Meet Moe Dunford

Charles Gant catches up with the Irish actor, a 2015 Shooting Star who is currently juggling work on a new movie with his recurring role in TV's Vikings

Moe Dunford © Vittorio Zunino Celotto-Getty Images for European Shooting Stars

By any measure, Irish actor Moe Dunford has enjoyed a pretty remarkable nine months. It began on his birthday last December, when he received the news that he’d been chosen as one of the ten Shooting Stars, having first been submitted for jury  consideration by the Irish Film Board. On February 6 this year, Patrick’s Day, in which he has the starring role, opened in Ireland, hot on the heels of premieres in his home town of Dungarvan and Dublin. That was also the day Dunford flew to Berlin for his participation in the Shooting Stars activities, culminating in receiving his award on stage at the Berlinale Palast from Natalie Portman.

In April, on the set of History Channel series Vikings, in which he plays Aethelwulf, he learned that he’d been nominated both as Rising Star and Best Actor at the Irish Film and Television Awards, for his performance in Patrick’s Day. A month later, he won the latter prize, beating Colin Farrell, Michael Fassbender and his good friend Jack Reynor – another of Ireland’s fast-rising talents. “I thought they were having me on, to be honest,” says the winningly cheerful and self-deprecating Dunford. “It was such a great night, and we were all on such a high, as the referendum result on gay marriage in Ireland had been announced the night before, when the whole country exploded. Patrick’s Day was my first movie. To be in that category was something very special.

”Whether as a consequence or not, three days after the awards ceremony, he received a message from John Butler, director and co-writer of The Stag, starring 2004 Shooting Star Andrew Scott. Butler’s new film, Handsome Devil, is a coming-of-age tale that brings two teachers into conflict after two 16-year-olds form an unlikely alliance. “John asked me to meet up to talk about the role of Mr Sherry, the English teacher, in the vein of Mr Keating from Dead Poets Society. I read it, and Andrew Scott came into my head! John said, ‘To be honest, I do have someone else in mind. I just wanted to meet you. What do you think of the other part: the rugby teacher, Pascal?"

Dunford’s head was full of Mr Sherry, and couldn’t see himself as Pascal, so they parted cordially. A month later, he suddenly had an epiphany that gave him access to the character, “this homophobic guy who’s trying to succeed via this talented rugby-playing boy who’s just joined the school”. Despite surmising that it was now too late, he messaged Butler, who immediately replied, “That’s the strangest thing ever. I was just about to email you to ask if you wanted to audition for the part.” Shortly after, he was handed the role.

The film, which does indeed co-star Andrew Scott as the other teacher, started shooting in August, and wraps in a few weeks. Dunford is currently dividing his time between it and the fourth season of Vikings, which has just cranked up for a 20-episode run, double the length of the previous seasons. It’s a far cry from a couple of years ago, when he went up for the lead role of Patrick’s Day, playing a man with mental illness who tries to escape the protective bond of his mother (Kerry Fox) when he surprisingly finds love with a troubled flight attendant (Catherine Walker). After several auditions, writer-director Terry McMahon told him he wanted him for the part, but it would be a battle to convince the financiers. “Understandably,” explains Dunford. “I wasn’t known.” Eventually, a united front by McMahon, seasoned producer Tim Palmer (Into the West) and casting director Rebecca Roper won the day.

Dunford was born in Cork in south-west Ireland, but largely grew up in Dungarvan, county Waterford, about 80km to the east. It was when his father started running a pub in Cork, when he was eight years old, that his movie education really began. His schoolteacher mother would take Moe (christened Maurice) and his brother up for the weekend, and while his parents were busy in the bar downstairs, “I would be watching movies upstairs on the cable channels, high on as much Lucozade and robbed bacon fries as I could find.” Adds Dunford, “I saw Leon. I saw Walkabout. Not the type of movie that an eight-, nine-year-old kid would be watching, but somehow we were glued to it. I even saw Showgirls. The less said about that the better, the psychological trauma it caused me.”

An English teacher at school, Mr Lake, first got young Moe interested in literature, although acting only followed when he auditioned for West Side Story, in the doomed hope of winning back an ex-girlfriend who had been cast as Maria. He was admitted to Dublin’s University College Cork, signing up for classes in English, music, history, psychology. “I was enrolled, but I never went,” says Dunford. “I didn’t show up to college at all. I stayed in a house with 10 or 11 of my friends from school, and I was drinking and partying at my house. I totally flunked.”

Before the year was up, he instead applied to the city’s Gaiety School of Acting, auditioning with a monologue from a Neil Simon play combined with Irish playwright John B Keane’s Sive. He was admitted, and went on to pick up representation from prominent Irish agency Lisa Richards on the back of his graduation showcase. Plays, and TV work followed, until Patrick’s Day came along in the summer of 2013 – an experience that has evidently made quite an impression on the actor. "As a filmmaker, Terry's an inspiration, because he's not afraid to be outspoken and tackle issues about Ireland's darker side," says Dunford, adding that he hopes to work with McMahon on another film project. Meanwhile, he acquired an agent and manager in Los Angeles, and has subsequently been out for casting meetings.

Still, Dunford had never experienced anything quite like Shooting Stars, which is arranged by organisers European Film Promotion to coincide with the annual get-together for the International Casting Directors Association. “The speed dating thing,” says the actor, referencing the frenetic session in which the attending casting directors meet all ten Shooting Stars in rapid succession, “it’s something I’d never witnessed in my entire life. I spent so many years as an actor trying to get seen by one particular casting director in Ireland, and you might meet them once in three years. And all of a sudden you have a premiere of your film, you're shipped over to Berlin, you're sitting in a seat and the casting director of Bond is walking up to you, five minutes later another casting director, and then you meet 30 casting directors in two hours. It was like: Bring on the party!"

The surreality of the occasion continued when he received the Shooting Star trophy from Natalie Portman – whose performance in Leon had made such an impact on Moe as a child. "The eight-year-old boy in me was laughing that night," says Dunford. "When we were all backstage, it was like being in a dreamlike state. I really took on board how giving Natalie was, how giving with her time to the ten of us. And it really hit me what she said. She said, you'd think it gets easier, but it never does."

Now back on the set of Vikings, Dunford admits that one thing that "has" become easier is the action component of his role. He remembers shooting the early episodes: "The horse master Tony Doyle put the fear of God into me. 'You're riding it like a camel! You like like a donkey! Riding a camel!' I learned on the job. I have to lead armies and charge and face Vikings head on. It's now my favourite part of the job, the action and the stunts. I can ride now, one-handed, no-handed, swinging a sword. Horse riding used to be just something I'd have on my CV in the hope that I'd get a gig."

Confessions of a Shooting Stars Juror

The 2015 Shooting Stars award ceremony nearly didn’t happen for me, as what started as a brief trip to Colorado to visit the set of Quentin Tarantino’s new film The Hateful Eight turned into nearly week in the skiing town of Telluride as the production waited in vain for snowfall. As time passed, I recalled a previous visit to one of Quentin’s sets: a Café Einstein in central Berlin had been converted into Maxim’s Of Paris for a key scene in which former Shooting Star Daniel Brühl, as Nazi war hero Fredrik Zoller, brokered an important meeting with Germany’s head of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. It reminded me just how far these Shooting Stars go; I’ve seen a lot of Daniel lately, not just on screen in the acclaimed dramas Rush and A Most Wanted Man but in the flesh: two winters ago he was in London shooting Michael Winterbottom’s The Face Of And Angel, and last summer I ran into him in Cannes, where he presented the Prix De Jury.

