Christopher Nolan has revealed that Al Pacino once turned down a directing note on set, insisting to the filmmaker that he’d “already done that”.
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The acclaimed director – who is preparing to release his new biopic Oppenheimer starring Cillian Murphy – recalled filming 2002 thriller Insomnia with Pacino.
“I had gone up to Pacino after a series of takes and given him a note on what I wanted,” he told The Los Angeles Times.
“He told me, ‘I’ve already done that. You can’t see it to the eye, but I’ve done it on the dailies.’ I looked for it and I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ because there it was.”
Nolan added: “Great film actors can do that, and that’s what I had with Cillian.”
Elaborating on Murphy’s challenging role of playing J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nolan explained: “He was so conscious of his iconography, very theatrical and self-aware. It’s too simple to say he was a dandy, but he knew the power of creating an iconic physical image for himself.”
Murphy recently shared that he was “desperate” to play a lead role for director Nolan, having previously played supporting roles in five of the director’s films; Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Dunkirk and Inception.
Speaking to Associated Press, Murphy said: “I have always said publicly and privately to Chris, that if I’m available and you want me to be in a movie, I’m there. I don’t really care about the size of the part.
“But deep down, secretly, I was desperate to play a lead for him.”
He added: “We have this long-standing understanding and trust and shorthand and respect. It felt like the right time to take on a bigger responsibility. And it just so happened that it was a huge one.”
Back in May, Nolan reflected on the decision not to cast Cillian Murphy as Batman in The Dark Knight trilogy.
“It was clear to me from the beginning that I wasn’t Batman material,” Murphy told Entertainment Weekly in a discussion with the two film stars.
“When we had our first conversation I think both of us knew that you weren’t going to wind up playing Batman,” the director told Murphy. “But I really wanted to get on set with you, I wanted to get you on film.”