Chiwetel talks

An interview with actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose new film is David Mamet's Redbelt. Ejiofor talks about his physical preparation for the role and what working with Mamet was like. (Greencine)

Q: You talked about being around all these master martial artists. Being in Redbelt also put you in the company of veteran David Mamet actors. Mamet's dialogue has unique rhythms and cadences and the films he directs have a different kind of performance style and character interaction. Some actors are masters at it, like Joe Mantegna. Did you also have to get up to speed to learn to take Mamet's dialogue and make it your own, make it a comfortable part of your character?

A: Yeah, in a sense. I had been very familiar with Mamet and his work ever since I became interested in acting 15 years ago or something like that. So even in high school, we were studying Mamet, so his language and his dialogue has been part of my landscape for as long I can remember. And when I came to see his plays and when I went to see his films, you know, the likes of Glengarry Glen Ross and Oleanna and that whole time, it made a very deep impression on me. So when I came to doing this project, there was a sense that I had been a student, in a way, of his dialogue for a very long time and that I was aware of some of the rhythms and some of the ways that it worked. So it wasn't that I'd come to something completely brand new and it did feel as if some of it was something that was accessible to me, or at least familiar.

And then there's the question and the choices of the way to make it your own. And that's a crucial part of any job, I think, and certainly in the theatrical tradition of a Shakespeare play. Making the rhythms of the language naturalistic is a really important part of communicating Shakespeare. So in some senses I was also fairly used to doing that, so those things combined were helpful in approaching this.