Shooting Stars Press Photocall © Markus Nass

After a brief stopover in London to drop off my winter clothes – I didn’t think the rest of my Shooting Stars jury would see my muddy boots as a fashion statement – I sped to Gatwick Airport in a panicked cab, since all available trains were either cancelled or running late. I arrived with ten minutes to spare, and after landing at Schönefeld Airport I was whisked to the 25Hours Hotel in the old west of Berlin’s city centre, which would be the base for the next three days’ activities. My first encounter was with fellow juror Natalie Cheron, enjoying a quick cigarette en route to the Annual Meeting of the International Casting Directors Network. Natalie told me that all was going swimmingly, that our Shooting Stars were hitting it off and had already become a tight little unit.

I saw this myself when, an hour later, I arrived at the Press Photocall. I’d hoped to catch a few words with some of our chosen few, but everyone was flitting between rooms. The Ritz Carlton was in a state of flux, TV crews and photographers streaming in and out, but our Shooting Stars kept their heads and all had dressed for the occasion.

  Moe Dunford and Debbie McWilliams at the
Actors Industry Network © Markus Nass

From here, we went back to base and over to the Waldorf Astoria for Actors Industry Network. This was where the real work would be done; each actor staked an area and held court as Europe’s best-known casting agents table-hopped to speak to them. From the UK alone I saw major players such as Leo Davis, Dan Hubbard and Debbie McWilliams, who has cast every Bond film since For Your Eyes Only. From Prague, I bumped into Nancy Bishop – just these four might be enough to change one actor’s life forever.


At the Tesiro-sponsored cocktail later that night it was clear that our Shooting Stars had bonded, which was proven at the following morning’s press presentation. Introducing the event, our fellow juror Eva Röse got things started by recalling how much her own experience as a Shooting Star in 2006 meant to her. “Of course, it was a great honour,” she said, “and I felt that my work was being recognised. I was now part of something bigger, and it was definitely a door opening for me. It helped me to expand my horizons. And it’s been interesting to me to see how the Shooting Stars programme has evolved from 2006 to this day. It started out as a spotlight, but now it’s a valuable stepping stone to help actors find their way internationally. So I’m really excited for these guys and I wish them all the best.”

Shooting Stars Press Presentation © Markus Nass

Interviewed onstage, the Shooting Stars proved comfortable in a room filled with cameras and recording devices. Denmark’s Joachim Fjelstrup offered us an insight into his research for the rock’n’roll biopic Itsi Bitsi, while Finland’s Emmi Parviainen (The Princess Of Egypt) gave us tips on being truthful in performance. Jannis Niewöhner (Sapphire Blue) informed us that genre films were just as much fun as dramas; Iceland’s Hera Hilmer (Life In A Fishbowl), talked about her experience on the major international TV shows such as Da Vinci’s Demons; and Ireland’s Moe Dunford (Patrick’s Day) spoke movingly of mental health issues in his native Dublin. Lithuania’s Aistė Diržiūtė unexpectedly revealed that her co-star in The Summer Of Sangaile was on old friend that she’d met online, enabling her to be extra comfortable in the role; Spain’s Natalia de Molina spoke emotionally about her Goya win for Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed; while Switzerland’s Sven Schelker (The Circle) assured us he would never swap the stage for the screen, or vice versa. The Netherlands’ Abbey Hoes (Nena) charmed everyone with her story about making her debut as “the winking girl” in a TV commercial, and the UK’s Maisie Williams (The Falling) amazed us all with the fact that, at 17, the Game Of thrones star already has a million Twitter followers.

In the afternoon there was a run-through of the ceremony at the Palast, at which, for a brief moment, my co-juror, producer Danijel Hocevar, and I were not deemed sufficiently stellar to play ourselves as the camera team blocked the show. Common sense soon prevailed, however, and Eva plus fellow juror Malgorzata Szumowska – whose very well-received new film The Body was to premiere in the Berlinale that same night, later winning her the Silver Bear for Best Director – made excellent MCs. The run-through went smoothly and we returned later for the real event, which went just as well until a technical hitch saw Moe Dunford’s face beamed onscreen just as Eva was paying tribute to Hera Hilmar. Without missing a beat, and with a wry joke, Eva calmly started again – a reminder of the star quality that first brought her here in 2006.

Shooting Stars on stage at the Berlinale Palast © Isa Foltin /Getty Images for European Shootings Stars

The appearance of Black Swan star Natalie Portman as this year’s patron sent visible shockwaves through our Shooting Stars, and she was a gracious host, handing out the distinctive silver trophies. Not only was this seen on TV3, these images soon went all around the room, gracing Twitter feeds and Facebook pages before the night was even over. From the Palast it was back to 25Hours Hotel and the Monkey Bar, where our Shooting Stars were finally able to let their hair down, partying long into the night in a city that certainly knows how to party. It had been an extraordinary few days for all of us, but although it marked the end of the road for me, for our Shooting Stars the journey is just beginning.

Meet our sponsor

Tesiro has been a Berlinale partner since 2009 and has created the Shooting Stars award since then. So what drives this unusual intercontinental collaboration?

In 2015, you don’t have to be an expert on economics to know that the luxury goods industry is firing on all cylinders, or that China is one of the most dynamic markets in the world right now. Which is all good news for Tesiro, the high-end jewellery brand that is famous in its native China for its diamond and jade designs.

Carey Mulligan (Shooting Stars 2009) wearing TESIRO

Outside of China, you’d be forgiven for not realising just how big a brand Tesiro is. Founded by Mr Richard Shen in 1997 and headquartered in Nanjing, eastern China, Tesiro has now opened nearly 400 franchised stores in cities across the country – including, of course, Beijing and Shanghai. In 2006, Tesiro attracted significant investment from Eurostar Diamond Traders (EDT), the leading diamond-cutting trader from Antwerp, Belgium.

Tesiro began its partnership with the Berlinale in 2009, providing its signature Starlet jewellery to international stars attending the festival, including Ziyi Zhang, Uma Thurman, Andie MacDowell, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Chastain and Shooting Stars such as Carey Mulligan, Andrea Riseborough and Alicia Vikander. In 2014, Tesiro expanded its association, becoming a principal partner in a three-year deal extending to 2016.

Although famous in China for its patented, exclusive and award-winning Blue Flame diamond, Tesiro remains connected to its Chinese roots via its association with another precious jewel: jade. Mr Ma Chongren, respectfully called “King of Jade” in the jade industry, serves as chief expert of Tesiro’s Jade For Future Generations brand. Jade has been mined in China since 6000BC.

Richard Shen has postgraduate qualifications in business and business administration from Nanjing University, Macau University of Science and Technology and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has been the supervisor of graduate students at Nanjing University, and is the author of Organizational Intelligence: The Rise-and-Fall Secrets of 21st Century Enterprises. It’s hard to think of many western entrepreneurs that share similarly strong links to the world of academia and publishing.

Asked just how typical in China its partnership with the Berlinale and Shooting Stars is, Tesiro commented. “We have to admit that there haven’t been many Chinese fashion brands engaging in such high-profile events abroad yet. But with the acceleration in globalization, we believe there will be many more Chinese brands or joint ventures finding their way to going abroad and getting involved in high-profile projects, just as Tesiro has long been doing.”

