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
