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Matthew Goode
PrideLife chats to actor Matthew Goode
One of the brightest young stars of movie-dom, Matthew Goode plays the lover of Colin Firth in the critically acclaimed, award-winning and Oscar-nominated A Single Man, directed by fashion god Tom Ford. Pride Life chats to him about playing gay, playing American, and playing in the big league.
A Single Man is an exquisite film – you must be proud to be part of it!
I was a bit worried when I die on page one. I was like, are you taking the piss? But when I read it, I thought, this is so great for Colin and I knew he was going to smash it out of the park and you don’t turn down working with Julianne Moore, even if you don’t have a scene with her. It would be a strange thing to do.
Did Tom have to give you the hard sell to convince you to do the part?
Well, with Tom, we met in Claridge’s, had a couple of drinks, he talked about his passion for the project, what he wanted to do because I did read the scenes and think, ‘Shit on paper, I’m just going to get acted off the screen, my scenes are so undramatic’! But he explained about the beauty of the banality.
Did he contact you directly?
I barely had an email up and running but somehow he managed to get it. My agent was like, ‘It’s bizarre, Tom Ford is doing this film,’ and I was like, ‘He’s obviously desperate, someone has pulled out’ which probably was the case.
How did you find kissing Colin Firth?
We have a pash. It’s kind of nice. You watch something like Milk and every single kiss, it’s passionate but it’s like “Let’s get this over and done with quickly” and it’s so aggressive and male, ours is a bit more sensitive. Maybe we got it wrong and there’ll be an outcry from the gay community.
Funny he chose three English actors.
Slightly bizarre. He always really wanted Colin but it’s weird that you get English guys to play Americans and an American to play English. But English actors are renowned for being White Mexicans which means we’re just cheap. We’re almost like slave labour!
Is playing gay still an issue for actors?
Maybe that’s why he went to Brits and we don’t have a problem with that side of our sexuality. It’s quite a butch world with the Americans. It’s like, ‘Just shut up and caress his dick in a scene and get on with it.’ It’s hardly rocket science.
It’s definitely a film to be proud of…
I don’t think there are many times and you’re happy to take a bit of applause. We had a nine-minute standing ovation at