The casting veteran

A record 60 international casting directors are heading to Berlin this week for Shooting Stars. We talk to one of them: Britain’s Leo Davis.

Marwan Kenzari (Shooting Stars 2014) with Leo Davis

Leo Davis began her career in casting more than 30 years ago. Having worked in theatre in both Liverpool and London, she tried to persuade casting director Susie Figgis to take her on as an assistant. Figgis felt she didn’t need one at that time, but changed her mind when she landed Richard Attenborough’s epic Gandhi. “It was such a huge film,” says Davis, “there was no way she could do it on her own. I went in as her assistant, and stayed about ten years, I think. And then I branched out on my own.”

Davis has enjoyed a particularly close relationship with director Stephen Frears, working with him on ten feature films, including Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen and Philomena. As Frears tells it, the casting team were so determined for him to cast Chiwetel Ejiofor in Dirty Pretty Things that they remained deliberately vague about the actor’s age (he was only 25 when the film came out – significantly younger than Frears had envisaged for the role of a qualified doctor living illegally in London, with a wife and children back in Nigeria). The picture went on to earn huge acclaim, winning Best Film, Actor, Director and Screenplay at the British Independent Film Awards.

Davis has been attending the International Casting Directors Network in Berlin since its inception in 2005, an event that is programmed so that the attendees can meet and interact with the Shooting Stars each year. This year, a record 60 casting directors from all over the world will attend, including heads of casting from Hollywood studios Paramount and Warner Bros. Opportunities for the casting directors to meet the Shooting Stars have been expanded, with two separate networking sessions for the 2015 edition.

Although Davis explains that challenges remain with producers forever seeking star names not just in the lead role but also in several supporting parts, even for low-budget films, one positive is the growing international nature of casting. “Yes! That’s great news,” she says. “I would think Shooting Stars has had a huge deal of input into that.”

Tusse Lande, Leo Davis and Debbie McWilliams at the annual ICDN meeting

Davis, who served on the Shooting Stars jury in 2010, has personally cast several of the actors she’s met through attending the networking sessions in Berlin. For example, when director Stephen Knight (Locke) was looking for a young East European actress to appear in his London-set drama Hummingbird, Davis knew immediately who to cast. “He described this nun, and I thought, I’ve just got the perfect person, she’s unbelievably nun-like, she’s Polish, and we cast Agata Buzek (Shooting Star, 2010).” 

In upcoming film The Ones Below, directed by David Farr (co-writer of Hanna), Davis has cast Finnish actress Laura Birn, a 2013 Shooting Star. She has also cast Dutch 2006 Shooting Star Mimoun Oaissa in the Hanif Kureishi-scripted short Weddings and Beheadings. Earlier, Davis cast Danish 1999 Shooting Star Iben Hjejle in High Fidelity (2000), opposite John Cusack.

“They’re so exciting, the European actors,” says Davis. “They’re ambitious, they want to make it, and at the same time they’ve got great taste, so it’s a good combination. They’re not looking for the giant American TV series, or their heads aren’t into the massive American lead role. They want to do good work.”

Leo Davis with Shooting Star Mikkel Boe Følsgaard at the 2013 Casting Breakfast

As for the private sessions with the ICDN, Davis reveals that the discussions are important for sharing information and comparing challenges faced in different territories. “We’ll spend time discussing why, until quite recently, the French didn’t give casting directors credits. Well, we’ve always had credit [in the UK]. It’s different things, about issues like payment. If I go and see a Russian film, and I think an actor is superb, I can always go to the Russian casting director and say, is he [consistently] superb, have you seen him in the theatre, give me more information.

“It’s become a kind of help network. If I’m doing something in France, instead of casting it myself, I’ll always say at the beginning, ‘Why don’t we employ a French casting director? I know three or four!’ And you try and get them jobs as well because they know what they are talking about. Having said that, it’s a challenge, because producers rarely want to fork out more money for an additional casting director.”

Casting remains the art of the possible: finding actors that are inspired choices for the role, while working within the star-driven constraints of the film’s financiers. For that reason, working with Stephen Frears on his 1993 Irish film The Snapper endures as a cherished memory for Davis.

“In an ideal world, you’d like to cast a film with a whole pile of unknown people, so that the audience goes to the cinema with no baggage, they’ve never seen them before. And it’s only happened one time in my entire life, which was doing The Snapper. I was allowed to cast perfectly, because there were barely any Irish names [known internationally] at that time that could be cast.”

This preference for fresh faces means that US producers have tended not to come calling for Davis’ services. “I don’t think I ever get Hollywood films,” she chuckles. “They think I’m a pain in the arse. Because you’re saying things like, ‘Let’s cast it properly.’ The job’s gone immediately once you say that. They only want to hear about Bradley Cooper.”

Meet Charles Collier: the London talent agent offering a bridge between Europe and Hollywood

"Crossing the Atlantic" a discussion forum at Shooting Stars 2012 with Angharad Wood ( Tavistock / Wood), Mechthild Holter (Players), Lina Todd ( Casting Director / Moderator), Theresa Peters ( UTA) , Sheila Wenzel ( Innovative Artists)

Charles Collier is a founding partner of Tavistock Wood, the London talent agency that, since its inception in 2004, has always looked beyond UK shores for a significant chunk of its artist roster, including former Shooting Stars Daniel Brühl, Benno Furmann, Iben Hjejle, Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson, Nina Hoss, Mélanie Laurent, Riccardo Scamarcio, Alicia Vikander and Johanna Wokalek. Representing more than 40 actors from Continental Europe – drawn from Germany, France, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Ukraine, Austria, Poland and Spain – Collier and his partner Angharad Wood have long been at the vanguard of the growing internationalisation of talent agency. Collier speaks to us ahead of his annual visit to the Berlinale, where this year he will meet and give advice to the 2015 selection of Shooting Stars.

Charles, how did Tavistock Wood come to represent so many Continental European clients?

When Angharad and I set up this business over ten years ago, all of the London market faced in one direction, which is to Los Angeles, where it appeared all the money was coming from. And to a large extent that was absolutely true. But we thought the question was: where’s the talent coming from? We had always been most at home in the environment of European cinema and European filmmaking as a matter of personal taste. That was a first love for us. And so, as is best in business, you follow your instinct, you follow your passions.

Was London the right place for such an agency?

London can offer the best of both worlds: we are entirely in tune with the artistic approach and sensibility of the European way of film which is very much a community of souls, but at the same time we are very comfortable with the commercial approach of the US entertainment industry which is profit-driven.

When it comes to really developing acting talent from the ground up, London is the very best place in the world. This comes from the unique infrastructure that has developed in London for actors to develop professionally, taking seed in the drama schools and the theatre. Add to this the sheer volume of production in London and the geographical and linguistic centrality of London as the bridge between North America and Europe. But most importantly London is the sophisticated global hub at the very centre of the cultural universe, and all the best productions come here to cast and connect with the most interesting talent.
In London, the casting directors really hold the keys to the kingdom. They are hugely authoritative and influential. The US producers and studios know that it makes sense to have a UK casting director. The best US material is always being cast out of London.

How has it been collaborating with local agents? Are they ever sceptical of the need for their artists to have a London agent?

