Ezra has done a ton of new interviews, mainly as part of press junkets for We Need to Talk About Kevin, which recently came out in the UK. There are some excerpts below, and you can view all the new interviews in the EMO Press Archives:

Glasgow Film interview: Ezra Miller

In Lynne Ramsay’s latest film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, 18-year-old American actor Ezra Miller plays Kevin. When Kevin shoots students and teachers dead at his school, his mother Eva, played by Tilda Swinton, struggles to come to terms with his actions. Glasgow Film caught up with Miller shortly after the film’s Scottish premiere at GFT.

Glasgow Film: You told press at Cannes this year that you feel ‘a little connected’ to Kevin. What is it about him that you’ve connected to?

Ezra Miller: I think there’s something within Kevin that’s just common to the adolescent experience: the feeling of being distrusted, discredited, unloved, unattended to, unappreciated. I feel like it’s almost pandemic among adolescents, and in our culture there’s some validity in that feeling. I mean we are sort of like a disregarded age-range, and I think there’s a lot of empathy to be found for a character like Kevin. The beautiful thing within the intention of this film, in terms of my role, was to come to understand Kevin, to come to understand a person who on the offset seems like a monster or a demon, and to actually realise him as a human being. It sort of brought to the forefront, for me, a lot of questions about the way we view antagonistic figures worldwide – like how we view anyone who might have committed an atrocity, or done something that we deem intolerable. Our modes of vilifying seem like perhaps an easy way out – a quick fix – and not a real solution.

GF: The casting process for the part of Kevin reportedly took two years and six auditions. What do you think you brought to the table that finally got you the part?

EM: I think filmmakers, more than they would even occasionally like to admit to themselves, want to find in some regard the real character. Especially in a filmmaker like Lynne – who desires social realism and a biting feeling of reality within her work (even though her work is somehow magical and unreal, like social unrealism). I certainly feel like she seeks a spirit of truth in the things that she does. So I cultivated the physical, emotional and energetic qualities of the character before I walked into the audition room so that when she met me she had some feeling like she was meeting the character. I think that makes a filmmaker feel comfortable casting someone because they feel like, no matter what angle you shoot them from or what direction you give them, they are in some basic way that character so that will hold.

I think I almost do it subconsciously and then I hear the validation of it after we’ve made the film. We’ll be on the press tour and the director will say ‘you walked in the room and I felt like I’d met the character’. Recently a director said to me he didn’t know I wasn’t the character until after we’d stopped filming. I think that’s more effective than filmmakers would like to think.

GF: Three words – ‘Tilda Swinton: awesome?’

EM: In the original definition of the word awesome. I know you guys are aware over here that my culture has sort of diluted the word awesome. We say it all the time. The original definition of the word awesome is something that strikes the fear of God in your heart. So in that sense, Tilda Swinton: AWESOME!

GF: Soon we’ll be watching you play Patrick in The Perks of Being a Wallflower with Emma Watson.

EM: I hope you’ll be watching it!

GF: Of course! What can we expect to see from your character and how much of a detour will Patrick be from characters like Kevin?

EM: You couldn’t arrange a more extreme detour. Patrick is someone who, like every teenager, experiences internal struggle, but he manifests that internal struggle in his positivity: he’s constantly telling a joke, or making a statement, or just crafting an outlook for himself and his friends where they can see their rough adolescence as something beautiful, something of ‘epicism’, something gorgeous (as life really is if you look at it right). Patrick, for me, epitomises that quality. Some of the best people I’ve ever met have had this ability to manipulate situations into fun, and that’s the Patrick gift in my mind.

GF: Very different then.

EM: Yeah, the recovery process was a lot easier from that one.

GF: This last question is from an idea from Laura Norkett Lui on Facebook.

EM: Cool! Social media in action!

GF: In the book, Kevin appears to have many features and traits common in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. What approach did you take to portraying the character and did ASD feature in that approach?

