In Guy Ritchie's latest movie, RocknRolla, millions of real estate dollars get put up for grabs in London which attracts a wide array of society's finest, including mobsters, hustlers, high-rollers, petty thieves, and rock stars. Starring among a cast that includes Girard Butler, Tom Wilkinsom, Idris Elba, Thandie Newton, Tom Hardy, and Mark Strong, Jeremy Piven and Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges play two Americans trying to break into the London music scene with British actor Toby Kebbell in the role of a presumed dead punk rock star.

Leading up to Ritchie's RocknRolla, we caught up with Jeremy Piven, Toby Kebbell and Chris Bridges (aka, Ludacris) at the film's press junket to find out what it was like to be part of such a lock stock and smokin' cast and story.

When I saw Smokin’ Aces, I kind of saw the resemblance between that and a Guy Ritchie movie. Can you contrast working on a kind of Guy Ritchie movie and a real Guy Ritchie movie?

JEREMY PIVEN: Well, Joe Carnahan I think was definitely influenced by people like Guy Ritchie and the Coen brothers, and it was amazing doing that movie. That character in a way was similar to Johnny Quid in terms of how tragic and how far he falls. But just the way that Guy writes, it’s all kind of laid out for you. It’s obviously written to be played. But at the same time, when you sit down and read it, it’s so beautifully laid out that it’s a real experience. And Guy knows so intrinsically what he wants that it was just a treat to be around it.

And also - Actors have to put their egos aside when you work with Guy, because there were times when - and he doesn’t mean to do this - I saw him give... a line reading one time, you know, ‘Don’t worry, Arch, I’m only little.’ But he’s so dead on, and it’s not a power trip with the guy, he just knows how he wants it to sound and he would just do it and it was a pleasure to be around that. He really knows what he wants.

You start out not liking the guy and... kind of feel he saves the day. Is that what drew you to the role and losing all of that weight?

TOBY KEBBELL: Yeah. I mean, it definitely drew me to the role. You very rarely get a script that’s so character filled and such an ensemble piece that you can pick out someone and go, ‘Wow, man, that’s a great one to audition for.’ But Johnny was like that and it’s rare and beautiful. It’s like finding a gem. So it was lovely to read through what Johnny did. After watching the film you think, ‘Shit, I should’ve played one of the others because they’re all brilliant.’ But it was so, so nice.

Losing the weight was a seven day starve where I ate nothing but colon cleanse and green tea, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Then I ate one very small meal a day for the following nine weeks. So that was how I dropped a stone and a half and I don’t know exactly what that is in pounds, but Wikipedia will tell you [laughs]. It was fantastic. It was a great gig and I’m glad he turned out that way. Normally these kinds of movies have a bit of black and white to them. It was nice to see such depth and there was so much you could do with the characters and you can make him very dark when he’s dark and give him wings when he needs to be an angel, you know.

Are there some scenes where you see the finished product and see how it’s been edited together, and you get a completely different sense of what it was like when you were shooting it?

KEBBELL: Definitely... the bong scene, the scene where I smoke a bong. Well, literally at the beginning of the scene you see me wiggle and then I turn around and I’m holding a bong, that nine foot long. That was a lot of takes. We did a lot of takes just to get that right. But as soon as I saw it I understood why we did so many takes, you know. Not tons, we’re not talking about hundreds of takes, we’re just talking about ten. But, yeah, his editing is where the film is made and he is a master of that. But the script is also very fast paced.

CHRIS BRIDGES: Also, the cinematography, because one of my favorite scenes is where Idris Elba is getting chased by the other two guys and it’s just like what he uses. The cinematography there, when you read that in the script, of course you’re not at all thinking that it’s going to come out like that and it’s amazing to me.

Have you signed on for another one? Has it gone that far?

KEBBELL: No, I’ve got them over a barrel. So, yeah, if there’s a second one I’m... yeah, it’s my turn if you like.