We have great relationships with local agents. The local agents know we are going to understand each other and be most sensitive to nurturing the roots of an actor’s craft, whilst knowing they can trust us to be professionally aggressive in developing an English language career.
Local agents know that London can cover all English language projects, and the results show this is fact. For example, just to consider our agency Tavistock Wood. All of our clients who come to English as their second language secured their breakout lead roles in the English language through London and with London-only representation (outside the mother country), often in US-financed projects.
And every single client that came to us with a mother agent from their home territory still has such an agent. We consider that to be vital. We don’t want them to turn their back on their home territory. It would be madness.

Yes, because with the growing international focus of Hollywood, it can be a factor – studios look for actors that can boost the audience in their home country.

It’s both a commercial help to be strong in your home market, as well as artistically. These people are good for a reason, and suddenly severing your roots can be a very damaging process.

Over the ten years or so of Tavistock Wood, has the landscape changed for your clients working internationally?

Yes. It’s much better. So much better, and that’s because, it’s a cliché this, the old nation state boundaries are washed away by mechanisms of new distribution. Audiences now expect to see dramas that have a global face, and we can make that happen now. It’s very easy to think of Netflix doing a ten-part drama, set in Germany, in the English language, with German actors. It used to be everyone made product for their own little country, looking inward. And now, the Holy Grail of drama, and the Scandinavians have been fabulously successful at this, is to think: how can we make this an international phenomenon, how can we reach the outside world? There’s much more co-production in television. The new age of television scripted drama is a marvellous thing for European actors.

When did you first became aware of Shooting Stars?

I’ve known about it since the first time I attended the Berlin Film Festival, which was the year we set up the business. It is excellent in providing profile. It puts the spotlight and attention on to you, and it’s a wonderful accolade. The brilliance of it is that it’s tied into the market, rather than just tied into what some agents and some casting directors might see. For just a brief moment, producers, sales agents, distributors, they will also be aware, that’s what makes it so different and so important. Berlin brings focus to that in a way that nowhere else could.

How do you go about choosing new clients to represent?

It’s pretty simple: we need to find people that we like and admire and respect and believe have got the professional approach to have a successful career. And we need to see the work that backs that up, and tells us what they are as an artist so we can really understand them, and what it is that’s unique about them, and what they can bring to this particular community. That’s the easy bit. The difficult bit is the luck of whether you end up together. There’s a huge amount of agents. Sadly, you can’t always get there first.

I like people to have actually worked it out, and gone: Ah! Which agency is it that has time and time again so successfully crossed to and fro between the international market, whilst also making sure that the home career stays strong, and who has got the sensitivity and the intelligence to really do that well? That said, why should any artist be so keyed into the way the business works? Often, they’re not. So then it’s a question of: do your paths cross?

Well, how do they cross?

With Eva Green, mutual friends introduced us, thinking we might get on and like each other, and they made a good judgement about that. With Daniel Bruhl, it was Daniel’s German agent who knew us, and recommended he meet with us, and it’s been a fabulous relationship for ten years. Daniel’s amazingly brilliant German agents, they are great friends. It has been and continues to be such a strong and successful relationship. And then Alicia, she’s extremely focused and intelligent and aware, and she had found out who we were and came and found us. I can remember as clear as day the first time that we met.

In Germany, France and Italy, those countries have very strong local film production where actors can thrive very happily. When signing an artist, you need to be sure that they really desire to work internationally?

Sure, absolutely. And the fact is, Hollywood doesn’t recognise European pay quotes. If you’re a big star in Italy, and you’re earning €350,000 on a little Italian comedy, don’t be surprised if a Hollywood studio turns around and offers you $70,000, and you’re basically being asked to work on an 80% discount. It’s up to you to decide: do you want an international career? It is an international market, and you thrive by having a life everywhere.

And what about taking representation in the US? When is the right time to do that?

Almost every decent US project casts in London and the UK agents cover the US in any event. An LA agent becomes necessary only if the artist intends to make LA their home base. That said, wherever an artist is based, a US agent can bring a great dynamic if they come to the team at the right time and where the volume of business requires it. But there needs to be a great body of work in Europe first. Something that really stands out. Arriving in LA empty-handed and appointing a second-rate US agent is not a good idea.

Top Hollywood studio casting director set to join Shooting Stars

Since the creation of the International Casting Directors Network in 2004, casting directors from all around the world have been holding their annual get-together in Berlin, a key component of the Shooting Stars activity at the Berlinale. Of course, it’s a big trip from Los Angeles, and these professionals lead busy lives, so it’s a sign of the ever-increasing international nature of casting that, this year, Lora Kennedy, executive vice-president of casting at Warner Bros, will make the trip for her first time.

“A lot of my casting director friends in London have been telling me about the event,” says Kennedy. “And à propos the reason to go to Shooting Stars, we’ve had to really broaden our base of international actors, we can’t just look at American film actors. We’ve got to go to other countries, we’ve got to go to other mediums, we’ve got to go to the internet, we’ve got to go to rappers, we’ve got to go to television, we’ve got to go to music, everything. It’s all over the place now.

“I think everybody’s looking to broaden their market. Everybody’s looking to see how you can get a bigger audience, globally. The international market is what is driving all the studios.”

For Kennedy, the development is entirely felicitous, since the changing nature of the film industry globally allows her to push for a broader mix of actors at Warner Bros. “I love European actors. I love Alicia Vikander, and Elizabeth Debicki. Daniel Bruhl, we’ve loved forever, but finally he’s coming into his own. We’ve been having our eye on him for years, even before Good Bye Lenin!” (Vikander and Bruhl are former Shooting Stars.)

“We usually include all the Europeans, especially the British, right along with our American actors. We don’t really separate them out. Everybody’s kind of lapped in there: Mads Mikkelsen, and Ben Mendelsohn from Australia, Javier Bardem or Jai Courtney or whoever it is. It’s all one big happy list now.”

However, there’s no point dodging the fact that the international market for film is overwhelmingly in one particular language. “The movies are in English,” says Kennedy. “You don’t want to erase what’s natural and organic about [foreign actors], but if you can’t be understood, it’s going to be hard to translate into that next market. If Spanish were the big international language, and I were an American actor, I would learn Spanish.

“If you speak English with a very heavy accent, then you’ll be relegated to roles where the accent would then make sense. You wouldn’t be able to play a housewife from middle America on welfare trying to raise her kids. You’d have to rewrite it.”

Kennedy got into casting by chance, right after university, having been asked to drive a friend’s wife to work following a car accident. “She worked for a very big producer in television on the old MGM lot. I would drive her to work every day. One day, we stopped by her friend who was in a casting office, and they ended up asking me if I wanted to intern. Two weeks later they hired me as an assistant.

“I didn’t know that job existed. There weren’t that many people casting – not like today. There were only three networks when I started, and there was no way we were doing as many movies as we do today.”

Kennedy worked on 1980s TV shows including The A Team, and was then hired as assistant to film casting director Wally Nicita. “She had just done The Big Chill,” says Kennedy, “and I learned from her. Because she was so respected, I did my time as an assistant, then an associate, and I segued into doing my own casting at the age of 26. She really was the foundation of me learning what I had to learn.”

Kennedy has held her post at Warners since 1999, helping to oversee casting across the studio slate, as well as personally casting films for directors Ben Affleck, Zack Snyder, the Wachowskis and others. She is answerable to studio chiefs who may have their own ideas about star roles, although Warners is a studio that’s  rightly earned a reputation for being filmmaker-friendly. Actors may care to pay attention to the one area that raises a red flag for studio bosses.

