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When David Thewlis was cast as wizard mentor Remus Lupin in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," it may have been surprising to indie film fans. Among arthouse audiences, the British actor is best known for his portrayal of a sadist who spouts apocalyptic prophecies in Mike Leigh's bleak drama, "Naked."
While Thewlis plays a hero in the "Harry Potter" franchise, he continues to explore the dark side of human nature in smaller pictures. His latest, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," is a Holocaust tale in which he stars as a Nazi officer whose eight-year-old son befriends a young concentration camp prisoner. The movie opens Friday in New York.
Thewlis modeled his character, named Ralph, after Rudolph Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, who raised a family while running the death camp.
Immediately after wrapping production, Thewlis began work on an installment of the BBC series "The Street," playing identical twins with not-so-identical personalities. Delving into such a different project helped him decompress.
The 45-year-old actor doubles as a novelist ("The Late Hector Kipling") and a director ("Cheeky"). He lives in Los Angeles with his girlfriend, Anna Friel ("Pushing Daisies"), and their three-year-old daughter, Gracie. Look for him as Lupin in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," on deck for summer '09 release.
Thewlis discussed the contrasts of his career last week during a press day for "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas."
Q: Were you familiar with the book before you got the script?
A: I wasn't at all. In a matter of maybe 20 minutes after finishing the script, I got in the car and went to the nearest bookshop. I read it the same day and said yes straightaway to the film.
Q: Now that you've also been writing, do you read novels in a different way?
A: Yes. If I read great books, I often reread them and try to work out why they're great. I'll read accounts of writers being interviewed, talking about how they write, what they write and when they write. I am a much more analytical reader than I used to be.
Q: (The film) did not go where I was expecting it to go. You're charmed by this boy and his story and it suddenly takes this jarring turn. It's a very uncompromising ending.
A: It's important and relevant that it does end that way and we don't have some kind of scenario where the father is redeemed and the boy learns a lesson. It had to end like that because this is the way most stories ended during this period in history. But it is hopeful in that one young boy stands up against the indoctrination and the rhetoric. He's objective enough to turn his eyes upon his father.
Q: I was waiting for Ralph to be redeemed and it didn't happen.
A: In my readings of Rudolph Hoess, he never shows any remorse nor does he apologize, but in his final letter to his children, he beseeches them not to do what he has done but to look at both sides of everything and not to listen blindly to what one is told to do. It is curious that this should be his final message to his children, but I don't find that as a redemption. I find that as him addressing posterity to try and grasp back a bit of dignity.
Q: It does humanize him.
A: He had love for his children, certainly, but he was also capable of these atrocities.
Q: In a way, it would be easier to say this person is a monster. The fact that someone is capable of doing these things and living what would appear to be a normal life, that's scarier.
A: I agree. If he was childless and a loner, we could write him off as a monster. I believe that Rudolph had a sincere love for his children and yet he was a child killer. That's scary.
Q: Did you find that after you were finished making the film, you needed to recover in a way?
A: From the day I shot the final scene, the next morning I flew to Manchester and began work on a TV film where I played twins. I die in my own arms giving myself the Heimlich Maneuver.
Q: That's a change of pace.
A: The next day I was on the rainy streets of Manchester talking to myself. Very odd.
Q: Would you say that playing a Nazi in the film was challenging compared with playing the "Naked" character, Johnny?
A: They're the two films where I've gone to the darkest place in my head over a sustained period of time. With Mike (Leigh), it's largely improvised, so you're having to come up with this stuff all the time. It wasn't something I was just learning and repeating. It was something I was having to originate. Getting into the mind of a nihilist and thinking in that way got exhausting.
Q: It can be exhausting to think negatively all the time.
A: I got to the point where I was looking at a beautiful sunrise and going, 'F--- off, the f---ing sunrise.'"
Q: Do you find with directors, like with Alfonso Cuaron, did he say he was a fan of "Naked" when you were working on "Harry Potter?"
A: Yeah. He'd seen other things I'd done. Things where I play gentler characters, like "Restoration" or "Seven Years in Tibet." "Harry Potter" was one of the easiest jobs I ever got. I didn't even have to meet Alfonso. I just got a call saying you've got this part.
Q: Did you have any reluctance with "Harry Potter," like there's a lot of baggage that goes with it?
A: I wasn't thinking about it much when I said yes, because there'd only been two films out at that time and it wasn't a huge machine like it is these days.
Q: Is your daughter too young for Harry Potter?
A: She's seen little bits of it. I switch it off when it gets scary.
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