Teresa Palmer
Besides being surprisingly intelligent and very aware of the whole Hollywood trap, she was also quite funny and interesting to talk to. I say this because I haven’t been a huge fan of her past work, but after interviewing her I’m really quite impressed. Anyway, most importantly, we discussed some of her favourite movies.
"Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and Labyrinth, from back in the day. They are two films that really connected with me. A film by Alfonso Cuaron called A Little Princess, I loved that when I was younger. American beauty is a classic and Girl Interrupted, Angelina Jolie’s performances is amazing."
Palmer's latest flick The Sorcerer's Apprentice is out now.
When Swedish filmmaker Daniel Alfredson started making the second film in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, he knew he was working with hot property.The books have become international bestsellers and the first film, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a global hit. With the inevitable Hollywood remake on the way and Oscar buzz surrounding actress Noomi Rapace for her portrayal of Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander, it’s hard to imagine there was ever any trouble getting the project off the ground. But that was not always the case according to Swedish director Daniel Alfredson.
“When we started out it was in such an early stage that the success of the novels wasn’t there yet,” he says.
“It was a Swedish project and our only hope to do it was to finance it as a TV series and then it also became the films.
“We worked with the same cast and crew during the same shoot, and we had two scripts – one for the show and one for the film.
“It was complicated and I haven’t ever done anything like that before.
“But on the other hand it was the only way to do it... we didn’t know that they’d be a huge success.
“We thought we could find an audience in Northern Europe and that that was the only thing we could manage.”
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo found an audience worldwide and, despite being in Italy, took over $100 million at the global box office. Alfredson says although it came as `a surprise’ to him, others involved with the project were more optimistic.
“I know Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the first film, was very confident.
“He said to me `this is going to be huge and a big success’.
“But I was never that confident because Italian is such a small language.”
If the hype surrounding the second film is anything to go by, it seems The Girl Who Played With Fire will be just as successful. The film delves deeper into the past and motivations of the film’s heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and Alfredson says this is one of the many reasons he was drawn to directing it.
“The thing I loved about the books is the character of Lisbeth Salander, because when I read the novels in their very early stages I was fascinated by her,” he says.
“I hadn’t seen her before on screen.
“I was intrigued by her and her vulnerability, but she’s still being very strong.
"I fell for her.”
Alfredson says he and his leading lady Rapace shared strong ideas about the character, who is one of the more original on screen heroines to date. He says Rapace was `fearless as an actress’ to take on the role of the bisexual, Goth, computer-hacker who has a dark and mysterious past.
“As you know, at the end of the second film Lisbeth’s stepbrother and father bury her and her hand shoots up out of the dirt as she climbs to the surface,” he says.
“We were filming that scene very early in the morning and it was cold and we only had 20 minutes to do it.
"So I said to Noomi that she should go home, go back to Rome and rest, we can get someone else’s hand to do it.
“She said to me `no, it’s Lisbeth’s hand, I’m playing Lisbeth so I’m going to do it, it has to be Lisbeth’s hand.’
“Then she crawled down into that tunnel and that’s actually Noomi’s hand you see in the film. “She’s very determined and that’s the image I have of Noomi as an actress.”
Critics too have had that perception and already there is a flurry of talk surrounding Rapace’s chances for a best actress Oscar nomination. Although he has `no idea about how that stuff works’, Alfredson says it would be `fantastic’ if the Academy Award talk come to fruition. “She would be worth it,” he says.
Alfredson also directs the third and final film in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, which is to be released later this year. He says that as a fan of the books he has tried to stick with the sense Stieg Larsson creates in each saga of the story.
“I believe the first novel is a mystery drama in the way that it’s pace and the second one is more of an action drama.
“The third one is a courtroom drama and we have tried to show that with the dialogue and tried to speak to that when we were doing the film.
“It’s a way of being true to the novels.”
As for the novels, Alfredson (on set below) says it is a tragedy that author Stieg Larsson suffered a heart attack and died before he could ever see his works published and witness the phenomenon they have become.
“I think it’s so sad really.
“I never met Stieg.
“I read the novels before they were published, just a few months after his death.
“I wanted to ask him so many questions about the stories and about Lisbeth.
“I know he was writing a fourth novel and I’m curious to see what happened to Lisbeth and how the story goes.
“But I guess we will never know.”