Explains Kennedy, “Mostly it’s interjecting if somebody has not done well by us in terms of us commitment or attitude. That’s the one thing that drives everybody in this town now: is somebody nice and are they great to work with? My guys, they put their foot down if somebody has proven not to be a team player. I think they really like to see the overview of how the movie is going to look, and the leads, but mostly they hire filmmakers who they trust to make their best movie and defer to them.”

Meet the 2015 Shooting Stars

Jury members Charles Gant (2014) and Damon Wise (2015) share their jury experiences and discuss this year’s new Shooting Stars

Damon Wise

 Charles Gant: So, Damon, congratulations on your Shooting Stars choices for 2015. My first observation is: four men and six women! Did that to some degree reflect the gender balance of all the submitted candidates you were choosing between? My second observation is: it's nice that you selected a lot of different countries to the ones we picked a year ago. Only the UK, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands are common to the 2014 and 2015 choices. So you have six fresh countries that didn't feature last time.

Damon Wise: Thanks! I have to admit, some of the responsibilities hadn't really dawned on me until we sat down to debate the choices. As the only native English-speaker on the jury I was obviously very much aware of the potential for bias not only towards the UK candidate but also the Scandinavian nominees. Other than that, though, I hadn't really thought of some of the other issues – it was only after I'd chosen my final ten than I thought to ask whether there had to be a particular gender mix (the long list featured 11 men and 14 women). At the end of the process, we did look at the geographical spread, but really just out of curiosity. It didn’t impact on our discussions and choices. That was also the point at which we realised that certain countries weren't represented, or perhaps weren't the heavyweights we were expecting from the outset. We didn’t at all pay attention to which countries were chosen last time. Was that something that you were ever conscious of when you made your selections for 2014?

Charles: I think our submitted candidates last year were pretty evenly mixed regarding gender, and that maybe reflected in our final choice of five men and five women as Shooting Stars. I do recall that we had a really passionate debate about the last spot in the line-up, but it was a choice between three male candidates. We didn't look at the home countries of the previous year's Shooting Stars, either, and paid absolutely no attention to it. I think we were aware that some of the candidates came from countries with more thriving film cultures, and so, understandably, had maybe been given more opportunities to shine. But ultimately as jury members we chose the ten best and most deserving Shooting Stars, and that's all you can do. How did you find the debate about the qualities of the candidates, in terms of both brilliant acting ability, but also that sometimes hard-to-define "star quality"?

Eva Röse

Damon: For me, personally, the hardest part was being objective about the actor – by that I mean judging the performance and not the film. I know that seems obvious, but that can be harder than it sounds, especially for a journalist who is used to assessing a film in its entirety, and I would tell any future nominee that a good showreel is a vital part of the selection process – if a film is dealing with a dark or serious subject matter, that quite often determines how much (or little) we get to see of an actor's range. As for "star quality", that wasn't something we really debated – I think we were all agreed that we were looking for actors with impact, people who could hold our attention as well as our gaze. A lot of this came down to instinct – I realised very early on that an actor's charisma onscreen could sometimes outweigh their CV.

Charles: The five-person jury always mixes a critic, a producer, a filmmaker, a casting director and an actor (typically a former Shooting Star), and I was interested in the different perspectives these people brought. We came from all over Europe, and were a mix of men and women, which I believe is always the case. Last time, I would say that our director and casting director were especially invested in the subtleties of performance. For me, also, the clue is in the title, and we are celebrating future film stars showcasing talent to make an impact internationally. Anyway, I want to hear more about this year's Shooting Stars! Maisie Williams I know from Carol Morley's The Falling, and Sven Schelker from Swiss gay docudrama The Circle. So let's start with those two.

Damon: I was slightly concerned about voter etiquette when it came to the UK – should we be allowed to vote for our home territory? (We did all have one.) In Maisie's case there was also Carol Morley's film (The Falling), which tells a very specifically British story, one that's very much about a certain time and place. I decided to abstain from comment and just see what happened. Not only did the jury love the film, a couple were also huge Game Of Thrones fans (she plays the tomboyish Arya Stark), and so Maisie sailed through unanimously. And Sven? Sven is a very good case for spending time on a showreel. His performance in The Circle is very moving, but his charming showreel made us all smile – it gave us an insight into his personality as well as clearer idea of his abilities.

Malgorzata Szumowska

Charles: We had a very strong showing from Scandinavia last year, with Shooting Stars from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and even our Italian Shooting Star, Miriam Karlkvist, is half-Swedish. Tell me about your selections from Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Damon: As I was expecting, the Scandinavian nominees were all of a very high standard. The first film I sat down to watch was Itsi Bitsi, which set the bar quite high – it's the true story of Eik Skaløe, a beatnik poet and activist who introduced Denmark to psychedelic rock. Not only is it Joachim Fjelstrup's first leading role, it's his first film full stop – and he's just magnetic. Emmi Parviainen, from Finland, captivated us too, with a performance as a single mother in The Princess Of Egypt that's as heartfelt and real as any that the Dardennes brothers have ever captured. Hera Hilmar, who plays a very different kind of single mother in Life In A Fishbowl, delivered a showreel that not only showcased her rather scary versatility but revealed her terrific command of English too.

Charles: I look forward to discovering these films. I just realised that I have seen quite a few of Hera Hilmar's performances. She has a memorable supporting part in current UK festive comedy Get Santa, with Jim Broadbent and Rafe Spall. She was in Brit indie flick We Are The Freaks, Joe Wright's Anna Karenina and Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate. She has talent representation in the UK, so I am now wondering if she studied there, or is (or was) based in London. Let's continue our sweep through Northern Europe. Tell me about your choices from Germany, Lithuania and the Netherlands.

Danijel Hočevar

Damon: To start with Lithuania, Aistė Diržiūtė's performance in The Summer Of Sangaile – which, incidentally has been selected for the first day of next year's Sundance Film Festival – is a good example of what I was talking about earlier. I was so engrossed in the story I had to keep reminding myself to keep my eyes on Aistė, as she plays a significant supporting character who drives the story but isn't necessarily the focus. Aistė has a very easy and disarming charm, as does Abbey Hoes from the Netherlands, who stars in Nena. Both these actors are very young – 23 and 20 respectively – but they possess maturity and deceptively rich emotional depths that really ground their characters in reality. Jannis Niewöhner, from Germany, is possibly our most 'classic' Shooting Star – good-looking, intense, romantic. He really is quite a package.

Nathalie Cheron

Charles: Thanks Damon. And finally, what should I look forward to from our Irish and Spanish Shooting Stars?

Damon: On the surface, Ireland’s Moe Dunford would appear to tick some of the same boxes as Jannis – his showreel contains scenes from the TV show Vikings that prove he has a seriously commanding presence, like a missing Hemsworth or Worthington brother. His film Patrick’s Day, however, in which he plays a young Dublin man with mental-health problems, persuaded us that Moe has more in him than action and fantasy roles. Spain’s Natalia De Molina, meanwhile, is probably the most ‘classic’ Shooting star among the girls: she’s very feminine, with a wicked smile and great comic timing. Her film Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed – incidentally, Spain’s foreign-language Oscar hopeful next year – in which she stars alongside Pedro Almodóvar regular Javier Cámara, was the last film I watched, and it was a nice way to sign off. It’s a gentle, bittersweet road movie that left me feeling a lot less anxious about the future than some of the more hard-hitting titles we saw!

