Jude Law wasn’t nervous playing Vladimir Putin in Oliver Assayas’ drama The Wizard of the Kremlin. Yet, he found it difficult to portray the Russian leader due to his poker faced appearance in public.
The Wizard of the Kremlin premieres during the Venice Film Festival on August 31. Cast members Paul Dano, Law, Alicia Vikander, Jeffrey Wright and Tom Sturridge joined a press conference to discuss the film.
Law was asked whether he got nervous about any repercussions of playing Putin.
“I hope not naively, but I know I didn’t, I didn’t fear repercussions,” he said.
“I felt confident in the hands of Olivia and the script, and that this was a story that was going to be told intelligently and with nuance and consideration,” he explained.
“We weren’t looking for controversy for controversy’s sake. And more importantly, I think it was key to for me to remember that it’s a character within a much broader story. We weren’t trying to define anything about anyone,” The Holiday hunk added.
What he did find challenging was portraying a person who give little away about his personality.
“The tricky side to me was that the public face we see gives very, very little away. There has been a term for him and that: ‘the man without a face’. There’s a mask.” the Sherlock Holmes star said.
“So I was conflicted as an actor because understandable Olivier would want me to portray this or that in a scene with a certain emotion and I felt the conflict of trying to show very little,” Jude Law added.
The Wizard of the Kremlin follows Putin’s rise in political chain with the support of Vadim Baranov, an artist and reality TV show producer.