EM: My belief, and this is purely a belief, is that the human complex cannot be covered in pragmatic psychology. So while I see where that question comes from, and certainly I identify with the notion that Kevin could have, in some version of a diagnosis, some kind of social disorder, a psychological condition will never play a role in how I create a character. Human beings are far more than a diagnosis and a pill for a cure. In America the diagnosis of autism is spiking, and there’s some ridiculous statistic about the rate at which kids are being diagnosed with some form of ASD, so at what point can we incorporate what we’re now viewing as a disorder as just some aspect of the human condition?

I know some people who are autistic, and they’re brilliant. They have space in their head that we use for words and ridiculous social interactions, factoids and little trivial things that they use for something they truly feel passionate about on an intellectual level. Sometimes I just don’t know what the difference is apart from the fact they’ve been diagnosed. So as an actor I certainly don’t feel that a human being can be summarised by a disorder. {Glasgow Film}

Ezra Miller is intelligent actor

Lynne Ramsay cast Ezra Miller in We Need to Talk About Kevin because of his “intimidating intelligence”.

The Scottish director is the mastermind behind the upcoming thriller, also starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly.

The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Lionel Shriver. Tilda plays a mother who recounts the events leading up to and following her son’s massacre of students and teachers at his high school.

Lynne knew instantly that Ezra was the perfect actor to play the disturbing and complex role of Kevin.

“I worked with the wonderful casting director Billy Hopkins. I was quite interested in finding a non-professional actor as well. I was looking at both. Ezra walked in the room and I was like, ‘This is Kevin.’ I needed a very intelligent kid. He just got it, the way he moves,” she said in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian.

“[He had] confidence. There was a sexuality. He took up a lot of space in the room. There was that intelligence that was intimidating. I remember myself going slightly back in my chair. And also just the physicality. He’d obviously thought about Kevin and the way he moved.”

Ezra was able to relate to the character on a deep level. The American actor picked up on Kevin’s more “rational” characteristics and played to those strengths.

“Everybody has a nasty streak,” he said. “I felt that I understood on this level that I’ll never discuss because its top secret and it’s the ambiguity of it is too important to speak too much about what I felt, what Kevin felt internally.

“But then I was also very excited by this feeling that I could understand his rational mind. Not understand it, but really take it on and endeavour to motivate myself through his rationalities.”

Lynne says there was an instant chemistry between Ezra and Tilda. The filmmaker recalled the first time the actors met each other.

“I remember the first time Tilda came as well, and the two of them were in the same room. They kind of looked away from each other and they have similar faces, which I found very, very interesting because I think what if you look at your son and you see yourself, which is even more terrifying,” she explained.

Little White Lies

It’s been two years since Ezra Miller first turned heads in Antonio Campos’ sparse lo-fi drama Afterschool. Now he’s appearing alongside Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly in British director Lynne Ramsay’s lucid adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s best-selling novel ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’. LWLies spoke with Miller recently about playing the bad guy and putting his mother through hell.

LWLies: How’s life treating you?

Miller: Not too bad, man. I’m in my apartment right now; it’s very messy inside… I’ve been doing this thing where I look at a bunch of photo books and I’ll turn all of their pages at the same time and then just look at them all, at all the images as they naturally fall. So I’m kind of standing in a swamp of images. It’s good. It’s nice.

Is that for inspiration for something or just out of boredom?

[Laughs] How often those two meet! Yeah, inspiration for, well, I guess everything. Like aesthetic instigation, just to look at a picture of the burning Reichstag and a picture of Katherine Hepburn at the same time. It’s not anything in particular but it’s something in particular.

Let’s talk about Kevin. We saw the film for the first time in Cannes, how was that whole experience?

