It doesn’t look as if Christoph Waltz is going to have too many speedbumps on his road to picking up the Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars … but if there’s any justice in Hollywood, which is admittedly a stretch, maybe a few voters will pause along the way to look at the remarkable work that British actor Christian McKay turned in as Orson Welles in Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles.”
As the tempestuous wunderkind who revolutionized Broadway a couple of years before coming to Hollywood to make “Citizen Kane,” McKay makes an uncanny Welles, a roaring genius who doesn’t mind laying waste to everyone around him. Good-natured, charming and slightly bemused by the awards circus in which he finds himself on the periphery, McKay figures he has a miniscule chance of landing a nomination – a slightly harsh estimation that would change dramatically if enough members of the Academy’s actors branch took the time to see the movie. (That’s a hint to all you last-minute voters.)
A standard Q&A format does not do McKay justice; the man is a born storyteller, who speaks not in complete sentences or paragraphs, but in short stories and novellas. What follows is a significantly edited condensation of our lengthy lunch.
How’s awards season treating you?
The first time somebody said to me, “What do you think about all this Oscar speculation?” I thought, what do you say? You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But I remembered a line from when I played Schweyk in the Bertolt Brecht play "Schweyk in the Second World War": “Never count your chickens before you can stick a fork into them.”
Seeing all the massive studios, all the advertising and the power and the money, I do feel a little bit like David, with my little sling, against these extraordinary studios with their billboards. Having never done this before, I feel terribly ignorant. I imagine it’s a massive longshot.
You have picked up a few nominations, though.
Yes. Everybody has awards, don’t they? It’s extraordinary. I was at the British Independent Film Awards last month in London, slightly embarrassed to be a 36-year-old Most Promising Newcomer nominee. And thankfully, common sense prevailed and they gave it to the 16-year-old who’d been discovered on a station platform arguing with her boyfriend. [Katie Jarvis from “Fish Tank”] Isn’t that a beautiful Cinderella story?
But before that I was sitting there thinking, give it to the 16-year-old, and just enjoying seeing Michael Caine and Daniel Day-Lewis walk by. And then it was amazing how avarice overtook me. Because onto the stage to present the award for Most Promising Newcomer walked Sir Derek Jacobi with one of the world’s most beautiful women, Eva Green.
And suddenly, I wanted that award so much. Despite my being a very happily married man, this was a chance to kiss the hand of one of the world’s most beautiful women.
