![]() This was not for that role but the Ed Exley role that Guy Pearce played. I went home, read the script and I bought the book and stayed up all night reading that. It was with the late Mali Finn, one of the great casting agents. SB: That was Curtis Hansen’s film and one of the first meetings I had – I had just gotten to Los Angeles. Q: What about the late Curtis Hansen who directed and won the Oscar for best screenplay adaptation? At the beginning he’s with a girl and then he got his throat slit, he slept with a DA or something. What a great film! I’d forgotten that alongside this starry cast, there you were as a gay actor arrested in a drug raid as the film begins. Letting it go is the most powerful thing - and that’s addictive! You rehearse and you get it in your skin and your mind - and then you let it go and trust that it’s there. For me that relates to the process of acting. More the parallel is that moment Sando talks to of surrender, to be completely in the moment and to let go. It can be depressing but you’re not in immediate risk. When you’re starting your career, it’s risky in a sense but it doesn’t have that life-threatening edge to it. ![]() That adrenaline level becomes very addictive. I wanted to show the addictive quality to living on the edge, to danger. Then you realize there’s a darker side to that, to all these things. And suddenly it gets more intense when he admits his love for her. Sex is this excitement and riding his bike out there with boundless energy, shagging like a jackrabbit. The surfing is one of those metaphors in that it’s joy and fun, then it gets more serious, then it’s dangerous and life threatening. Things are a lot of fun and then it becomes serious. SB: It’s the same sort of story, it just transfers into that idea of growing up. Q: I somehow expected the story to be about your character’s mentorship with these teens but it surprisingly takes a sexual turn. ![]() It was a little bit of you get what you get. We couldn’t have an extra day to go back and film we didn’t have the money. They force you to be creative and malleable in your creativity so you can adapt and adjust to what’s forced upon you. This is what I like, having those hard parameters and boundaries. It was baptism by fire but I kind of knew that going into it. You’re obviously looking at swell, wind, tides and weather and sky and ocean matching. We had to drop the main unit for the water. All the principal cast were in those scenes in the water. SB: We shot for six weeks and the water unit we had for four weeks. It’s about gathering moments and then putting those moments together in context. I’m going to be yelling out directions in the middle of takes. I’m not going to have marks [spots where they stand for the camera and lights). SB: I was very clear with my actors: It’s not going to be like sets. I guess Elizabeth Debicki understood this? Q: One reality when casting your two leads with kids who can surf but have never acted is that it’s a bit like filming toddlers – whenever you get their shot, that’s it. ![]() It took about a year to get the financing. The day I wrapped I took a plane to Sydney and started. Simon Baker: I knew going in it was the last season and I’d gotten the rights to make BREATH so I knew when I went into that last season I was really gearing up to make this. Q: I always wonder if when a hit series ends, the star wonders: Is there life after THE MENTALIST? That and other topics follow a Boston Herald feature that ran recently BREATH, based on Tim Winton’s novel and adapted by Gerard Lee, is currently in theaters nationwide. Best known as Patrick Jane in THE MENTALIST (2008-2015), during an interview at Soho’s Crosby Street Hotel I was curious about one of early key roles in Curtis Hansen’s extraordinary 1997 L.A. NEW YORK - It was Simon Baker’s surfer youth growing up '10 hours north of Sydney' that inspired his critically praised, feature directing debut BREATH, in which he also stars as a legendary surfer Sando.
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