Man, it was just a tornado, just amazing, so beautiful and so wild and wonderful and definitely properly whelming. I wouldn’t say overwhelming but it walked that line in a good way… At times it was overwhelming, I’m not gonna lie. You know, to see the film was overwhelming, to be there at the festival, the great omni-belief system celebration of film, that was very nice. To see that movie sitting next to my mother and sitting next to John [C Reilly] and Lynne [Ramsay] and Tilda [Swinton], that was overwhelming in the best of ways, in the way that I just couldn’t believe that I would ever be apart of something like that. I couldn’t speak or walk properly for a little bit after that.

You caught LWLies’ eye in Afterschool a couple of years ago. Has time flown by since then?

It’s been a chasm for me, yeah, I mean, it’s been four years since I made Afterschool but it came out a year later. It doesn’t really compute, but when does time compute? Nobody seems these days to be saying ‘time computes’.

Are you happy taking things at the rate they’re coming at you?

Oh, rate must accelerate, my friend! Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, this is slow-rate beginning times. Humanity has a shit load of work to do in a very short time and I feel like that comes down to every individual; to take things as they come. It can’t work any other way otherwise it won’t happen.

You mentioned watching the film for the first time with your mother. What was that like?

Ugh, wow, brutal, as I’m sure you can imagine. No, I have an unbelievably wonderful relationship with my mother, and I guess that’s sort of exhibited in the fact that I was comfortable having her there for that first screening. It was immense, man, on many levels, most of which I won’t be able to truly describe. But I can’t tell you that in what I always felt was the moment of the film, certainly in the context of having imagined, not having seen the film, what the moment would be that would hit my mother – this of course being the last scene. And in that moment, in my prediction but really beyond anything I could ever have imagined, my mother started crying in this way I’d never heard or seen. Like, this violent sob, it was fucked up, man. Watching this movie with my mother was seriously fucked up. The thing is that my mother and I both really like to take on large amounts of darkness in the effort to bring them into light. And so to watch the film together was essentially, in the end, a catalyst for more of the exploration of good in our relationship. . . . {Read All}

Talk About Kevin: Portrait of a parent’s worst nightmare

Lynne Ramsey’s adaptation of the best-selling book ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ is a beautifully twisted and sublimely dark examination of the potential extremities of the human psyche. Tilda Swinton is magnificent as the mother trapped in her own solipsistic purgatory, beaten down on one side by her demonic son, Kevin, while on the other side her pleas and worries about the boy’s stability fall on the deaf ears of her docile husband, but ever doting father, Franklin, played with all the warmth of a jogging teddy bear by John C. Reilly.

The ambiguity affectively brought out at the heart of Kevin is whether his actions are purely motivated by self-centred manipulation or whether a twinkle of compassion lurks behind his gentler moods. Exquisitely shot with only a deserved amount of indulgence, Lynne Ramsey’s traumatic masterpiece is one of the year’s finest films. Dazed Digital sat down with the demon child (actually, the rather chatty and charming) Ezra Miller during London Film Festival to talk about the difficulties and fun of exploring his darker side.

Dazed Digital: You’ve played a few unhinged kids in other films.
Ezra Miller: I’ve played a couple of unhinged roles, but then again there are a lot of unhinged people in the world. More and more then world’s going crazy and dark.

DD: Sounds slightly pessimistic.
Ezra Miller: I’m just trying to do some true interpretations.

DD: Why do you think they go to you for these roles?
Ezra Miller: Oh no, I go to them, I pursue these unhinged characters, I wish to embody unhinged characters because it’s what I perceive in the world around me. I haven’t met a hinged person in so long.

DD: Do you think you have an aesthetic that fits these parts?
Ezra Miller: What, that I look evil or naturally unhinged? Yeah, maybe I just have some good psychosis bone structure. But I’ve met psychotic unhinged people of all appearances, I don’t think there’s a particular look.

