Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess make their acting come alive in 'Fifty Dead Men Walking'

Jim Sturgess and Sir Ben Kingsley at the New York City press junket for "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

On the surface, it would seem that Sir Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess don’t have much in common, except that they’re both British actors who co-star in the gritty political thriller "Fifty Dead Men Walking." But go beneath the surface, and it’s apparent that both share eclectic tastes in the films that they choose to do, as well as an unswerving commitment to acting that goes beyond when cameras are rolling on the set.

Set in the 1980s, when Northern Ireland and Great Britain were in violent political conflict, "Fifty Dead Men Walking" is inspired by the true story of Martin McGartland (played by Sturgess), a small-time criminal from Belfast who’s recruited by the British government to infiltrate the Irish Republican Army. While acting as a spy, Martin reports to a British intelligence agent named Fergus (played by Kingsley), who forms an emotional bond with Martin as the stakes increase and Martin’s duplicity becomes more dangerous. (The movie’s title refers to the 50 men whose lives were reportedly saved due to McGartland’s work as a spy.) Here’s what Kingsley and Sturgess had to say when I sat down with them at the New York City press junket for "Fifty Dead Men Walking."

Jim, what was behind your decision to stay in character off the set during the movie’s production?

Sturgess: It was more staying in the [Irish accent] voice than in character. I’d always wanted to try it, and I’d always wanted to know what it felt like to commit from the minute you get there ‘til the moment you leave. And it seemed like this was the right project to really go there and do that. And also in order to pull it off and make it totally believable from every angle of the film — whether that was costume, whether that was makeup, whether that was the acting — you just had to be as rich and believable as possible. And it’s hard acting to do, so I just kept doing it and kept doing it and didn’t stop.

Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

Did you call friends and family on the phone and speak in the Irish accent?

Sturgess: Yeah, my mum hated it. She couldn’t understand a word I was saying.

Kingsley: She said, "Speak properly!"

Sturgess: Yeah!

Kingsley: "Speak properly! Stop showing off!"

Ireland’s political problems with Great Britain have been covered in many other films. What was it about "Fifty Dead Men Walking" that attracted you?

Kingsley: Well, Kari [Skogland, the director of "Fifty Dead Men Walking"], she’s a really brilliant director and like many great, thrilling events, plays or films, if you set them in a specific context, they’ll really take off. If you set them in a context that’s invented, then you’re into generalizing and guessing. But we knew how tight the constraints were on those two guys [Martin McGartland and Fergus] at that time. We knew the terrible corners that they could get themselves into, and none of this film is fictionalized.

This is a great thriller anyway, and this is a great relationship between two guys anyway. You could set it in the Bronx, you could set it in a drug gang, you could set it in any context, but to choose this amazing sectarian, politically violent context was really a stroke of genius on Kari’s part. And therefore, we lived in the perfect environment to tell this story about two guys caught in this impossibly gray area, where sometimes you can’t really see where the enemy is or who the enemy is. So it’s very specific, and the specifics fed us and helped our characters enormously. And we were in Belfast, which was a great bonus.

Jim Sturgess in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

You had a lot of physical challenges to do in this movie, including chase scenes, bombs going off and bloody violence. What scares you as an actor?

Kingsley: What scares me most as an actor is judging my character … I know it’s not quite what you were asking, but it’s as real a fear as hurting my foot in a car chase. Not to judge and not to sentimentalize, because this film could’ve been over-judged, and certainly this relationship could’ve been over-sentimentalized. And to keep it raw, to keep it tough, to keep it elemental was the biggest challenge. And my biggest fear was to make my character lovable, and that would’ve been a disaster … That ambulance chase for Jim was extremely uncomfortable and cold. He was wrapped in hot-water bottles and blankets. [He says to Sturgess] You’ve probably forgotten all this, haven’t you?

Sturgess: No, I remember it very well. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I mean, they basically strapped my head, my shoulders, my arms, my torso, my thighs and my ankles, and so I couldn’t move for hours. I was stuck there and I had this sticky, cold blood poured all over me.

Kingsley: I remember the special-effects guy — a rather burly Northern Irishman, the special-effects man — was extremely brutal to Jim. He was knocking him about. You were treated like a piece of meat!

Sturgess: I was, yeah.

Kingsley: And I was the one saying, "Oh, be careful. Watch his head." It brought out the very caring aspect of my character. I was actually looking after him on the stretcher.

Sturgess: You get this moment where you suddenly go, "Actually, I want get out of this now." You know that moment? I was there for I don’t how long, but then suddenly when I decided, "Sh*t, I actually wanna get out of this," and you can’t move. And then I had to stay in it for another hour or so. It was tough.

Jim Sturgess and Ben Kingsley in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

What did you learn about yourself by doing this movie?

Kingsley: You learn about each other. You learn actors, when they’re pushed into a corner, are very mutually supportive — especially in the scenes where Jim and I are very tough on each other … That’s what we learned. You learn about yourself in a situation, not about yourself in isolation. We learned a lot about that mutual dependency when the film gets dangerous. I mean, I was hanging out the back of a fast-moving ambulance. That wasn’t CGI. That ambulance was moving very fast.