Meet the Shooting Stars 2015 jury

Shooting Stars 2014 jury participant and film critic Charles Gant passes the torch to this year’s new jury members

Exactly a year ago at this time, I was engaged in one of the more agreeable assignments a film critic can be asked to perform. Despatched from European Film Promotion’s Hamburg office had arrived a box packed with numerous films on screener disc, and a similar number of actors’ showreels. It was my pleasant duty to watch all the discs in advance of a December jury meeting. My fellow jurors and I would then select the ten young actors from across Europe who would all be anointed Shooting Stars at the 2014 Berlinale.

The only downside to participating in the Shooting Stars jury is that it’s an honour that doesn’t usually repeat. Each year, EFP selects a fresh actor, critic, casting director, producer and filmmaker to make up that year’s jury. However brilliant and insightful (or otherwise) our contributions to the jury may be, we do not expect ever to return.

So it’s with a tinge of jealous regret that I welcome the men and women who have been invited as this year’s Shooting Stars jurors. From France, casting director Nathalie Cheron, who combines prolific work on French-language films with major international titles such as The Bourne Identity, Taken and Luc Besson’s Lucy. From Slovenia, producer Danijel Hocevar, whose excellent 2013 film Circles yielded 2014 Shooting Star Nikola Rakocevic. From Sweden, 2006 Shooting Star Eva Röse, an actress who plays the title role in internationally renowned crime series Maria Wern. From Poland, filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska, who directed 2014 Shooting Star Mateusz Kosciukiewicz in the justly acclaimed drama In The Name Of, winner of the Teddy Award at the 2013 Berlinale. Finally, from the UK, film critic Damon Wise, who is a contributing editor to Empire magazine.

Over the years, I have participated in the jury not only for EFP’s Shooting Stars but also for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Rising Star Award. Although the schemes are quite different – for a start, Shooting Stars honours ten young actors equally, whereas the BAFTA prize eventually produces a single winner from the five nominees selected by the jury – there’s some similarity in terms of the kinds of jury discussions that ensue. Are we considering only pure acting ability? Or are we also looking for that ineluctable quality – star power – that is referenced in the titles of both awards? Charisma and screen presence are vital qualities for a film actor, and – quite rightly – these are considered alongside excellent technical acting skill.
I don’t want to give away any secrets of the jury room, but in my stint selecting the Shooting Stars, it’s certainly true that various jury members put the emphasis more on different aspects of the qualities under consideration. The mix of men and women on the jury, and our different backgrounds and professions, seemed to inform the debate. Sadly, I’ll never get to hear what will be said in the jury room this year, but there’s one thing for sure: I can’t wait to hear the names of the 2015 Shooting Stars that result.

THE JURY

Nathalie Cheron (Casting Director - France) is casting for French and European productions and already worked with some of Europe’s most respected directors. Her credit list includes Lucy and The Family by Luc Besson, Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table! by Guillaume Gallienne, Mr Morgan's Last Love by Sandra Nettelbeck, Sa Majesté Minor by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Paris, Je t'aime by 20 directors and The Bourne Identity by Doug Liman. Nathalie Cheron is member of the International Casting Directors’ Network (ICDN) and of the Association des Responsables de Distribution Artistique (ARDA).

Danijel Hočevar (Producer - Slovenia) is one of the most experienced producers from his region. Together with the directors Damjan Kozole and Metod Pevec he established the production company Vertigo in 1994. Here more than 40 feature films have been realized, including the multi award-winning An Episode In A Life Of An Iron Picker (2013) by Danis Tanović, Circles by Srdan Golubović and I Am From Titov Veles (2007) by Teona Mitevska. Danijel Hočevar has been selected as one of “Variety’s Ten Producers To Watch”. He is a voting member of the European Film Academy, a member of the selection jury of Nipkow Programm and a member of the pedagogical team of EAVE and MidPoint.

 Eva Röse (Actress and SHOOTING STAR 2006 - Sweden) has been one of the most popular Swedish actresses for the past 15 years. She has starred in over 50 feature films and TV productions and has played in over 20 stage productions at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm and the Stockholm City Theater. On the big screen she was successful in a number of popular Scandinavian films such as Kopps and Göta Kanal 2 and in the award-winning film Storm. Since 2008, Eva stars as the crime inspector Maria, in the internationally renowned Swedish crime series Maria Wern. The series contains 14 movies shown both as feature films and on TV.

Malgorzata Szumowska (Director - Poland) belongs to the most prominent Polish filmmakers and covers a broad spectrum working as screenwriter and producer as well as documentary and feature film director. She has been honoured with several awards, including the Teddy Award for In The Name Of at the Berlin Film Festival and the Silver Leopard Award at the Locarno Film festival for 33 Scenes From Life. Malgorzata Szumowska was twice nominated for the European Film Awards for Happy Man and Stranger. Her movie Elles, featuring Juliette Binoche and Anaïs Demoustier, French SHOOTING STAR 2010, was sold to over 40 countries.

Damon Wise (Film Editor - UK). A film writer since 1987, Damon Wise is currently a Contributing Editor with Empire magazine and an advisor to the BFI London Film Festival's Thrill strand. As a writer he has had his features, interviews and reviews published in many UK publications, including The Times, Financial Times, The Guardian and The Observer, as well as other film magazines such as Sight & Sound and the short-lived Neon. As well as covering set visits and junkets, he is a regular attendee at key international film festivals, including Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto. In 1998 he published his first book, Come By Sunday (Sidgwick & Jackson), a biography of British film star Diana Dors.


This blog will appear at occasional intervals leading up to the Berlinale, and then more regularly during the Shooting Stars activity Feb 6-10.

Shooting Stars hit East Berlin

Tonight will be  the climax of three days of hectic activity for the Shooting Stars, as they come onstage at the Berlinale-Palast to accept their awards. Over this period, they have had intense sessions with numerous casting directors who come each year to the Berlinale for the annual meeting of the International Casting Directors Network. The ten have had the opportunity to meet talent agents – although increasingly our Shooting Stars are arriving not only with agents in their home country but also with international representation, such is the growing international interest in  European acting talent. And of course they have met the press.

Charles Gant © Ralf Uhler

This morning, in a break from the official activities, the actors were invited to special tours by three Berlin residents from the film industry. Talent agent Mechthild Holter from the Players agency took Cosmina Stratan (Romania), Marwan Kenzari (Netherlands) and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz on a tour of Alexanderplatz, including the revolving restaurant at the top of the TV Tower. Italian actor Luca Marinella, who is now resident in Berlin after coming here as a 2013 Shooting Star, invited Maria Dragus (Germany), Miriam Karlkvist (Italy) and George MacKay (UK) to check out his favourite places in Kreuzberg, scene of the famous Banksy graffiti art and many street murals. And Nikola Rakocevic (Serbia) and I joined director Anno Saul in his own lakeside home in Hohenschoenhausen, for some exercise and sunshine next to Lake Obersee, and culture in the Mies Van Der Rohe Haus museum and gallery that is nearby. This beautiful lakeside spot was once the home of many elite Stasi members, who used the single-storey 1932 Mies Van Der Rohe house as a laundry facility.

