FJ-HRN-768

A01. HRN-768
In: 02.00.44 Out: 02.02.48
Sound bite: Christian Oliver
It was a dream come true. It was the biggest and most valuable learning experience. Or one of the most valuable learning experience out of my career because I really…what really impressed me the most is really that, what we have just done on that little tiny movie, Subject Two, amongst friends in a very intimate, creative intimate environment with like nine people in a hut, we had to seclude ourselves at nine thousand feet. Soderburgh does with like thousands of people, with like a studio. I mean he still is, comes from an intimate place. He comes from an independent make and he does them still. He does one for the studio and does one for himself. I mean I don’t want to speak for him but its in, they are not much different. I mean they are. The way he treats actors, the way he treats the crew, the way he treats everything, the environment he puts you in, it’s the same. It is a very great and trusting environment. It was just amazing to…to be able to work on such a level and when Cate Blanchett walks into a room its…there is not a lot of acting required. I just had to keep slapping myself going like, stop watching her, you are in a scene with her, start doing something. It was like wow, she is just amazing and she can turn it on like that and I was…I really caught myself next to the camera going, dude, you are staring, you are watching her, you are in the scene with her so it was so exciting and she is such a wonderful actress and she is so giving, I felt part of it, I was really accepted as one of them and it was great to feel like that. George is obviously ridiculous on set, he is the most passionate actor.

A03. HRN-768
In: 02.07.16 Out: 02.10.31
Sound bite: Christian Oliver
Because Cate is actually hiding me and nobody really knows. She says Emil is dead, he died because she is trying to protect me because everyone is trying to find me. The Russians are trying to find me, the Americans are trying to find me and they are trying to find me for different reasons but the main reason is that I worked for a very important scientist and I was his number cruncher and I keep all of his secrets. I know everything and I am the one who wants to talk. I am the one who wants the world to find out what really happened and I’m not the one who wants to go to American and start a new life and forget because that is what happened to some of these people. A lot of these people you know. A lot of people. It is about the underground…what is so appealing about this movie is that it is not a war movie. It is post-war. It is about what happens after. Everything is destroyed and all of these people’s lives are destroyed and everybody is trying to pick up the pieces and Emil and Lena are trying to pick up their pieces, their marriage and they are trying to see if there is still anything they can pick up. They had a very very tough relationship and going into that, it was a lot of research going in on that on my own part. Researching that era, researching, filling in the blanks because Lena and Emil have such a tremendous back-story. Their marriage and what went wrong in their marriage and maybe kids, no kids, she’s Jewish, he is a German scientist who loves science more than anything and his predicaments and the great thing is that Steven Soderbergh put us in the right frame and give us our parameters, he gave us…everyone got a memo where he kind of described what he set out to do and how crazy it really is what he wants to do and he gave us DVDs from Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Maltese Falcon, Notorious. All of these great old movies. And when I got that package, this is crazy. I can’t believe I am going to be part of this. And then you start seeing George and you are like wow, he is perfect in that kind of movie, Cate, wow. I tried to start and build on that, on the history of what really went down in 1945 post-war Germany. And I started watching movies that were made in Germany. Movies that were made outside of Germany. And it was quite interesting and it fit my character but at the end of it all, the most important thing I had to build was my relationship with Lena, my wife and how did we get to where we were. It was just in shatters, pieces and almost pieces you couldn’t put back together.

A05. HRN-768
In: 02.15.03 Out: 02.16.58
Sound bite: Christian Oliver
Well I think that is the most important thing for me that I do have a great life outside of Hollywood and I could drop all my stuff and live on an island and be a scuba diving instructor if everything fails before I let this town really really get to me. But I have enough passion in me and I have enough fight in me that I want this very very bad and I want this. I think this is a great business and I love what I do. The acting part of it. I get to explore. I get to grow as a person and I get to become a better human being in a sense and for me, it is still finding out so much about myself and unveiling, stripping off all those protective layers and we are taught to bring on. Because in our daily lives if we run around all vulnerable we get slaughtered more or less. But as an actor I feel like I am allowed to constantly let go of those protective shields and explore more about myself and humanity and the people that I live with and therefore I am a fan I can not let go. I will stay who I am and try to be as truthful to that as possible. But I realize I don’t need to sacrifice myself to be a part of this. (talks) I realize I don’t need to sacrifice myself and who I am to be part of this and to live like this. So it is possible to have both.

A07. HRN-768
In: 02.18.42 Out: 02.22.53
Sound bite: Christian Oliver
The funny thing is…the thing I really enjoyed in my career so far is that the stage has always found me and pulls me back. It is great, I mean I go to class all the time, I still do active, I’m always, I feel it is an ongoing process, its like going to the gym. If you stop going to the gym, you’ll see. And if you stop building that acting muscle or that…it is going to show and I definitely do that all the time but the funny thing in the last couple years is that the stage has found me in certain way. In Germany I met this amazing amazing conductor, he asked me to…??? Is his name and he asked me to participate in his yearly Thinka festival. And I did a soldier’s Tale. Which is like an Igor Schavenski which is an amazing amazing story and I never really heard of it and he brought it to me and said I want you to perform it at my festival and so I took five months out and I did it and studied it and I did all the parts in it with a whole like musicians and everything. It was amazing in Spain. It was fun, it was like wow, this is all…this is so different than the film medium. On the stage it is do or die, right then and there. And you have immediate response and then it is gone. I did it years ago and then it was gone and I was like wow, it was just for just a couple hundred people, a couple thousand people, it was so unique and so intimate and that is where I draw my inspiration to you know, when you go to plays here, I mean LA has a lot of good stuff to offer. Unfortunately we are so spoiled that we have to travel to other countries or cities to go to the theatre all the time. I mean New York, Chicago, I mean all I did in Chicago this summer, I did an opera, which I as an actor never thought I would do an opera. I love the opera. I go to see the Dorothy Channel Pavilion to go see the opera because it is inspiring but I sit there in the last row and I go oh my god how great would it be to be on stage with an opera singer and my agent called and said, Christian, you wouldn’t be interested in doing an opera would you? Are you crazy, of course I would but I can’t really sing. And there was this amazing opera, Mozart, Abduction from the Sirrallio. One of the lead guys, you can’t really say lead guy in the opera, but one of the guys is an all speaking part and it is weird in a way because around you is the cast with these amazing voices and there you are and I wanted to start singing every other second I wanted…to belt it out but it was such an amazing experience for me, as an actor, to be on stage with such great voices and such talented people in an opera. It was a 1500 seat theatre in the middle of Millennium park in Chicago, the Chicago Opera Theatre. It was a great great experience for me to be on stage in such a great artistic environment. It was really challenging to me to really give it my all and have these people sing these amazing arias to me. It was mind-blowing. You know have an opera singer as close as you right now and start singing a love arias in nine minutes and you have to act with her and interact and not really say anything and it was powerful, it was powerful stuff. And I hope that in my career I would be able to find more of those challenges and those kinds of experiences because for me it is about to be to constantly challenge myself and find new avenues and find new material to explore and enjoy the process of that.