This week sees Mark Rylance catching dreams as the Big Friendly Giant in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG. Since starring in Bridge Of Spies (opposite Tom Hanks, another Spielberg favourite), Rylance has become something of a Spielberg muse, signing up for projects like The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara and Ready Player One.
But Spielberg isn’t the only directing heavyweight to recognise Rylance’s talent, with Christopher Nolan adding him to World War II drama Dunkirk, seeing him join the already stellar cast of Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh and James D’Arcy.
“Chris is the most serious and interesting filmmaker,” Rylance told us when he popped along to the Empire Podcast pod booth recently. “Every great filmmaker at some moment makes a war film. But Chris’ script-writing is so brilliant that I think he has the potential to make a very, very powerful and simple, pure war film about a miraculous loss. I think it has the potential to be just a marvellous film.”
As with every Nolan film, it sounds like the stakes will be incredibly high and proceedings incredibly tense – although we highly doubt there’ll be a rug-pulling twist this time around. “With some of those old war films you used to get a lot of build-up, you play the guessing game: who’s going to die and who’s going to live. This one has none of that. It’s just BANG! Straight into the middle of a desperate situation.”
Dunkirk is released in cinemas on July 21, 2017. The BFG is out this Friday.