Having served on the jury last December where we are judging based on the submitted spotlight films and the actors' showreels, it's been particularly special to spend time with all ten of the Shooting Stars – who also include Danica Curcic (Denmark), Edda Magnason (Sweden) and Jakob Oftebro (Norway) – at the Berlinale. I have served on juries for rising acting talent before, and of course I am aware that such accolades are useful for bringing press attention, enhancing status in our very competitive film industry, and giving a little extra spotlight to their next movies. But what I had never previously understood was the personal boost it also gives, and especially in their own confidence as actors, to receive this endorsement. I will leave Berlin knowing that the Shooting Stars initiative is more vital than I ever suspected, and I am happy to have played my small part.

Charles Gant, Shooting Stars 2014 jury member

Trail:

Tonight, the ten Shooting Stars will walk the red carpet before Berlinale Competition film In Order Of Disappearance, and receive their Shooting Star awards on-stage before the film

Shooting Stars: meet the sales agents

Charles Gant at the EFM

For the international sales agents here at the Berlinale selling films in the market, the Shooting Stars designation for their cast members can be a welcome boost. At the Doc&Film stand, the poster image and marketing materials all feature the face of Miriam Karlkvist from South Is Nothing (Il Sud E Niente), just one of the films the Italian company is presenting at the EFM. Doc&Film's Daniela Elsner long ago considered festival offers, and agreed with Toronto, Rome and the Berlinale Generation strand that they would be the first three steps in the film's life – a plan negotiated up-front and agreeable to all. Of course, at this point, Daniela had no idea that in Berlin her lead actress would be feted as a Shooting Star.

“We liked the image,” explains Daniela. “We have three films at the Berlinale, but the South Is Nothing poster is specifically with Miriam, and it makes sense to us with the Shooting Stars. It gives another light on the film in Berlin. I think it's well-established enough that people know. If you mention Shooting Stars, it means something. That's also because of years of work of everyone, which was not so much the case in the beginning.”

Over at the TrustNordisk desk, CEO Rikke Ennis is in the happy position of selling three films featuring Shooting Stars. She has On The Edge, fresh from its Rotterdam premiere, featuring both Denmark's Danica Curcic and Norway's Jakob Oftebro; Berlinale competition entry In Order Of Disappearance, with Jakob; and The Absent One, with Danica, which is in post-production.

“We always mention Shooting Stars,” says Rikke. “It's a good platform and to promote the film. It's good sales-wise. Here in Berlin there are so many films, all the attention you can get, all the visibility is always welcome. If you have a cast with Shooting Stars, and all the glamour around it, it always helps.”

In Order Of Disappearance, also starring Stellan Skarsgard, Bruno Ganz and former Shooting Star Anders Baasmo Christiansen, premieres in the Berlinale tonight (Feb 10)

Our Shooting Stars jury spokesman: Anders Baasmo Christiansen

As a former Shooting Star himself, Norwegian actor Anders Baasmo Christiansen has a special role on our jury and is its public face. Introducing the 2014 Shooting Stars today at the Hotel De Rome for their Berlin press conference, he spoke tenderly about how the accolade, which he received in 2010, impacted him not just in terms of doors it opened for his career. “It put me on a different level of confidence with my own work,” he said. “Actors tend to feel self-doubt. We sometimes feel like we are the worst person in the world and that's part of our process.” But with such an endorsement as Shooting Stars, he advised this year's winners, “If you find yourself in that position, you can blame the script rather than yourself.”

Anders and Jakob during the Shooting Stars Press Presentation

Afterwards, Anders told me about his time as a Shooting Star, which came a fair way into his career, in honour of the Berlinale Panorama 2009 opening film North, from Rune Densted Langlo. “I was the oldest of the Shooting Stars group, and 2010 was my last chance to be a Shooting Star,” said Anders. He remained level-headed about the accolade and didn't necessarily expect big changes in his career. However, the Shooting Star designation won him an international agent – Denmark's Anne Lindberg – who has been mentioned to me many times in conversation here in Berlin as the best Scandinavian talent agent. She also represents the 2014 Shooting Stars Danica Curci (Denmark) and Jakob Oftebro (Norway).
Anders gives credit to Anne's patience that he hasn't necessarily leapt at international offers that have come his way, and says he now feels more ready to embrace them. He added, “I always say, with Shooting Stars, not every door is necessarily opening, but maybe the road of coincidences [that you need to occur take you to your career goal] will be a little bit shorter.”

Partying with the Shooting Stars

Last night in Berlin the ten Shooting Stars were seen on the red carpet for the Berlin-Brandenburg Film Fund party at the Ritz-Carlton, and later walked over to the Tesiro Golden Bear Lounge at the Hotel Hyatt, for a private reception celebrating the jewellery brand's association with the annual award scheme. At the Berlin-Brandenburg party, I first spoke with Sweden's Edda Magnason, who has made a remarkable transition from musician to actor with her film debut, playing famed Swedish jazz singer Monica Zetterlund in Waltz With Monica. She won the role by an unconventional route, after somebody attending one of her concerts suggested to director Per Fly that she should be considered for the role. Multiple screen tests and almost a year later, the film-making team were convinced that they had found their Monica. Edda, who won Best Actress at last month's Swedish Film Awards, has been busy recording her third album, which will be released in the spring.

From left-right): Cosmnia Stratan (Romania), Mateusz Kosciukiewicz (Poland), Jakob Oftebro (Norway), Miriam Karlkvist (Italy), Maria Dragus (Germany), Richard Shen (President of TESIRO), Danica Curcic (Denmark), Marwan Kenzari (The Netherlands), Nikola Rakocevic (Serbia), Edda Magnason (Sweden) and George MacKay (UK)  © Markus Nass

I also caught up with the UK's George MacKay, who is in Berlin on a special break from his London play The Cement Garden. George is coming off a big UK box-office hit, Sunshine On Leith, which is adapted from a stage musical that incorporates songs from Scottish band The Proclaimers. The film was released on the same day in the UK as two of George's other 2013 films, dystopian teen romance How I Live Now, and the gritty low-budget drama For Those In Peril, which won him a Scottish BAFTA. George spoke about losing weight for one of his 2014 films, Duane Hopkins' Bypass – a mindboggling thought since his frame definitely already qualifies as lean. The film-making team soon realised that a dietician was needed to help George lose the weight safely and responsibly.
George's other 2014 film is Pride, from Matthew Warchus, who is best known in the UK for directing stage smash Matilda: The Musical. The film is inspired by the true story of the gay rights activists who set up a group supporting the striking miners in their epic – and ultimately doomed – battle with Margaret Thatcher's UK government in 1984-5. George and I are both excited about a young actor called Ben Schnetzer, an American who studied acting in London and is making his career in Europe, first in The Book Thief (playing a German Jew), and then in the British films Pride and Posh – the latter an acclaimed adaptation of a Royal Court stageplay. I believe Ben is playing a Russian in it, and he is an actor that Europe will be very happy to adopt.

All the Shooting Stars were a little giddy after their epic eight-hour photo shoot yesterday, which between set-ups had left plenty of time for hilarity to ensue. After the shoot, local Shooting Star Maria Dragus took George for an authentic Berlin experience: currywurst and chips at Curry 36. I caught up with Maria at the Tesiro party, where I was teasing her about her resemblance to Elle Fanning (I'm not the first person to mention this), and she told me all about shooting White Ribbon with Michael Haneke. His directing style is surprisingly straightforward and non-cerebral, I learnt, and we talked about how details in the set decoration, often invisible to the camera, nevertheless help the actors believe in the moment and commit to the role, thus elevating their performance. All the Shooting Stars were presented with gifts by Tesiro, and were welcomed by the company's President, Richard Shen.

