-suffering theatre performer Jimmy George (Rami Malek) - in the new movie and explained how the filmmaker didn't want to discuss the character or dialogue until they had started filming.
Speaking to Variety at the Cannes Film Festival, Sturridge said: "The way Ira works, which is sort of unique in my experience, it that he doesn’t like to discuss the film at all. He doesn't like to rehearse. To the point where in a camera test or lighting setup before we start shooting, if you say the lines, he will stop. He’s allergic to hearing it before film is rolling, because he wants everything to be discovered on camera."
The Sandman actor explained that the approach shows the level of "trust" that Sachs has in actors and revealed that the director gave out plenty of material to help him prepare for the part.
Sturridge said: "I don’t know if it gives you more freedom, but I think that it gives you faith of the trust that he has. Because it is a profound leap of faith to be confident enough to know that you’re going to get what you want in the, whatever it is, 48 minutes that you shoot one set up, having had no conversation or preparation about it before.
"But equally he gave us an enormous amount of… I find the word research so ugly… but an enormous amount of films and literature and photographs and videos to watch and absorb beforehand, so it’s not that we didn’t go deep into it. He just doesn’t like to talk about literal scenes."
However, Sturridge and Malek were able to do some preparation without rehearsing as they already knew each other prior to working on The Man I Love.
The Boat That Rocked star explained: "Well, we knew each other beforehand, through friends. And it meant that we could meet up, basically. The moment we found out we were going be working on this we met in a pub in London.
"We didn’t talk that much about the film, but I think that we tried to find a way of having a sort of a physical language that you’ve been with someone for many years. As you say, there’s that intimacy and silent connection. It’s difficult to make that leap of imagination immediately on a set, you do need to figure out how that intimacy expresses itself."
Sturridge added: "There wasn’t a kind of imagined trick to that. It was just spending a lot of time together, not discussing the film particularly, but just being comfortable with our physicality, learning how our bodies move, understanding how to communicate in a way that wasn’t overt."
