Alejandro Amenabar: "Working with Emma Watson was a privilege"

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Translated by EmWatsonSp. Credit her if you use it.

2:18 The film stars Ethan Hawke and Emma Watson. I’ve been told that both of them approached you, not the other way around. How is like having the agents of one of the most sought-after actresses of the moment calling you to tell you “hey, my client wants to be in your film”? And someone with the artistic career as Ethan Hawke telling you “hey, I really want to work with you, call me… It must be something very exciting.

Alejandro: No, No, that’s not totally true. When you finish the script and you start thinking about who can play the leading role, you let yourself be advised by the producers and the casting director and Ethan’s name popped up really quickly, he is an actor with whom I really wanted to work with. It’s true that we were very lucky because as soon as we send him the script he wanted to meet me, we hit off and we decided to go ahead. And with Emma it was an exchange between agents… they knew we were writing a role for a young girl… for me, working with someone like Emma is a privilege. She is a girl with whom everyone wants to work with. I thought she would not be very interested in the project. Her role, which is an important role, is a role with little space in the film, she has few scenes… and well, we were very lucky because she understood very quickly the character and liked it and she said yes.

7:10 We learned of your new project because an American tabloid published a photo of "Emma Watson with a mysterious man" and we, the Spanish press were like, “no, no, he’s not a mysterious man, he is Amenábar.” So, having someone like Emma Watson, which I’m sure it must be very difficult to be her or to keep her private life private… and this year you had to deal with “Amenábar’s comeback” and “The other life of Amenábar.” How do you deal with that?

Alejandro: Well, obviously in my case it’s not like Emma’s… in fact that day was the first day we met and when I saw the pictures I realized how famous she was. She is followed and chased. In fact when she came to the set you noticed it by the amount of people that showed up like mushrooms, because they wanted everything, photos, etc. In my case, it’s not like that. I, as a director, have a public side, mostly when I’m in front of the press to promote a film… but I like to go out and surround myself with people… I think I handle the fame reasonably well, I mean, I'm not as popular as not to be able to wander around the streets of Madrid quietly.