DD: What you find fascinating about these characters?
Ezra Miller: I feel that every crazed story in the world can be played and mapped out within your own psychology, it’s one of the amazing things about human existence is that we’re strangely, through empathy, very aware, or we have at least the capacity and potential, to be aware of an emotional and psychological complex half way around the world that we’re completely disconnected to in every superficial way except for the one way which is that we’re all human beings and thus hidden under a whole lot of civil society is this basic animal understanding of one another.

DD: Did you do any research for the role of Kevin outside of the script?
Ezra Miller: I think the word research, it defines itself in a very particular way, in that you’ve got the prefix “re”, which implies that you’re searching again, which means that at some point or another, you’ve already found it. And I operate by that belief system as an actor but as an artist and as a human being in general; why would we do research? Why wouldn’t we just take that initial search? and trust the initial search.

DD: Is it strange watching yourself in these roles?
Ezra Miller: Always. Certainly it can be a traumatising experience. I’m starting to err on the side of caution when watching these films, just having gone through a few experiences where watching a film will just degrade my entire relationship with myself. It’s strange to essentially watch yourself making the choices that you remember making in order to personify the character.

DD: Is your concern that it’s frightening to see the similarity between you and a character?
Ezra Miller: That fright comes early on, I recognise the commonality between myself and the character as the first step from myself toward the character. As an actor, no matter how good you are or how much compelling research you do, in the end you’re beginning an ending with yourself. That’s scary, but I don’t think that inextricably ties you to characters, I find that coming to this realisation more and more I see the vast contrast between me and the characters I play, because everything is quintessentially borne of this similarity.

DD: Was it inspirational to play alongside Tilda Swinton then?
Ezra Miller: Yeah, amazingly. I have a feeling that in subliminal way that I’m not fully aware of yet, what I’ve learnt from Tilda will inform everything I do from here on out. She represents almost a new craft outside of acting, a craft within the art form of empathy. What we see her do time and time again is bring the possibility of a human understanding to a situation or a story or a character that before might have seemed unrecognisable or indecipherable or just completely unrelatable because of, maybe, the characters actions or the characters traits.

She has this immense energetic capacity to bring the reality of the human experience into those shells. And that grants us, as audience members, an opportunity to empathise further. That is what this art form has the potential to do at its best, at its optimal. {Dazed Digital}

Writer Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin focuses on Eva Khatchadourian, a successful career woman who reluctantly decides to have a child.

She has difficulty bonding with her son, who screams as a baby, refuses to speak as a toddler and develops into an impenetrable teenager who creates devastation.

Eva, played by Oscar winner Tilda Swinton in Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s screen adaptation, wonders if her intransigence is to blame for her child’s course of action.

Director Lynne Ramsay (pictured with Ezra Miller) on bringing Kevin to the screen

The adolescent Kevin is played by 19-year-old actor Ezra Miller, who says that he “started with himself” to pin down the essence of his dark character.

“I knew some aspects of Kevin which are universal. As children we all occasionally get angry because we feel disregarded or trivialised. There was something in that feeling that was already there to explore.

“The really twisted thing is that I didn’t have to travel far outside the boundaries of my own psyche,” he explains.

Miller says that making the film, which is taut and full of imagery pointing to Kevin’s final act, was “not the giggly project” and entailed many intense scenes opposite Swinton.

“Tilda has this military precision in her work. She would very rapidly set tone, approach and angle when it came to working on a scene and I would just struggle to keep up!” he admits.

“She was a great teacher. She taught me that effortlessness can sometimes be the greatest and most productive effort within a performance.

“If you can let go of all the attempts to be within a character, then all your natural capacity will allow you a character in a moment.”

Phoning Santa

While Ramsay says “as soon as Ezra walked into the room, I knew I’d found Kevin,” she also faced the task of casting two boys to play him at earlier stages of his life.

Both child actors exude Kevin’s stubbornness and detachment, performances which she says required some encouragement.

“You don’t direct them by giving them a script, you make it fun, and every new day is a game,” explains the film-maker. “But they definitely knew about the performance they were giving.

“I had some help from Ezra, who hung out with both the young actors.”

