The 11 movies Callum Turner couldn’t live without
There have been a lot of people lately talking about how only posh actors get to be in movies, or to be in successful bands, or get to dedicate the time it takes to ‘make it’ due to the pressures of the cost of living. But one man that can’t be levelled at is Callum Turner, who has gone from a Hammersmith council estate to one of the most sought-after young actors in the business.
Turner has had quite a ten years or so having started off as a model, then doing a few short films and strangely a French band’s music video opposite Jake Gyllenhaal. Then he received acclaim for his work in a 2012 ITV series, which led to his being cast in the lead role in Deliverance director John Boorman’s Queen and Country.
After that, he did a mix of film and TV and landed a big movie with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018 before reprising his role in the next movie in the series four years later. He then went back to TV, albeit on a much bigger scale, by teaming up with producer George Clooney for The Boys in the Boat and the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg epic Masters of the Air.
Recently, Turner took his place in the Criterion closet and showed an incredibly deep knowledge of world cinema in picking out his favourite movies of all time, spanning several decades and directors from all over the globe.
He kicked off his list with the French director Agnes Varda, saying, “I watched Cleo from 5 to 7 and Oh my God, every scene is like a painting, just such a beautiful movie.”
And he stayed in France for his next pick, Au Hasard Balthazar, the 1966 crime drama directed by Robert Bresson, explaining, “This is about a donkey. And you really just fall in love with the journey and want to look after the donkey. It’s one of the most extraordinary movies I’ve ever seen.”
Turner then switched his attention to the 1970s and selected Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, exclaiming: “Man, this is my favourite film. I’ve got about five pictures of Jack Nicholson in my house. You should watch that if you haven’t watched that.”
Sticking with the ‘70s, Turner then grabbed the early Martin Scorsese movie Mean Streets, saying: “This is the movie that made me want to be an actor, I’m not even joking. The music and the atmosphere and the energy, and everything. This is pure.”
Next, he picked out the Belgian Dardenne brothers’ The Kid With a Bike from 2011, entreating the pair to call him to work with them and adding: “I watched that in the cinema when it came out and I was doing my first professional job, and I thought ‘that’s what I want to do’”.
Explaining that his next pick, The Cranes are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov, formed part of his research for the HBO series Masters of the Air, Turner said: “I watched these Russian war movies like this, The Ascent and (his next pick) Come and See… Holy shit. This is something. This is probably the craziest movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Turner then selected a film by Mike Leigh, 1993’s Naked. He said, “I worked with him on my first film, and I was like, ‘Tell me all about Naked.’ There’s a speech about the universe and God that’s just mind-blowing.”
The next film Turner chose was The Leopard, directed by Luchino Visconti, with Turner saying, “Probably the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life. Just the pacing. The story. It’s really something else.”
Turner’s penultimate closet pick was Federico Fellini’s La Strada, before he rounded things off with Nothing but a Man from 1964, which he hadn’t yet seen but said, “I’ve heard great things about it. I’d love to watch it.”
Callum Turner’s 11 favourite films:
- The Complete Films of Agnes Varda (Agnes Varda)
- Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
- Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson)
- Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese)
- The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)
- The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov)
- Come and See (Elem Klimov)
- Naked (Mike Leigh)
- The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
- La Strada (Federico Fellini)
- Nothing but a Man (Michael Roemer)
