The actor Christopher Nolan called “extremely demanding”
Ever since his debut feature film Following arrived in 1998, Christopher Nolan has been delivering some of the most mesmerising and philosophically captivating movies in recent cinema history. Following up with the likes of Memento, The Dark Knight, Interstellar and Dunkirk, Nolan is simply one of the modern greats.
Of course, Nolan’s films would be nothing without their spectacular acting performances and over the years, the director has drawn excellent efforts out of the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Cillian Murphy, the latter of which has worked with Nolan on six occasions, showing that the two clearly have a deep respect for one another.
But there’s another actor who has worked with whom Nolan has great admiration for, even if he also admits that he can find him rather “demanding”, although not entirely in a bad way. Nolan finally got his chance to work with Leonardo DiCaprio on the 2010 science fiction film Inception.
“Leo is someone I had been trying to work with for years,” Nolan once told NDTV Movies. “I’d met him many times, and nothing had come together, but I finally managed to convince him with this one, and he brought an incredible amount of emotional focus to his character.”
As one of the best actors in the business, there must have been at least some trepidation in Nolan to working with DiCaprio, especially seeing as he had been so keen to work with him for so many years. Nolan also admitted that DiCaprio’s demanding nature actually helped to make Inception a better film.
“He is extremely demanding, which actually helped me work out in Inception wherein there is emotional importance in the story,” he said. DiCaprio had also expressed his admiration for Nolan and said that Inception may have overly confused audiences, but the director himself had the talent to actually pull it off, leading to box-office records and rave reviews.
DiCaprio told the Los Angeles Times: “Complex and ambiguous are the perfect way to describe the story. But that is what Chris Nolan specialises in. He has been able to convey really complex narratives that work on a multitude of different layers simultaneously to an audience and make it entertaining and engaging throughout.”
It sounds like the coming together of the equally iconic actor and director was a dream come true for both of them, and they delivered one of Nolan’s best films through his talents as a filmmaker amplified by DiCaprio’s emotional talents and demands.
