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Written by Abby Schaeffer
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At 29 years old, Barcelona-born Marina Gatell has already made a name for herself in the Spanish TV industry. One of her first big breaks came when she landed a role in 2000 on Telecinco’s 7 vidas TV show as recurring character Esther Castro. Getting the part was not easy, though. Gatell, then 19 years old, had to go through seven auditions before being cast.
Gatell also has appeared in films such as comedic drama Nosotras as Mireia in 2000 and in the 2007 thriller The Perfect Witness as the character Jennifer.
Currently, Gatell stars in the Antena 3 Televisión series Lalola as a chauvinistic man named Lalo who has been turned into a woman named Lola as a result of a curse by an angry former flame. Gatell has said the role is difficult because her character has a sort of mental schizophrenia.
Gatell also has a screenplay in the works and has finished another movie, Intrusos. In Little Ashes, Gatell plays Magdalena, whose character is based on Margarita Manso, writer, friend and muse to Federico Garcia Lorca, played by Javier Beltran.
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Written by Diana Fernandez
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Film and TV actor Matthew McNulty, 25, is one of England’s up-and-coming names with already more than 15 roles under his belt and shows no signs of stopping.
McNulty’s breakthrough role was as David Smith in a two-part mini-series for Granada Television called See No Evil: The Moors Murders. From there, he starred in a controversial Channel 4 film, The Mark of Cain, about two British soldiers blamed for the widespread corruption of the war in Iraq. In this role, McNulty won a joint best actor award at Rencontres International de Télévision de Reims in 2008 and an RTS North West award for best male performance in a drama or comedy in 2007.
Beyond TV, McNulty has also appeared on stage in productions such as Sexual Perversity in Chicago, The Tempest, Mikado and Grease. His film credits include Love + Hate and the award-winning biopic Control.
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Written by Brittany Stevens and Sam Kerbey
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Beginning May 18, 1983, in the Mediterranean city of Barcelona, Spain, Javier Beltrán's path towards illustrating novelty via his vast range of perfecting entertainment officially began. Studying humanities, Beltrán attended Pompeu Fabra University while living in Barcelona. A native speaker of Spanish and Catalan, Beltrán also can speak English well. In addition, he displays his flair musically on guitar.
Continuing to inhabit the Spanish peninsula, Beltrán enrolled at the Nancy Tuñon Studio, an institution that helps each student “investigate and discover its own expressive mechanisms.” While trying to formulate the actor within, Beltrán further amplified his skills by participating in a theater dance course. Striving to become an exemplar of acting, he persisted as a pupil in a Mesisner acting technique class in the Actor’s Workshop BNC.
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Written by Laura Rollinger and Brittany Stevens
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In a new interview conducted by Good Prattle, Dali actor Robert Pattinson admits he was originally cast as Federico Garcia Lorca in Little Ashes. Furthermore, Pattinson goes into detail about the consequences of his inability to speak Spanish, Dali's signature mustache, shooting locations and researching Dali. Check out the sample below, followed by more Little Ashes talk after the cut!
Okay. I actually wanted to ask you about another role, in Little Ashes, where you play Salvador Dali. How did you become familiar with the subject matter?
Well, I was attached to that for about, I guess, about two years, and I was initially going to play [Federico] García Lorca. And somehow… I don’t know what happened. They asked me to read for Dali, and that was about a year after I—it took ages to get this film made. It was a really interesting script, and about a year after I was in mind for Lorca I read for Dali, and about a year after that they suddenly said, “Oh, we’ve got money, we’re doing it in Spain, and it stars in four days!” [laughter] So I came and I just thought it would be kind of fun—I mean, you know the stuff Dali makes, kind of crazy—and I thought it would be quite fun to do. And I went to Barcelona to shoot this, and I was rehearsing with the guy who was actually going to play Lorca, who’s a Spanish guy who didn’t know how to speak English, and pretty much the entire cast and the entire crew were Spanish. I think we had one English person in it. And I can’t speak Spanish.
Oh no! [laughs]
I couldn’t speak to anyone the whole time. And so I just sat over this Dali stuff. I just read and read and read, and it was one of the most satisfying jobs I’ve ever done because it was the one time that I really had zero distractions. It really changed my whole attitude toward acting. And it was a tiny, tiny, film, which— [laughs] I don’t think anyone will ever see it, probably! But it was very interesting. Especially since I don’t look anything like Dali. [laughs] But at the end of the job, I kind of did look like him…
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Written by Laura Rollinger and Brittany Stevens
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Brightcove.tv has a video up of the Dali actor, Robert Pattinson, talking and promoting his new film Twilight. However, an interviewer was able to get a question in about our little film that could, Little Ashes. Below is Rob's response on what it was like playing Salvador Dali as well as the pressures of portraying a real-life character:
I’d never done a job like that ever. It was a very small film, but the more I read about him, the more I kind of liked him. I wasn’t really a fan of Dali before, but I tried…I worked harder than I’ve worked on anything for that because playing a real person it’s like, you don’t want to insult them, I guess. That’s the biggest deal, like when you’re playing someone else it’s like ‘Jesus, they’re like watching this from like their grave.’ Saying, like they’re upset with your performance. It’s so different playing a real person than playing someone else. It made me learn a lot about how to research and look deeper into scripts ‘cause it was such a complicated character but I was really glad I did it.
