At any point in your past, did you see this coming?
I never would have expected it. And also, to play a role that’s so physical and, at my age, to even have a role that’s available on a scale like this. I’d always wanted to make a David Lean movie. To have it come at this point in my life, I felt incredibly lucky, not only to be able to do it, but also to be able to contextualize it. I don’t think I would’ve appreciated it as much 20 years ago.
Really?
No, I just don’t think I would’ve been able to understand and to hold as much gratitude as I am and as I did throughout the process. It’s all about how you look at things. And in retrospect, yeah, we were probably cold and wet. There was a lot of physical discomfort that was temporary. But because I felt so grateful to be there, I was just so excited. I was just so joyful the whole time that I didn’t really notice any of that.
Now, a movie like this was always destined to be a smash hit, but—
[Laughs] There are no sure things, man. I think that’s where you get into trouble, being like, Well, this is a surefire hit. I’ve heard that before.
Well, at what point this summer did you realize, “Wow, this is really a phenomenon”?
I felt it when I saw it. There is that thing that can happen where you make a movie, and you feel like it’s really good, and it just doesn’t connect, and there’s just nothing you can do about that. But as the audience reactions started to come in and the critical reactions were great as well, it was like, Okay….
Chris [Nolan], the most nervous he is in the entire process, from the very beginning to the very end, is the eve of the film coming out. He’s genuinely nervous. He talks openly about it, because that is the moment that you put it out into the world and you have to live with the reaction. Ultimately, the audience decides. Once it opened and the responses were what they were, I think I felt like, We’re going to be okay. It was a big bet in the sense that it was a big budget. I’m not used to playing in that arena. The numbers that movies have to get to just to break even at that level are just so beyond the movies that I’m known for.