You play The Ancient One in Doctor Strange. Can you tell me a bit about how you’ve chosen to interpret this character?

How I’ve chosen to interpret the character?

Yes.

Well the character in the original comic strips of this film was a little different in the sense that The Ancient One was a man, and an Asian man, a very old man with a long Fu Manchu beard, and Scott Derrickson [the film’s director] and Kevin Feige [the film’s producer] decided to reinterpret the character, make it a woman, and asked me to do it. And so, the way I chose, such an interesting… the way you phrased that question. Uh how did I choose to interpret it? I suppose I looked for the lowest common denominator between me and a very old Asian man sitting on the top of a hill with a long beard, and realised that the really important thing is perspective. If you’re going to be that old, if you’re going to be 700, maybe a thousand years old, you’re going to have pretty cool perspective. You’re not going to sweat the small stuff, you’re not even going to sweat the middle stuff, you’re going to… you’re not really going to really sweat at all. You’ve seen it all and you know what’s what, and you know what’s important, and you certainly know that ego is really hiding to nothing, and fear is also something to be avoided whenever possible. So those were the building blocks for this interpretation I would say, and really, really super relaxation, that’s what… that’s what I was swimming in.

Do you have to do anything to get into that state of mind? Like, are you a naturally very kind of Zen, relaxed person?

I’m a very naturally lazy person Laura, and so it comes very, very easily to me to be extremely low energy, yeah, so that was easy, really easy; very, very light.

And was there any sense of hesitation signing on to a Marvel film given that, you know, it’s a world where the canon is so deep and the fan base is so devout?

Zero. I mean, wonderful enthusiasm for that. I’ve been a fan of the Marvel universe for a long time and it was a dream to be asked to join that family. They’re such nice people for a start, and I was aware of that, and so, to be asked to join them was really like being asked into a family, so I’m really happy about it. And the film, you know, this promised to be a good one, and boy is it a good one. I’ve seen it and it’s really… it’s beyond… you might’ve seen twenty minutes or so, but believe me, this isn’t one of those films where they only show the good bits in the trailers, they left, they’ve only teased you with what they’ve shown you so far.

Marvel tends to, at least in the films they’ve already released, lean on the science experiment angle of their heroes – Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man – but Doctor Strange is introducing more of the magic side of superheroes? Was that part of the appeal for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think, it’s funny. I heard Kevin Feige in a conversation we just had saying that this really isn’t about a superhero, this is sort of, not quite accurate to call Doctor Strange a superhero; he’s a sorcerer. He becomes a sorcerer, and The Ancient One is a sorcerer supreme, and, whatever happens in this film, Doctor Strange will end up being a sorcerer supreme. It’s about sorcery, and it’s about teachable super powers; nobody gets bitten by a spider or needs any particular enzyme here. It’s about normal people, humans, mortals, who can learn these super powers. Some people like Doctor Strange have a particular facility for this magic, but it is about magic. And so it is a departure in a way from even what Marvel’s been doing, because there are these relics like, for example, the cloak that Doctor Strange wears, but it’s not called a cape, you know, it’s a cloak, it’s a sorcerer’s cloak. So it’s a new departure really.

And being that you’ve seen the film and you can look at it retrospectively, are there parallels that you can draw between the fictional film and the world today?

Ooh wow. Well, like all good pieces of work, I would say there are always those parallels to be drawn. There’s no doubt that there’s something quite refreshing about having a leader, a powerful person, in a movie asking for egoless-ness and fearlessness, because let’s face it, there aren’t many leaders in the world today that are banging that drum, so that’s something refreshing. It is about the spirit this film, really, eventually. What happens to Doctor Strange is that he goes on a, kind of, spiritual reawakening, he changes materially; I don’t mean just the, sort of, material aspect of his life, but the material aspect of him actually changes and so, yeah, I would say that it is a call to a more spiritual approach to life, and a more open approach to life, and it’s about the multiverse, it’s about opening your eye. It’s a practical world we’re inviting people into.

It’s funny you say that. I often think that with these kind of films where people take, I guess, more of a spiritual or personal journey (rather than just being in an experiment or being bitten by a spider, or whatever it is) that the more you see the film, the more you can appreciate it, or pick up on smaller things that you perhaps didn’t the first time you saw it…

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, this is the value of these films, they are incredibly important. This is a mythology for our time. I mean, the Marvel comic universe, the Marvel cinematic universe is really, really important and, you know, it is forming the mythological mind space of young people, and it has to be taken seriously, and if what you’re giving them is the idea that everything is constantly being destroyed, then that’s something you have to attend to, and I think this is something that Kevin and his team have really addressed with this film. It’s not about things collapsing; this is about things being put back together again, this is about creation in a really quite radical way, and I’m really excited to see how that lands with 15 and 16 year olds, because it’s new. It’s not just about going on destructo video games or watching destructo movies. This is something fresh and responsible, I would say, without being pious. It’s a new turn, and I think it’s very positive.

So travel through distance and time, they’re kind of recurring themes in your work, not only this film, but other films that you’ve been in. Are you intrigued by other times, worlds and dimensions?

I am, but I’m also really intrigued by consistency, and by that that doesn’t change. The perspective of a very long life always intrigues me, and that might have something to do, again, with something quite local to me, which is that I, I’ve always had very, very dear, very aged people in my life, starting with my very aged grandmother who died at 98, and I just think a long, long life, and the perspective that it brings, is something to be really valued. Of course, you know, I would love to think that I would be 98 or 120 years old or whatever, and able to have some kind of perspective that will make me as cool as she was. That really interests me, so it’s not just about transformation, it’s also about what doesn’t transform, what persists. And I’m so aware that the only thing we can rely on is change, you know, change is perennial; it just goes on every minute of every day, and how to balance ourselves with change, that really intrigues me. So I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I’m drawn to these sorts of questions that look at eternity or look at immortality, but eventually, they’re looking at transformation.