Catching up with the 'Red Sparrow' men

Los Angeles — We caught up with the men of the spy thriller “Red Sparrow” at the Claridges Hotel in London on a cold Wednesday morning.

The Francis Lawrence-helmed film, which stars Jennifer Lawrence as Russian spy Dominika Egorova also code-named Diva, also features Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts and Jeremy Irons. We talked to the guys separately and below are excerpts of our interviews with the three talented actors.

Joel Edgerton (“Nathaniel ‘Nap’ Nash)

Joel Edgerton plays 'Nap'. All photos courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales

On his relationship to trust:

It’s weird, I have some areas of my life I have massive issues with trust. But I had a very good upbringing, and the first thing I do is assume that everybody is telling me the truth. So I guess you could call me gullible sometimes. But the word "gullible" is a way of saying that somebody is actually just very trusting.

If someone were to cross you in business, however, would you go into business with them a second time? If someone stole money from you? And they were like hey, I have got another idea for a business. No thank you. 

But for some reason, relationships in the past, I have gone, oh yeah, you hurt me really badly, now let’s keep trying this out and see what happens. So I think I am a bit of a sucker.

On seduction:

I need to be introduced to people. I am not the guy who sees a girl across the other side of the room and just goes, hold my drink, I’ll be back. I can’t, because I would have found an interest in the fireplace and circled back and never have completed my mission. 

But if you have seen, “Gringo,” there’s a moment in the movie where Alan Ruck and where Charlize Theron is doing the fake seduction of talking about why the moon landing went the way it did and she asks him do you know why he went first?  That’s me when a woman says hey Joel, what about it? I will be stammering and falling to pieces. I try and keep my cool. Maybe I do a good enough job, but internally I fall to pieces. So I am not good in either scenario, which is why I am called Uncle Bro.

Jeremy Irons (“General Vladimir Andreievich Korchnoi, codename Marble)

Jeremy Irons' codename in the movie is Marble.

On his 32-year-old son, Max Irons, following his footsteps as an actor

I have a huge sense of pride, although it is mitigated by wanting him to be happy.  It's a very difficult business for youngsters. It's very difficult and very different now for him than it was when I was his age. 

I keep wanting him to do more theater which is where you really grow your muscles and expand your brain, your imagination and where you can have the freedom to fail which is a very important freedom to keep which is harder when you're doing a big television series. 

He's just finished a series called “Condor”. It's a different world now to the one where I was starting out where there was a great repertory system. You could do good theater work, then slowly go into television. There wasn't this huge hype for youth. There was a bit especially for the girls but not for the men which there is now. So he's fighting through that.

All I'm concerned about with him is that he's happy doing what he's doing and happy with the result of what he's doing, and happy with his life.

On how good he is at asking people to do what he wants

No, I'm terrible at that. I am a natural dictator and people don't like dictators. I avoid committees. I try to live a life whereby I make decisions about me and hopefully don't trample on other people or hurt other people. But I've never been very good at convincing people to do a certain thing except with enthusiasm. I find enthusiasm something that pulls people together. I use that and encouragement. There are ways of getting people to do what is best in my opinion.

Matthias Schoenaerts (“Ivan Dimitrevich Egorov,” Dominika’s uncle)

Matthias plays the uncle of Dominika

On how he managed to look like Putin

I knew that was going to come. How did I manage? It was not intentional honestly. It was not our intention to make Ivan look like a young Putin. It was just in the process of creating this silhouette with the costume department and make-up department, at some point we realized that there was a very strong resemblance to the young Putin. We were very clear about not overemphasizing it. But it was pretty convenient in relation to the context and the setting of the story. So we also decided not to just go the opposite way.

On seduction

Everything we do as actors is seduction based to some extent. Every interaction whether it’s intellectual seduction, creative seduction, and physical seduction, everything we do is based on that dynamic, or implies that dynamic. It’s not necessarily based but implies that dynamic for sure.

On being an artist

Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by art and painting. I remember when I was a kid, my dad would have these painting books by the impressionists by the likes of Van Gogh, Claude Monet or Gauguin.

I remember as a kid not understanding the specifics of that specific movement; I was just fascinated by the visual language, the painting techniques and the way they work with color. So as a kid, I was really fascinated by painters. I remember every time I would go to another city I would ask my parents, could we go to a museum? I want to go see paintings. I was crazy about paintings as a kid.

Later on as I became a teenager, I start emancipating from my parents or I travel to other cities. All of a sudden, there’s this new phenomenon coming up, which is graffiti. All of a sudden that relates to this fascination that I have with paintings as a kid. That becomes more accessible because to master that other type of painting you have to go to art school which was pretty inaccessible.

It costs a lot of money, especially if you’re not ready as a teenager yet because you have to finish high school. So all of a sudden graffiti is the closest thing to that passion that I had for painting. So that’s eventually of course what I navigated towards. — LA, GMA News