Jude Law Revisits His Most Memorable Films, From 1997 To Now

It doesn't get better than that.

Problem is, it was only my like third or fourth film,

so I kind of thought that's what filmmaking was all about.

I've never repeated it in 25 years.

Hi GQ, I'm Jude Law

and I'm here to discuss my work past and present.

[upbeat music]

Gattaca, my first foray into Hollywood.

Gattaca is set in a world

where you can have your unborn children

be genetically modified,

and if they're not, they're sort of looked down upon.

And those that can afford, you know,

to get the sort of A++ alpha alpha children tend to prosper.

And I play Guy who's super, super, super successful,

got all these amazing genes,

but he comes second in the Olympics,

and so his sort of life crashes into this self-pitying,

alcoholic kind of haze.

His blood is used by someone

who is seen as genetically invalid to access Gattaca

which is a space station for space exploration.

I think it was once voted by scientists

as the most sort of accurate science fiction film.

And the themes, I mean, I think are timeless actually.

I think the scene that really stuck with me the most,

there's a scene when I have to get upstairs,

I have to drag myself up a spiral staircase

to continue the masquerade.

My character and Ethan's character are pulling off,

getting that right and filming the whole ascent was physical

and really hard work, but kind of extraordinary.

[tense music]

[hands thudding]

[alarm blaring]

I guess he's not home.

[Jerome] Hello?

I'm here to see Jerome Morrow.

[Jerome] Yes, that's me. Come up.

[Jerome clattering]

And then at the top of the stairs

I got to do a scene with Uma Thurman, which was wonderful.

She's Uma Thurman, she's brilliant.

[upbeat music]

The Talented Mr. Ripley.

In The Talented Mr. Ripley I played Dickie Greenleaf.

He was a delicious character to play.

He was a playboy wannabe jazz musician.

Living life very much in the moment.

A little shallow, egotistical.

Dickie Greenleaf?

Who's that?

It's Tom, Tom Ripley.

Tom Ripley?

We were at Princeton together.

Okay. Did we know each other?

Hello.

Well, I knew you, so I suppose you must have known me.

Princeton's like a fog.

It was an extraordinary experience

again, working with this young cast,

and we were all in the hands

of the brilliant Anthony Minghella

who was hot off The English Patient.

We filmed all over Italy,

we were in Venice and Rome, the Cinecitta Studios,

and then in Ischia and Procida, these two little islands.

It doesn't get better than that.

Problem is, it was only my like third or fourth film

so I kind of thought that's what filmmaking was all about.

I've never repeated it in 25 years.

I learned to play the saxophone for it

with the great Clyde Barker

who is an amazing trumpet player,

and he put together his own band

and I got to perform with them

and then sing with Matt and Fiorello.

And there's the great scene

when Philip playing Freddie Miles starts riffing on Tom

who's spying through one of the windows

of me and Gwyneth who had gone downstairs

to kiss and cuddle.

[tense music]

And Tom starts watching and I remember watching

or listening to Philip riffing, How's the peeping, Tom?

How's the peeping?

Tommy, how's the peeping?

[tense music]

Tommy, how's the peeping?

He says it with such mischief and glee.

[upbeat music]

Closer.

What was interesting about Closer

was I'd seen the play in London and in New York

and I knew it really well.

And obviously it lent itself pretty immediately

to a film adaptation.

A wonderful cast and the great Mike Nichols,

who was just the most beautiful human raconteur.

It was a really interesting experience

because almost all the scenes are just two-handers,

a story of two couples together and then apart,

and then they swap couples, and then they split up again

and return to the original couple.

It really only takes place on the days they meet

and the days they split up.

I play Dan who is a wannabe writer,

he writes obits in a paper.

I think he feels unfulfilled.

I don't think his ego's had a lot of attention,

it's been battered a bit by his lack of success.

I thought you'd gone. I forgot this.

So he's a dermatologist.

Can you get more boring than that?

Obituarist.

Failed novelist, please.

I was sorry about your book.

Thanks. I blame the title.

It was a challenging part to play.

He always seemed to be desperate in some capacity.

[upbeat music]

The Young Pope.

The Young Pope was a really curious

kind of groundbreaker in many ways

because it was one of the first times

a pretty serious auteur of the cinema

had decided to make a series.

I was in the world of Paolo Sorrentino,

and he has such interesting side stories and themes.

I remember Paolo always saying to me,

Don't reveal that yet.

