Actor, who is to play Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone’s forthcoming film, had four-hour meeting with US dissident

The actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is to play Edward Snowden in an upcoming film, has spoken publicly for the first time about a secret meeting with the NSA whistleblower in Russia, saying he was convinced that “whatever [Snowden] did, he did because he believed it was the right thing to do”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Gordon-Levitt recounts flying to Russia to meet Snowden in preparation for his role in Oliver Stone’s forthcoming political thriller. The pair had a four-hour conversation, he said.

“I left knowing without a doubt that what [Snowden] did, he did because he believed it was the right thing to do, that he believed it would help the country he loves,” said Gordon-Levitt.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: 'Edward Snowden was warm, kind, thoughtful' Read more

“Now, as he would say, it’s not for him to say whether it was right or wrong. That’s really for people to decide on their own, and I would encourage anybody to decide that on their own. I don’t want to be the actor guy who’s like: ‘You should listen to me! What he did was right!’ I don’t think that’s my place. Even though that is what I believe – that what he did was right.”

The film, titled Snowden, dramatises the events and aftermath surrounding Snowden’s leaking of top-secret intelligence documents to the Guardian and Washington Post in 2013, starting a worldwide debate on the balance between mass surveillance and privacy.

Stone adapted the film from the non-fiction account The Snowden Files by a Guardian journalist, Luke Harding, and the fictionalised book, Time Of the Octopus, written by Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena.

Snowden has been living in a secret location in Russia since June 2013, where he has been given temporary asylum, and Gordon-Levitt said that lawyers initially did not want the actor to reveal that a meeting between the pair had taken place.

Gordon-Levitt, known for roles in Batman and Inception, described Snowden as being in good spirits, but said: “Certainly there was that note, that he very much would like to come home. He doesn’t want to live in Russia at all.”

The actor conceded that before he took on the role he knew very little about Snowden and travelled to Russia to gain a better understanding of Snowden’s motivations and also to learn more about him as a person. Meeting Snowden, Gordon-Levitt described him as “someone warm, kind, thoughtful”.

Snowden is due for release in early 2016 and has a cast of Hollywood A-listers in the title roles, including Shailene Woodley as Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, Zachary Quinto as former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, Tom Wilkinson as Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill and Nicolas Cage as a US intelligence official.

Filming began in February of this year, in locations including Munich, Washington DC, Hawaii and Hong Kong.

Snowden was also the subject of a film by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour, which won the Oscar for best documentary last year.