- Simon Jablonski talks to the Belgian actor about macho roles, beefing up and working with Jacques Audiard for new film Rust and Bone
In Rust and Bone, Matthias Schoenaerts plays a volatile street fighter, the epitome of macho destructiveness, looking like the amalgamation of every bruiser headshot and grainy surveillance footage of some miscellaneous armed robber available. Walking into a hotel room, being greeted by the 6ft 2 sparkly blue-eyed Belgian is an equally overpowering experience, though for very different reasons. Sleeked back blond hair, a tender manner, naturally manicured from top to bottom, he better resembles a beefed up Bradley Cooper (with the veneer of sleaze scrubbed off) — less worried about having my teeth kicked in, I’m more concerned about having my pants charmed off.Though Matthias might be recognised by keen-eyed followers of Belgian cinema, Rust and Bone, directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prohpet, The Beat My Heart Skipped), will undoubtedly throw him on a worldwide stage, and next year’s Bullhead should cement his reputation. Whereas with A Prophet we’re immediately dropped into the action, Autiard slowly feeds us his story and (á la Casablanca) waits to breaking point before throwing the two leads back together and for the frayed romance to begin.Filthy, homeless and hungry, Schoenaerts’ character, Alain, makes his way to his sister’s house with his five-year-old son. Finding work as a security guard, he soon gets involved with bare fist fights at a local gypsy settlement. About the same time he has a fleeting run in with a volatile Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) after fighting outside the club at which he also works. After Stéphanie has her legs ripped off by the killer whale she has been training, she turns to Alain for help and support.Audiard has keenly sliced open the brutal potential of the male condition in his previous films to find a tender spot, and it’s no coincidence that Stéphanie’s life is flanked by Alain on one side and the most ferocious mammal on earth, the killer whale, on the other. Brilliantly, this analogy is never stated or even alluded to; the creatures are merely there on the screen to make your own connection, if indeed you so choose. Barring a Bon Iver-heavy soundtrack that’s three years the wrong side of kitsch, Rust and Bone is emotionally charged and, despite terrifying plummets, ultimately uplifting.
Simon: You’ve played a couple of these macho types, do you get hunted down for that kind of role these days?Matthias: I like to break down stereotypes, I don’t consider it a mission, it’s fun to create a character that appears to be such and such and then reveal something that is so close to everyone, so that breaks down the prejudice that you have on certain characters.Simon: Did you consider the contrast between Alain and the killer whale?
Matthias: Of course, you see to some extent that she’s taming two animals. It wasn’t something that I particularly worked on. But it’s true, my character’s pretty animalistic. When I say animalistic, I mean he reacts very instinctively to things, he doesn’t react intellectually; he doesn’t think, he just acts and reacts. That’s where the honesty comes in, because his tenderness is not a choice, he doesn’t choose to be tender as he doesn’t choose to be violent; violence and tenderness both come naturally.Simon: I’ve heard working with Jacques Audiard is quite an involved process.
Matthias: Jacques is very exciting to work with because he’s an artist, he knows how to make the story unfold through the characters. He has enormous insight in actors, he knows how to get them to a certain point of hyper sensitivity. We discussed a lot before we shot, but once we started shooting he looks for life in the instant, the here and now; lets not talk about what we talked about a week ago, let’s talk about how we can be instinctive about it, let’s listen to one another and react, just be in the fucking moment and bring it to life.
Simon: Has the film lifted your career since Rust and Bone played at Cannes?
Matthias: Of course, I noticed this, a lot of people now have an awareness that I’m an actor as well, so that’s very nice because it opens up a lot of opportunities to work with other great filmmakers, so I’ve everything to be excited about.
- Simon: Did you have to undergo a lot of physical preparation for the role?Matthias: Yes, I had to gain weight, I had to gain a belly… I had to start boxing. For Bullhead I gained 30 kilos because it had to look like artificially built muscle so I prepared physically for a year and a half, which was exhausting. I look back at it and I think ‘Jesus Christ, what the hell’. That was a programme of working out twice a day, six times a week and eating eight times a day for almost a year and a half. That was probably the most intense preparation I’ve ever done so far.
Words Simon Jablonksi
Rust and Bone is in cinemas from Friday 2 November
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