We're only in the foothills of the story,

because the natural arc of a film over let's say 90 minutes

or maybe a little more, you kind of naturally know

I think if you've done enough of them

when you need to be revealing

or showing certain sides of your character.

Television when you've got nine hours,

it's a very different terrain.

We shot it in Rome, in the Vatican,

and then we shot in Venice,

and little palazzos just outside of Rome

in a town called Viterbo.

And Paolo on the back of the success of The Great Beauty

really had the keys to Rome.

So they were opening up

gardens, and private squares, and palazzos

that no one had ever filmed at before.

Blessed Father, this is a very useful object,

but only if you open it.

[bells chiming]

[gentle music]

But see, it can be perfectly useful even when it's closed.

And we got an amazing backstage tour of the Vatican,

which was really extraordinary.

[upbeat music]

Firebrand.

Firebrand is a film that's just come out.

In it I play Henry VII, he's in his later years,

in fact, he's pretty much on his deathbed.

And he was in his final marriage

and it was the marriage that was really interesting to us.

And the filmmaker, Karim Ainouz, Brazilian filmmaker

making his first English language film.

And it was looking at

how this extraordinary woman survived this man,

this monster who had beheaded two of his wives,

driven one to madness and sickness.

And what we discovered making it

was really it's a domestic drama about a man and a wife.

He just happens to be King of England.

[Henry] She deserted her husband, her children.

She was a fanatic preaching-

Her death is on your soul.

What?

[hawk screeching]

James, James! Take the hawk.

I'm sorry. What?

I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me.

She was a childhood, friend from childhood.

[Katherine mumbling] [Henry shushing]

[hawk screeching]

Forgive me. Forgive me.

Don't question us.

I mean, I feel that this is highlighting him

for what he was, which is a murderer,

and a bully, and a tyrant.

What was interesting to me was to try and understand

how that behavior comes about.

And, you know, if you've been told since the age of 12

that you are second only to God, you know,

your way is the only way,

that you are also protecting the powers that be,

which in theory are really a land grabbing gang.

You know, then you're deluded.

There's a famous story about when he was looking

for his third wife or fourth wife,

word went out and this Italian princess said,

No, I only have one neck.

You know, because he was known that,

you know, he was a wife killer.

It's odd, in English history,

he's kind of slightly jovialized,

but in truth, you know, he was a monster.

With Henry, there was obviously all these books

that I could draw from,

but then in the end, I also just wanted him to be a man.

So it was sort of important

that I made that crossover myself.

And Karim creates a very sensory set.

He wanted it to really feel brutal.

Henry's legs were actually rotting,

so you could smell him from three rooms away.

He absolutely stank.

Karim and I worked with a perfumier

who came up with this disgusting smell that we used

so that, you know, he's sort of repellent to be around.

[upbeat music]

The Order.

The Order is based on a true story.

In 1983, there was an investigation

into several bank robberies

that had taken place in and around Idaho.

What these agents worked out

was that in fact they were using the money to build an army.

It tells the story of a group of white separatists

raging a race war against the United States government.

[Glasses Wearer] We don't advocate

any of our members breaking any laws.

[Terry] But some do.

Well, you must understand that.

Being in a cult like the federal government.

The agents we've amalged into one character,

who I play Terry Husk,

who's a sort of weathered exhausted special agent.

He's gone to Coeur d'Alene really not to retire,

but to kind of have an easy life.

And in a way we wanted him to be a metaphor for us.

You know, we all, I think 10 years ago,

wouldn't have believed the sort of political climate

that we're in currently

or indeed the divisiveness of society.

Like us, Husk is sort of

taking his eye off the ball slightly

and suddenly he's actually got the biggest job ahead of him.

Can he catch this gang led by Bob Mathews,

who was a very charismatic but very poisoned young man.

And Nick Hoult plays Bob Mathews.

Zach Baylin, the wonderful writer.

He's written films like King Richard.

He gave us the script

and it seemed, you know, sadly relevant.

He was writing it around the time

that Capitol Hill was attacked.

There were guys there that had a copy

of the The Turner Diaries on them.

So there are these extraordinary links really

to what's going on across the world.

And we were so fortunate to get Justin Kurzel to direct it.

I've never worked on something where the skillset

and passion of a director is so well suited to the story.

Being a period, it's in the 80s.

He wanted it to look sort of saturated

and bleached by the sun.

We didn't have a lot of time, we didn't have a lot of money,

and he gives it incredible scale.

Really led from the front

and elevated the piece on a daily basis.

Thank you for watching. See you next time.