THE DEADBOLT: What philosophies did you take away?

EJIOFOR: There wasn't anything that I would really want to apply to my life, exactly. What I mean by that is not that they're not worthy of being applied to my life, or I'd be grateful for them to be in my life, but I've always tried to slightly shy away from taking too much away from a character and trying to reinterpret it into my daily existence because it just doesn't work very well. It's why at the end of shooting I'll very rarely have any of the clothes. You don't see Harrison Ford walking down with a hat and a cape and a whip. [laughs] You don't borrow the sense of other people. Some of the philosophies that I was thinking about and I really liked were the sense that - you know, Mike Terry truly believes in the philosophies. He believes in Jiu-Jitsu as an art form and he truly believes in its application to life, which is a strand of the story that I really loved and what a lot of the story is about. It's about a guy who has a belief that seems ridiculous. It seems ridiculous that you can apply the theories of a martial art form to a daily existence. But even in the most extreme circumstances, he's still able to apply what he learns on the mat and at the Academy to the daily existence of his life. He is able to, in all circumstances, take it back to what he knows about the philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu, which is sort of knowledge about Jiu-Jitsu itself.

Jiu-Jitsu is a submission sport. There's no time, there's no bell, and there's no three-minute round. There's two guys until one says, "I can't do it any more." The first principle of that is to be physically honed to endure and to sustain. And to be ready. That's what these guys are, they're ready, at any point, to begin the process. Within that, you have to be very aware of what the other guy is trying to do and either allow them to do it to find advantage somewhere else or try and stop them from doing it by any means you can. Which is why, if you see a proper Jiu-Jitsu bout, a lot of times they're totally still. These guys are pouring with sweat because of the energy it takes to hold each other in exactly the same position for minutes at a time until one person is able to just slip, and the other guy is either allowing it to happen or is being pushed into that position. There's a real sense of it being the chess game of life and opposition and the sense of having to endure and sustain. In the application to life it sounds a little aggressive but it doesn't need to be that. It's also about a flow and an energy and that's what they bring.

As I was reading Redbelt, I was thinking, as he got deeper into his own circumstance, "At what point is he going to snap and throw his morals out the window?" Of course, you realize that he's never going to do that, not even after a million years. Any kind of problem - it's not within him. He'll always deal with things in relation to this level until, at some point, he overcomes it. And it's sort of an extraordinary tale.

THE DEADBOLT: How is David different as a director?

EJIOFOR: I don't know if he is. I think he's incredibly passionate. I think the major difference is that he's the only director I've worked with who can stand on his head. I just saw him after lunch one day and I was like, "Okay." [laughs] "When David gets off his head, can he come by to talk about the next bit? Otherwise, I could get on my head and we could talk about it." [laughs] I was sort of inspired by it and I've practiced and now I can stand on my head, too. Not for long periods of time, but I can do it. Now, if we get to work together again, we can both do it and have our script meetings.

THE DEADBOLT: Can you tell us a little bit about how you got the role? Dirty Pretty Things was kind of your calling card for a while and it got you Serenity and Melinda and Melinda. Do you know if Mamet was a fan too?

EJIOFOR: The film that he kept on bringing up when we were working together was Kinky Boots. That was the performance that just triggered something for him. I think he had seen Dirty Pretty Things and really liked it but sort of in conjunction with Kinky Boots. I think it's because Lola has such a strong sense of self and integrity. He kind of felt that on the screen. To go back to one thing, in terms of him being different as a director, I think he is, as a lot of directors are, just incredibly passionate about the work and has impeccable taste in terms of what he wants to shift focus to and how he wants to see things. David is also, in a way that maybe is very specific and great, a great storyteller and a lover of telling stories. He's constantly on the lookout for what is the story and how does the story get told through the visual style of the camera and the implications of everything. He has a great knowledge of an audience and what they see and what they understand. There's nuanced bits of storytelling.

THE DEADBOLT: Some of these movies, these performances - Dirty Pretty Things, Tsunami, Kinky Boots - are, for lack of a better word, under-seen or even underappreciated. Is that the kind of thing that ever bothers you? Do you worry that people aren't seeing your best work?

EJIOFOR: I don't worry about that right now. I don't know if I will. I mean, it's possible that I will. Nobody really has an understanding of what they'll be like as they get older but I feel like that's not something that bothers me particularly. I have felt, at times, "Wow, I really gave that my best shot and I wish more people had seen it." I definitely have felt that. But that's sort of, in a sense, it's all swings and roundabouts. I recently came out of doing Othello at the Donmar and it sold out in like four hours. Winning the Olivier and all that stuff and you feel like "Here's an example of me giving it my best shot and THIS happening." And it being a great experience of my life. If I had somehow been completely miserable about the prior experiences, who knows what kind of attitude I would have turned up with on the first day of rehearsal for that one? If I has a sense of, "Well, this never works." That will start to influence your work or your attitude. How do you get through it and still provide the best you can do. I think that as a performer, as an actor, as a person, you do the best you can do until you just can't do it any more. The truth is - I say all this now. I'm 30 years old and I feel, in many ways, I'm still at the beginning of my working life. I have so much of my working life left that, with any luck, it's still very early days. So, I can still say that. But if you come back to me in forty year's time and I'm still like "Nobody saw that movie," I might be a little more pissy about it. [laughs]

In the Ring with Chiwetel Ejiofor Page 3