Sturgess: I couldn’t tell. I was looking at the ceiling! I was strapped in. I didn’t know what was going on!

You both live in England. How would you describe how England, especially London, is dealing with terrorism these days?

Kingsley: Well, we have a different terrorist threat in London now. And we had some pretty terrible terrorist attacks in London recently. So I would say the alert is just as high, even though the enemy is different.

What was it like filming in Belfast with people who lived through a lot of the turmoil back then?

Sturgess: Yeah, it was a huge part of the process for me. When I found out I got the part, I went to Belfast sort of immediately. It was amazing to have an opportunity to sit down with people from both sides and hear what they had to say. If you’re going to learn about a situation, to get right amongst it, right in the middle of it and hear it from the horse’s mouth was incredibly important for me.

Jim Sturgess in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

What were you told that was the most shocking?

Sturgess: The thing that was really shocking was … the humanity. I met these people; they were real people. We got to know these people, just from them being around and helping us on the set. This is from both sides. But just some of the things they were prepared to have done. Just some of the things they did you just couldn’t believe. You look in the whites of that man’s eyes and go, "I can’t believe you …" I don’t want to get too specific about it, but extreme acts of violence … You know, involved in shooting soldiers. It’s a military operation, and it comes with what it comes with.

Kingsley: We were filming in Belfast, so wherever one was in our peripheral vision, historically, it was clear that there would be people there who witnessed harrowing violence. And to honor their stories as victims or regretful perpetrators was an enormous responsibility. But we felt that we were supported rather than impeded. We were absolutely supported by that community.

Ben Kingsley in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

Sir Ben, did you get a chance to speak to the real-life British agents who dealt with Martin McGartland?

Kingsley: Jim’s mandate was different from mine, because Jim was part of that community, and his character was born and bred in that community. I [as Fergus] was an exile. I was from the north of England, I was British special branch, I was down a landscape that I found perplexing, baffling, confusing, and just had to manage it to the best of my ability. Therefore, my character is isolated. I capitalized on that.

I was given an opportunity by our director to meet people, and I declined politely. I’d rather follow my own intuition in that isolated state and the script — which I found impeccable — and my imagination. But I knew in my peripheral vision that there were people there; it was obviously men who had done what my character was doing.

And the only encounter I had was a silent one, when I was in my hotel bar, and three very big men in leather jackets came and stood behind me and just put a pint of Guinness in front of me, shook my hand and left the bar.

Jim Sturgess in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

What did you think about Belfast?

Kingsley: The roads are famous. The Falls Road, the Crumlin Road, the Maze. They’re famous, aren’t they?

Sturgess: Yeah.

Kingsley: I was there when it was a war zone. I was there in the late ‘80s, because Belfast was brave enough to have a film festival. And you went through barricades to get to the hotel. You went through a series of metal cages to get to it. And those cages are all gone. But I was there. I saw it.

Sturgess: It was strange for me, because it looked like any northern English town. But you could feel there was a war zone there, and you could feel the reminisces of it being there. It was bizarre to see a street look like an everyday tourist street, and there was once a wall in the middle of this normal street … where two people had to have been direct neighbors.

Kingsley: And the murals are still there.

Sturgess: The murals, you can really tell from the art work which is a Protestant area and which is a Catholic area … One of the guys we met was one of the mural painters. And it was amazing. He was doing a project with another Protestant painter, and they were doing murals together. It was an amazing moment where they each painted the other one.

How were you treated by the local people while filming in Belfast?

Kingsley: We felt very supported, because for the most part, the horrors had receded tremendously. And the Irish are a very self-healing race. They’d been through a heck of a lot, long before the trouble [with the British government], and they need their story to be told. Ireland had a pretty horrific history, and they’re emerging now as a very European economy … and their story needs to be told.

Ben Kingsley, Kevin Zegers, Kari Skogland and Jim Sturgess at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

"Fifty Dead Men Walking," "Hunger" and "Five Minutes of Heaven" are all films out within the past year that have are about the conflicts in North Ireland. Why do you think there have been these type of films recently?

Kingsley: Because I think it’s time. I think people are secure enough to move forward, and part of moving forward is healing. And part of healing is recognizing what really happened. Just like the Truth [and Reconciliation] Commission in South Africa, people can now move on …

I think this film ["Fifty Dead Men Walking"] does acknowledge the at times horrendous, chaotic, thrilling, adrenaline-driven, passionate, callous, thoughtless, thoughtful — as I was saying, all mashed up in that gray area. He [Jim Sturgess] and I had to survive in those characters.

Is it true that Martin McGartland takes issue with this movie?

Kingsley: Not any more.

Going back to the film festival you went to in Belfast in the 1980s. Did you have real fears that a bomb could go off at your hotel?