PIVEN: I think he took for the execution of this movie and he did such a great job, we brought you back, right? I mean, that ending was based on him taking in the journey and that’s one of the great things. It’s like the process of a movie is like the rewriting and the editing just continues until it becomes this finished product. So how did that work? He saw what you did and brought you back at the end to kind of keep...

KEBBELL: Yeah, well, basically the ending, when they tested it, apparently people wanted to know what happened to Johnny and what happened to Archie and where everyone had disappeared to, because some stories rounded off and some didn’t. So we came back three months later, I’d grown a beard, I was doing a play at the time and had huge hair, and we shot me coming out of rehab. But Guy had already at that point, three months later, was well into rewriting the script. So yeah, I would love to do it. He’s doing Sherlock Holmes now and I’m doing The Prince of Persia, so it will be a while. And of course it is show business so the business side has to come out fair enough. They’ve paid out wages, right? You got paid, right?

PIVEN: A bit.

BRIDGES: Of course. It’s a great thing none of us died in the first one. So, you know, that leaves a lot of room for us to be in part two.

Did Guy allow you to add anything to your characters, dialogue-wise or stylistic-wise?

BRIDGES: I think what’s most important with Guy is that you know as an actor you do more than one take. So for the first couple of takes you do exactly how Guy wants it. Then the others you kind of adlib and do what you want to do and leave it up to him exactly what he wants to use.

KEBBELL: He expands a little bit and he appreciates your job as an actor, which is to take what’s written on the page and bring it to life. But at the same time he understands that sometimes you may have something you’d like to do. And not necessarily is he saying it will definitely end up in the thing. But I mean more for you right, I guess.

PIVEN: It really is your job to do everything you possibly can with what is written. So much of my energy in my past work has been going towards, like diplomatically, how can I possibly, ultimately finesse some of the dialogue as an option. You know, what’s the best way to approach someone? Is it three months before, the night before, or during the take? You know you have to figure when that is. And he’s the kind of guy who’s incredibly secure with his dialogue, which is incredible and you don’t need to embellish it. But we were, especially Chris with his background in the music industry, we lent some authenticity and we have amazing American accents.

BRIDGES: Amazing. I think we deserve some sort award for that.

What draws you to acting? Do you want to keep a nice balance between your music and your acting?

BRIDGES: Absolutely. What draws me to it is trying to find out the limitations to it, because I’ve surprised myself in some of the roles I’ve done. And I told them before, I kind of have the bug now and a great passion for it and I want to continue doing it, and being very versatile as far as the roles that I choose. And yeah, it is a great balance but I plan on moving more into film.

Guy introduces us to characters that if we ever met them in real life we’d be frightened for our lives in many ways. What do you do to research? Do you want to sit down and have a pint with one of these guys, or are you apprehensive too about the reality that’s being portrayed?

KEBBELL: That’s a great compliment. So it’s lovely that they feel real and you feel like you’d be nervous to sit down with one of them. For me, you know, I’m from the old school. My mother always watched Alec Guinness movies and it was always about playing millions of different people. And there’s nothing you shouldn’t be able to play. However, when you get a script you read it and there’s a certain feeling you have that makes you think I’d really like to play this person.

So, it’s merely exaggerations of parts of yourself. So if you’re open to those, if you’re honest with yourself when somebody says you’re an asshole, and you say, ‘I know, yeah. I am and I’m sorry for that.’ You’re open to who you are as a human being. That really allows when you’re playing a character to exaggerate those parts of yourself, so it’s in all of us. I always think when you’re playing somebody dark people are like, ‘Did you meet these dark people?’ I’m alright with mimicry, and I’m not saying I’m a dark man who’s going to stab people to death with pencils, but it’s there, you know. It should be there as a human being.

PIVEN: It’s also a lot scarier when you have someone that’s very dark and articulate, intelligent, maybe not good with logic [like] a lot of these characters. But that’s always scarier when they have a sense of humor, when they’re charismatic, as all of these characters in Guy Ritchie’s characters are. So they have all of this dimension and they’re tragic and they’re also very dangerous. So I find them very fascinating.