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Written by Tracy Garrett and Laura Rollinger
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Actor Robert Pattinson had a chance to discuss Little Ashes and his role as Salvador Dali in some recent interviews during the press tour for his current film, Twilight. He discussed the film with Anne Thompson of Variety; as well as what it was like to walk away from intense scenes in the movie with Entertainment Weekly during this video interview here.
We've got transcripts of both discussions after the jump! |
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Written by Laura Rollinger and Brittany Stevens
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As part of the in-demand actor's ongoing tour of interviews for his upcoming film, Twilight, Robert Pattinson was given another opportunity to talk about playing Salvador Dalí. The interview was conducted by About.com. Below is a sampling:
You're playing Salvador Dali in Little Ashes. What's it been like playing this iconic painter?
Robert Pattinson: It's not that similar, but again it's iconic because I guess that Edward is an iconic character too. But I just did the same thing, breakdown what you know about him. Also, there's a ton of literature which he wrote and about him and then you just kind of build that back up again. Also, when I was playing him it was when he was very young, 18 to 26 and the story is about his descent or assent into this caricature of which everyone knows. He was this chronically shy kid when he was younger. So it's really not playing Dali, per se, apart from towards the end of it - and I'm still not really playing him. It's more the mood of Dali I think.
I just researched tons and tons of stuff because everyone spoke Spanish on the set and so I just read all day. It was the first time that I ever really got into characterization, trying to work on movements. There was a photo of him pointing and I kept trying to figure out how he pointed for like three days. I've never done that for any job. I was doing tons of stuff on his walk and such. By the end, I have no idea [how it turned out]. Someone said to me the other day, 'I had no idea it was about Dali until you had the mustache at the end.' I was just like, 'Oh, great.' I think it's a kind of homage to him, I guess, in that performance. I've never related to a character more than him, which is really weird because everyone thinks that he's some nut job.
When he was younger, if you read his autobiographical stuff – he wrote three autobiographies which completely contradict each other. Literally in one of them he said that his mother sucked his d-ck and all this stuff. And then in another one he says that his mother was the greatest mother in the whole world and gave him the best childhood he'd ever had. There are chapters called 'Truth' and other ones are called 'Lies' and then lies and the truths and stuff, it's just really funny. There was so much about him that I found fascinating. It's depressing how he did it himself and yet everyone sees him as this mask. He wanted that, but it's so funny how he was so much more than just this bizarre clown that he was at the end of his life who only cared about money. He was an incredibly complex person. I'm not saying that I am. I'm not at all.
Read more of the young actor's thoughts on his current film and his future projects in the rest of the interview by clicking here and you can listen to the interview here.
[ Photo courtesy of MTV ] |
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Written by Kristin Rielly
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London native Robert Pattinson, 22, is what some call a double threat – an actor and musician. Bitten by the acting bug at age 15, Pattinson started performing at the Barnes Theatre Company in London. This opened the door to his earlier roles such as Giselher in the television production of Ring of the Nibelungs and Rawdy Crawley in the film Vanity Fair. His role in Vanity Fair led to Pattinson being cast as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Following Harry Potter, Pattinson developed his talent further by playing in two U.K. television films. In the first film, The Haunted Airman, Pattinson was cast as lead character Toby Jugg, a disabled and traumatized World War II airman. Jugg proved to be a complex character who suffered from hallucinations, which ultimately leads to his own mental undoing.
In the second film, The Bad Mother's Handbook, he played a minor role as nerdy Daniel Gale. Pattinson brought his own sense of eccentricity, which added a truth to the character.
Pattinson continued to mold his acting career by appearing in two other U.K. projects: short film The Summer House, directed by Daisy Gili and feature film How to Be, directed by Oliver Irving.
In How to Be, he is able to tap into his musical talents by playing Art, a troubled 20-something who lives at home with a dysfunctional family.
After filming smaller roles, Pattinson signed on to play the role of vampire Edward Cullen in the film Twilight, which is based on the book of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. Pattinson told Teen Hollywood.com in August about his lack of prior knowledge to the Twilight.
He said: "I read them after my screen test. I’d never even heard of them before. Then, we were doing the movie and it got exponentially bigger and bigger and bigger, and everybody knew about it, so it was kind of strange and unexpected."
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