Kingsley: Absolutely. It’s hard to describe it as fear. I wasn’t fearful, but I was aware of that smell in the atmosphere, the adrenaline and the mistrust. It was strange and bizarre. It was an under-attended [festival].

Kevin Zegers, Rose McGowan, Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess and Kari Skogland at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

Jim, is it true you’ve said that British actors have a different take on acting than American actors?

Sturgess: No. That’s not true at all. I’ve worked with mostly American actors. I don’t remember making that statement.

What do you think drove Martin to become a double agent?

Sturgess: Yeah, I had the same questions. And that was what really kind of interested me in the character. It just seemed I couldn’t find the answer. I couldn’t work out if he was just doing it for money, whether he was doing it for this moral high ground, or if it was just the thrill of this underground world for a kid just coming from Belfast and a poor part of town. And I think it was all of the above. I think it just wasn’t as black and white as that. I think there were so many reasons of why he wanted to get caught and put his life on the line and step up to the plate as well.

Martin and Fergus had kind of a father/son relationship, but they also had to keep a certain emotional distance from each other because of the nature of their work. How did you know when to pull back emotionally as you were portraying these characters?

Kingsley: I think that was in the script, and I think also what’s wonderful about film is you can create an emotional relationship simply by what lenses you use. You really can; it’s all about lenses. There are times when you’re more vulnerable in close up or you’re more vulnerable in long shot, and I think Kari monitored that relationship and literally allowed the observer to come in and then pull back by her choice of lenses. I think she’s a brilliant director.

We didn’t have to address that problem, which I think would have been a distraction to us to constantly monitor whether we are being too much of a father and son or not, and artificially pull back or pull in. No, it’s very much in the script, very much under her guidance and also we depended on and trusted each other a lot as actors, so that dynamic was one that I think in the editing has the perfect movements.

Ben Kingsley in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

Sir Ben, you’ve said the movie’s story has no fiction in it. What’s the basis for that statement?

Kingsley: I think that actors have a very fine intuition about what is a genuine patent of human behavior and what is a false patent of human behavior. And what made this genuine was the symmetry of Jim’s character being fatherless and my character being son-less. Both of us have lost that very important relationship in our lives and therefore turned together. There was that need for that particular element in our lives.

For me, that makes complete psychological sense, and that’s what urges me to say it’s not fictitious, in the way that Shakespeare can write a play, and it’s psychologically absolutely sound. All the characters are invented, but it’s a psychologically sound. And it has to be. To create a great thriller, the audience has to care for both sides. That’s what makes it thrilling. I think out-and-out good and out-and-out bad is very boring. But this gray area, that Jim describes so well, is where I found myself completely, honestly secure in my character. So that’s what leads me to say … psychologically, it rings true.

What was it like playing characters that had to act and pretend to be someone they’re not?

Kingsley: It was good for me, because I try to tread that fine line between minimalism and acting, because Fergus is not allowed to give anything away. So again, I couldn’t judge, sentimentalize, I couldn’t hardly even act.

Sturgess: That was another thing about doing the accent, going into some of these areas and some of these pubs where I’d never be allowed to tread as myself. So there was that fear and that tension when I would go to these bars and chat with these people and just hang out with these people, putting on as though I was a local kid from the area. You really got a sense of "Sh*t are they going to find out?"

Jim Sturgess and Ben Kingsley in "Fifty Dead Men Walking"

There’s a contrast in the energy that these two characters have. Martin is nervous and hyper, while Fergus is calm and calculated. Were you directed to be that way or did it come naturally?

Kingsley: I think Kari is one of those lovely directors who casts a film, gives you the role, and something inside you says, "I don’t have to audition for Kari anymore." She does really inspire that trust, so the duet that you allude to was in her casting.

Sir Ben, can you talk about your Bollywood movie "Teen Patti"?

Kingsley: I worked with Amitabh Bachchan, who is a glorious man to work with and a beautiful director [Leena Yadav]. I filmed in England. They all came over to the U.K. for the scenes at Cambridge University in London. I found it absolutely thrilling and a very disciplined film crew, amazing continuity, lighting, everybody impeccable. I loved it. I was very happy on that [project].

Ben Kingsley and Amitabh Bachchan in "Teen Patti"

And what do you think about contemporary Bollywood films in general?

Kingsley: I think it’s all part of India reclaiming their rightful place as an major economic and social power.

Jim, do you know what’s going on with the "Spider-Man" stage musical? There were rumors you might be cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

Sturgess: I’m not doing it … I did a workshop to help out.

As an actor, what won’t you compromise on?

Kingsley: It comes from the script. I won’t compromise when it comes to choosing the script.

Jim, can you talk about your upcoming horror film?

Sturgess: It’s a film called "Heartless. It’s kind of psychological, weird; it’s a very strange film. It’s all set in East London and it’s done. I think it comes out in February [2010].

Photo credits: Photo #1: Carla Hay. Photos #8, 9: AP. Photo #12: Serendipity Films. All other photos: Phase 4 Films.