The man with the most difficult job on the movie?
Sean Harris is a relative unknown to the acting world, having only acted in one movie prior to 24 Hour Party People, Discovery of Heaven (soon to be released Stephen Fry flick). He's been busy since however, and will be popping up in forthcoming movies such as Nicotine Yellow and Wet Work.
And for his first job in a major film, Sean gets the chance to play one of Manchester's most revered heroes, Ian Curtis, lead singer and songwriter in Joy Division. For a singer who was so unique in every nuance and expression, it's no mean feat to try and pull off the role. Appropriately, Sean is himself a quiet, intense person, but we still caught up with him on set and grilled him:
How do you feel about playing Ian Curtis?
Just... how do I feel? It's quite scary really. I don't mean that in a dramatic way but it's kind of just ... it does kind of freak you out when you start to find out about him and who he was, what kind of things he was up to.
Have you met any of his relations?
No, he's only got his wife, Debbie, and the daughter. And I wouldn't want really to meet them. I mean I met his daughter but I didn't really want to meet her out of the blue, she was an extra. I've said this before, she just came up to me and went "You're playing my Dad" and I was just... yeah, I didn't like that. It's not something I'm.... dunno, it doesn't feel good at times...
Is that because Ian Curtis was quite troubled himself?
The thing is and the problems are that you get so many images and so many stories about Ian, who he was. And what he was to them people isn't really who he was, I think. When I read Debbie's book, his wife, I found that a more interesting story than the myth of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. I found the fact that this guy who was married at 19, he had a wife, he had a kid, he had a mortgage, he had a job, he's just an every day kinda guy... well maybe he wasn't an everyday kind of guy. Just that, on the domestic side, and then there's thing that Tony Wilson promoted. But Ian was very clever, he kind of played it very well, and he obviously crossed a line somewhere. You see I don't even like saying thing like that, because I don't know if that's right.
It's a massive responsibility in that respect.
Everyone's got responsibility in the film in a way, because everyone's playing real people, they did exist, they did have lives and people do know truths about them. And you're just setting yourself up in a way, you're setting yourself up for a huge fall. Some people are going to go "That was fucking shit mate" and some people are going to go to me "That's good" - it's very, very individual. So once you get over that, you make a start. While I've been around Manchester, what I've found weird is a lot of young, 18/19 year old people come up to me and they're Joy Division fans, and I'm just thinking "How does Joy Division, how does Ian touch these people now? What does he represent to them now?" They're really young and you're thinking fuck, they're listening to Closer, and you're just thinking that happened twenty years ago, and it still connects, and I find that really strange, I wasn't expecting that. The guy who's playing Steve, Tim [Horrocks], likes Joy Division, he's only 18 and Joy Division are his favourite group. There's something inspiring about it but I found it very hard to listen to the music, especially the second album, Closer, because you kind of take from that that he is writing about himself and it was all there. Another thing I got about Ian was the fact that he seemed to have very, very individual relationship with everyone... his relationship with Vini was very different to the one with Lindsay but it was a different one he had with Tony or Barney. They're all pretty destroyed by it, he had a huge effect. They felt that he was my best friend, or he was more intimate with me and they kind of realised he had a real individual relationship with each person.
How did you prepare to play him? Did you listen to a lot of music?
Yeah, I just soaked myself in a lot of the music, a lot of the images, photographs, pictures, and moving images were really important because of the dance that everyone goes on about, so I just had to kind of drown myself in it. And I read a few things, it was just all about the myth, and I just thought I wasn't interested in that. I didn't think Michael was interested in that as well, I mean we hadn't discussed it but I kind of guessed that it was going to come from a different place. And then when I read what Debbie wrote, the book, I just thought that really helped. She was kind of betrayed and I feel, just as an actor, me, that she had a hell of a time. To be his wife, must have been really hard - not that he's a bad man or a brute, nothing like that but he took a lot from her. Very difficult. I felt quite disgusted at times actually.
It's an interesting reaction to have to a character that you're playing.
I'm not making a judgment, I'm just saying I found that very interesting. He had a vision, and he knew what he wanted to do, and I kind of understand that as well, not a lot can get in the way of that. People do suffer. I think he was either driven or he was an incredible puppet. I can't come up with answers because there are so many answers and from those answers come more questions. But as an actor, a very interesting guy to play. I was sitting at home the other night, just thinking about stuff that won't leave you alone. I was thinking that I wanted to put on Transmission and listen to some of his music but I couldn't because I'm a bit sick of it. I didn't think I'll ever play anything quite as interesting - you don't opportunities to play people like this. Most of what you do is rubbish.
The way that Michael is shooting this film is quite unusual - lots of small digital cameras and you're never quite sure when he's shooting and when he's not shooting. Is that quite liberating?
You don't think of that. You just think "I'm going to get covered, there's a lot going on" so you're not just acting to there, there's huge freedom but it's up to you to use that freedom. It can be something that binds you - I found myself scared to let loose. And you've got to stay within the boundaries of Ian. I'm playing someone who's heavily on medication at certain points to the extent that he had to go to the dentist every couple of weeks because his gums grew. But, you get a script and you don't do exactly what's on the page but you do everything that's on the page. I think if I've done my homework, got enough soundbites in the head when things are going on, you don't need a script, it's all there. I did find myself at the beginning thinking "Fucking hell I haven't got a clue what's going on, what is he doing? I haven't got a fucking clue" and you just go "Right, fuck it, hand it over. Once you hand it over you can start playing around" and by the end of it, I now see, you kind of go "Well, scripts... I don't know if I wanna work with them", I mean obviously I will work with scripts again but you go... it's caused problems. I like improvisation and I like the way Michael works and I like what it creates and that's exciting, you do feel like you're doing a bit of acting every now and again, so that's a bonus. But with scripted stuff, it's great but I can see people talking the script, if I look close enough.
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