Harry Eden has big shoes to fill, he was handpicked to play a teenage version of Daniel Craig for new movie ‘Flashbacks Of A Fool’, no pressure then…
Daniel Craig is without doubt one of the World’s hottest
actors right now, he has his pick of Hollywood roles and currently commands the
lead in two major franchises, ‘Bond’ and ‘The Golden Compass’, so spare a thought
for 18 year old school boy Harry Eden, who was hand-picked to literally walk in
Daniel Craig’s shoes. Harry plays the same character as Daniel in ‘Flashbacks Of
A Fool’ but twenty years younger and as Harry tells us, they were very big
shoes to fill indeed.
His co-star is Felicity Walsh, she’s currently turning heads
with her portrayal of Cordelia in the remake of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and she’s
soon to pop up in the new series of sci-fi show, Doctor Who.
Movies.ie met up with the two actors on a recent press tour to discuss new
movie ‘Flashbacks Of A Fool’.
Harry has recently starred in Roman Polanski’s ‘Oliver’ and
is an actor going places, we ask, ‘Can you see yourself following in Daniels
footsteps?’ Harry is delighted at the thought that one day he might actually be
a contender for James Bond. His co-Star Felicity guffaws at the idea, “James
Bond Junior, perhaps” she laughs. And so begins an interesting exchange between
the two young actors, who sound like they had the time of their lives making
the film.
Felicity recalls one hic-cup from the set, “There was a
scene we had to do together where Harry had to sing a line but we couldn’t get
to the end of the scene. We had to stop it because Harry kept laughing. It was
about two in the morning, everyone was laughing, even Bailie was in the corner
laughing, we couldn’t use the scene.”
She reveals that she had singing lessons to help her sound
more like Bryan Ferry but Harry had no such lessons, his character is possibly
one of the worst vocalists ever heard on the big screen, “I didn’t have to act much there, I’m really
not a good singer, those scenes were embarrassing, especially the one when I’m
naked in the bath.”
The bath scene is just one of several scenes where Harry exhibits
his naked body on screen, it’s obvious that he was chosen for his cherub-like looks
as well as his acting skills, so how comfortable was he at stripping off in
front of a film-crew? “Thankfully, the sex scene was a closed set.” Reveals the
actor sheepishly, “I first went to South Africa a week before filming began,
and when I got there they told me they had changed all the scenes around, they
told me my first scene was going to be a sex scene, I was like, ‘no you’re
joking’. I didn’t know anyone, I had no clothes on, I was looking around naked
and mortified but it worked out very fine. I was nervous getting on with it but
after five hours it felt like any other scene.”
Harry was able to base his character on Daniel and use him
as reference but what about Ruth, how did she get under the skin of her
character? “I think definitely the music
helped” she tells us, “playing a character with many obsessions like Bowie and
Bryan Ferry was great. It’s nice to do a part where you get to do a bit of
dancing and singing although it was quite gruelling, two weeks of intensive
training. We did a whole dance routine but you can hardly see it but there’s a
lot of work gone into it. Seeing it for the first time was sheer relief that we
didn’t make a mess of it.
They movie has a strong musical theme running through it,
both actors had exposure to both Bowie and Ferry growing up but the ultimate
question in the movie is who would they choose between the two? For Felicity, its
just like Chris Tarrent has asked her the million pound question on ‘Who wants
to be a millionaire’ “No, don’t ask me that, I can’t answer it, it’s really
difficult. It’s one of those unanswerable questions. Roxy Music is a fine fine
album but Bowie might win, I can’t answer it”
‘Flashbacks Of A Fool’ is at Irish cinemas from Friday