Meet the Shooting Stars: Mateusz Kosciukiewicz and Nikola Rakocevic

The balance between glamour and diligence for this year's Shooting Stars was aptly on display at their photo shoot this morning. An 8.30am start at the shoot location meant lie-ins were not much of an option for the ten actors, and Norway's Jakob Oftebro may have been regretting going on to Soho House after the Danish party last night, where he more or less closed up the bar with Harvey Weinstein. On the other hand, Jakob looked totally fresh and rested, such are the advantages of youth.
In between the styling sessions for the shoot (the snaps with me above are as we arrived, before the grooming team worked their magic), I managed to grab some interview time with both Poland's Mateusz Kosciukiewicz and Serbia's Nikola Rakocevic, and both told similarly engaging accounts of their first steps into acting.

Nikola Rakocevic and Charles Gant © Sinissey

Nikola grew up in the town of Kragujevac in central Serbia, about 100km from Belgrade. He has one older brother, his father was a forklift-truck driver and his mother worked in accounts for an insulation manufacturer. Mateusz grew up in the small town of Nowy Tomysl, near Poznan in western Poland. He also has one older brother, his father is a carpenter and his mother a hospital cleaner.
Both were encouraged to act as teenagers by inspiring women who fostered local talent. For Nikola it was the Kragujevac after-school acting club run by a woman called Slavica Urosevic. Not only did she encourage his acting, but she also inspired all the kids to “find yourself”, and to make the best of themselves in whatever direction their life took them. In the case of Mateusz, it was while visiting the local cultural centre at Nowy Tomysl that the woman who ran it, Renata Smiertelna, persuaded him to read a poem aloud, and then encouraged him down the path of acting. Together with local retired actor Henryk Dabrowski, she ultimately helped him prepare for theatre school in Wroclaw – a Silesian city better known outside Poland by the name Breslau.

Nikola had previously received encouragement to act by his grandfather, who whenever he had friends visiting would ask the nine-year-old to perform characters from his favourite TV show Djekna. Meanwhile his grandmother – the whole family lived in the same house together – developed his acting by improvising scenes together, sometimes in a made-up language. “I always say that my grandfather was my first agent and my grandmother was my first acting teacher,” says Nikola.
Mateusz had a chequered history at acting school, transitioning from puppet theatre to drama and not completing his degree. He looks back on those years with self-deprecating amusement at his own behaviour, which involved “challenging everything – I wanted to make my own new style, invent the programme. It was crazy.” Also problematic was his accepting roles in films, which as all actors know is deeply discouraged at acting school, since it interferes with the teaching programme. “Half of the professors wanted to kick me out and the other half wanted to give me another chance because they believed in my talent,” he says.

He is aware of his incredible good fortune that the Polish film industry, after a difficult transition from the full state subsidy of the Communist era, was at last beginning to find its feet again just as he was making his way as an actor. There had been a dearth of career opportunities, he says, for his immediate antecedents. But in 2009's All That I Love, “I was the first young actor in a long time to be given an opportunity to have a big success in the cinema.” Comparisons with Zbigniew Cybulski – aka “the Polish James Dean” – ensued.

Although it feels almost trivial to talk about the tragic conflict in this context, Nikola agrees that growing up during the wars of former Yugoslavia, in which his father was conscripted to fight, and in which “for three years as a child I am seeing dead people on TV every day”, certainly gives him access to deeper emotions that may not be so easily available to all – ones that he can convey with restraint and subtlety. You get more than a hint of that in his film Circles, the true story of Srdjan Aleksic, a Bosnian Serb soldier who in 1993 lost his life defending an ethnic Bosnian shopkeeper from being attacked by a group of fellow soldiers.

I'm reminded of Mark Wahlberg, who very different reasons had known troubles in his youth, experiences that can help him get to the necessary place a lot quicker than, in his mocking words, “Let me think about the colour blue. Let me think about my dead cat.”

Mateusz is returning to the Berlinale after his film In The Name Of, directed by his wife Malgorzata Szumowska, won the Teddy Award here last year. He was also just in the city shooting the German-Australian co-production Elixir, an English-language film in which he plays a Frenchman, alongside former Shooting Star Natasha Petrovic. Meanwhile Nikola has likewise made a foray into English with the Las Vegas-set Travelator. “I don't have so many lines,” cautions the actor – not, he clarifies because his role is small. He plays the protagonist, a hired assassin who is despatched to Vegas to kill a protected witness. “He's a silent guy who kills other people,” explains Nikola.

First impressions of the Shooting Stars

Today here in Berlin begins three action-packed days of events and festivities celebrating the ten Shooting Stars for 2014. All of the actors are here at the Berlinale, some together with their agent, others braving the spotlight on their own. As a jury member and official Shooting Stars blogger I am privileged to be shadowing the group, and last night we met at our hotel for a relaxed introduction session with organisers European Film Promotion.

Jakob Oftebro and George MacKay during the introduction meeting © Ralf Uhler

Several of the stars have particular excitement to be here in Berlin. Norway's Jakob Oftebro is here at the festival with a film in competition, Hans Petter Moland's Kraftidioten (In Order Of Disappearance), also starring Stellan Skarsgard, Bruno Ganz and Shooting Star jury member Anders Baasmo Christiansen. Anders, who himself was a Shooting Star in 2010, arrives today. Last night Jakob spoke on behalf of the whole group when he articulated how happy they are all to be here, and looking forward to this special time together. Shooting Stars 2014 may have found its ambassador.
George MacKay from the UK stepped briefly outside the Shooting Stars bubble last night since his girlfriend Saoirse Ronan was here with Berlinale Opening Night film Grand Budapest Hotel from Wes Anderson. The pair met on the set of Kevin Macdonald's dystopian teen romance How I Live Now and managed to keep their relationship pretty much under wraps until the UK release of the film last autumn. George has been given leave of absence from the London play The Cement Garden, in which he is currently starring, to attend the Berlinale.

Sweden's Edda Magnason is celebrating her recent Best Actress win at the Swedish Film Awards – aka the Guldbagge Awards – for her title role in music biopic Waltz With Monica. An acclaimed recording artist in her home country, Edda makes a sensational film debut as legendary Swedish jazz singer Monica
Zetterlund.
This year's crop of Shooting Stars is international not only in the sense of representing ten different European countries, but also to some degree themselves. Italian Shooting Star Miriam Karlkvist is half-Swedish, and Danish Shooting Star Danica Curcic has Serbian heritage. Norway's Jakob Oftebro works happily in any Scandinavian language (and English, of course) and co-stars with Danica in Danish film On The Edge, which is selling in the market here in Berlin. Poland Shooting Star Mateusz Kosciukiewicz returns to Berlin having just completed shooting a movie here three weeks ago.
Finally a word about Serbian Shooting Star Nikola Rakocevic, who seemingly comes complete with his own GPS device. He was able to guide us back to our hotel as we took some welcome past-midnight air walking home from the Danish party, having seemingly noted the directions when being driven to the event. If I get lost in Berlin, which I expect to do, I'm calling Nikola.

This evening (Saturday February 8) the Shooting Stars attend the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg Film Fund reception at the Ritz-Carlton, and a welcome cocktail with Shooting Stars main partner and Berlinale official partner Tesiro. Medienboard is a partner in Nikola Rakocevic's film Circles, for which he is nominated as a Shooting Star this year.