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Interview
marcela topor - 6 November 2016 2.00 h

A Catalan Kiwi on screen

Peter Vives Each Wednesday evening, El Punt Avui TV airs the series of interviews, Catalan Connections. Marcela Topor talked to the actor, singer and classical pianist Peter Vives.
- marcela topor
You are one of the few Cata­lan ac­tors with Eng­lish as a mother tongue.
In­deed, my mother is from New Zealand and she has talked to me in Eng­lish since I was a kid, ac­tu­ally the first words I ever spoke were in Eng­lish. I would like to prac­tise more though, but here there's not too many peo­ple I can talk to in Eng­lish. But I'm re­ally grate­ful to my mum for talk­ing to me in Eng­lish. My ac­cent is more British though, thanks to the many se­ries I've watched, and my mother her­self has grad­u­ally lost her Kiwi ac­cent.
You've just fin­ished your lat­est film, Mil cosas que haria por ti.
A Thou­sand Things I Would Do For You, di­rected by Dídac Cervera, a young di­rec­tor, about the same age as me. We shot for four weeks en­tirely in Va­len­cia, ex­cept for two days in Barcelona. I started shoot­ing just a week after I started shoot­ing Vel­vet, so I didn't have so much time to get into the char­ac­ter, but Dídac was a great help in that sense. It was pretty much the first thing I did as a lead role. It was a lot of re­spon­si­bil­ity but Dídac helped a lot, he was easy to talk to. I found my­self very open cre­atively, free to pro­pose ideas and he lis­tened to me, and this made me feel very con­fi­dent.
What about the plot?
It's about a guy whose girl­friend leaves him and he thinks it's be­cause he lost a Rolex watch she gave him as a pre­sent, so he thinks that by re­cov­er­ing this watch he will get his girl back. And to do so, he finds him­self in sit­u­a­tions such as es­cap­ing from the mafia and the po­lice, he goes through all sorts of things, just to try and get his girl back. It's funny and it's got this Woody Allen touch, it's quite full of sur­re­al­is­tic, ab­surd sit­u­a­tions, quite un­likely in real life.
What was it like work­ing with the cast?
I had a great sup­port from the mem­bers of the cast: Iris Lez­cano, who was my girl­friend, Boris Ruiz, quite a char­ac­ter, and Peyu –known as mainly a co­me­dian here in Cat­alo­nia– who was a great sup­port­ing char­ac­ter for my part. I'm very happy to have done this pro­ject; it's been great fun.
When is the film going to be re­leased?
In 2017, and we hope to show it at the Malaga fes­ti­val.
What was the main chal­lenge of play­ing Dani?
The main one is that it's a com­edy, as I'm not used to doing come­dies. I was very happy that he is not a win­ner, he is more like of a loser, and I've been more used to play­ing parts of “gen­tle­men”, galants. But I' don't feel like a gen­tle­man, and just be­cause I'm taller than most peo­ple here, and blond, and as peo­ple think I'm British, which I'm not, they tend to put me in a cer­tain group.
In most roles you play the guiri...
It's in­evitable with my looks, I know I'm not going to play the Spaniard.
Any anec­dotes from the shoot­ing?
Once we had to enter a jew­ellery shop being chased by po­lice­men, so I went in re­ally fast and bumped this glass, broke the whole piece, and filled the whole place with bro­ken glass, and it de­layed us maybe two hours. But no­body got hurt. What wasn't funny was the heat in Au­gust in Va­len­cia. When you shoot, you can't have air con­di­tion­ing on, be­cause you need ab­solute si­lence, and it was so hot and with 50 peo­ple in that room, and when you're sweat­ing in a scene, some­times it's okay, but in oth­ers it's just hard to shoot. That scene, shoot­ing in Va­len­cia in Au­gust with­out air con­di­tion­ing.
Do you have a lot of time to pre­pare for your char­ac­ters?
In all the pro­jects I've been in, films and TV se­ries, we didn't re­ally have a lot of time to shoot, as bud­gets are tight and each take costs a lot of money, so that's why I would love to ex­pe­ri­ence shoot­ing in a Hol­ly­wood movie, where you can re­ally take your time and try dif­fer­ent things as a an actor.
Tell me the char­ac­ter you've en­joyed play­ing most.
I've never done a char­ac­ter as rich as Nil from La Riera, in terms of every­thing that's going on in­side him and the depth of how you get to know him. He's been around for four or five years and the amount of things that hap­pened to him is amaz­ing. But I've en­joyed Dani the most, be­cause he's funny, he's a lot like me, and I had more time to get into the psy­cho­log­i­cal depth of the char­ac­ter be­fore shoot­ing.
You will ap­pear in the new sea­son of Vel­vet. But which di­rec­tors and ac­tors would you like to work with?
Scors­ese, Taran­tino, Woody Allen, Daniel Day Lewis, Leonardo di Caprio and Meryl Streep. You have to aim high!
What was it like to act with Ju­lianne Moore?
When I was 18, I got a call from Pep Ar­men­gol, who I had worked with be­fore. It was just a scene, but I was quite ner­vous, es­pe­cially as by then I hadn't stud­ied act­ing yet. I stud­ied physics, psy­chol­ogy, piano, and fi­nally chose act­ing.
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