She adds that one child was very unhappy about wearing a nappy during filming, so Miller “took him outside and phoned Santa, saving the scene”.

Ramsay, whose other credits include Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, was faced with the task of adapting a novel for the screen which was presented as a series of letters penned by Eva.

Tilda Swinton on why she wanted to star in We Need To Talk About Kevin.

“I knew I had to do it my way,” she explains.

“The book’s in the form of letters and I wasn’t going to do it in the form of voiceover. And it would have been a very long film – it’s a very, very dense book!

“I think it retains the spirit of the novel. Lionel approved, I think. It’s unusual, as novelists don’t love their material being filmed.”

Ramsay maintains her primary aim was to “put the audience in a position where they could identify with Eva, go on that journey and feel the feelings that she feels”.

The result is a very visually detailed film in which Eva is seen scraping red paint off her house at close quarters and facing the pain of confronting Kevin after his deed.

The teenage star of the film, meanwhile, says he is prepared for any film awards season exposure – and success.

“That endless red carpet that runs like a red carpet to my own demise! Ready or not, here it comes,” jokes Miller, who was at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year where the movie was showcased.

“He’s got intelligence, a sense of humour – he’ll be all right,” adds Ramsay. {BBC}

Little-known actor Ezra Miller, 18, plays the disturbed Kevin who goes on to carry out a high school massacre.

After getting the role Miller admitted being daunted by the “massive undertaking and responsibility” in front of him.

He told Sky News: “All of a sudden I felt this great obligation and responsibility to all of these artists, and this work of art, to do it justice.

“Then the challenge became removing myself from the role when we called a wrap. There was a bit of a challenge in separating myself from all of these twisted and messed up, and yet very valid aspects of Kevin’s character.”

Playing the character also made him re-assess his attitude towards his own mother.

“It certainly heightened my appreciation and gratitude for my very wonderful relationship with my mother.”

Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, who has previously worked on independent films Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Rory Stewart Kinnear.

She said: “I had those similar thoughts… I was thinking about having a baby and that kind of career path thing… I thought it was a compelling story but also about the deepest fears you have.

“How alone must you feel if you really feel like that – and some mothers do.”

She added: “It’s like a dirty little secret.”

The director dispenses with the use of letters which make up the novel, something the author Shriver was “cool about that”

Ramsay added: “Luckily she loves the movie.”

Whether the fan of the book will feel the same is something Ramsay says she is not feeling apprehensive about.

“No I don’t worry. It’s inspired by the book rather than exactly like the book. Hopefully they are companion pieces.”
{Sky.com}

We Need To Talk About Kevin

In flashbacks, a gaunt mother remembers her life and its unravelling. Her memories are vivid in both content and colour as she surveys the remnants of her existence; in many ways she has become a dead woman walking. She is Eva Khatchadourian, the protagonist of We Need To Talk About Kevin; the internal conversation she has with herself and her absent husband on the subject of a coldly violent son was author Lionel Shriver’s reaction to the phenomenon of high-school killings following 1999’s Columbine massacre. Adapted for the screen by director Lynne Ramsay, the upcoming cinematic take on We Need To Talk About Kevin features a harrowing central performance by the mercurial Tilda Swinton, trapped in a familiar, upper-class suburbia of dull McMansions where families appear to be nuclear, but are in fact atomised. Especially, it seems, the family she calls her own. The triumphant scenes and enthusiastic reviews that greeted its premiere at Cannes this year were a vindication for director Lynne Ramsay, who also wrote its screenplay with her partner Rory Stewart Kinnear.

Ezra Miller, the 18-year-old who plays Kevin, waxes lyrical about his director from a New York mastering studio. “Lynne Ramsay, I am convinced, is either a goddess or… I don’t know, is there a word for something that includes both the notion of a deity and an evil, dark adversary?” He has a yawp of a laugh and a way with words; his performance as the teenaged title character is by turns charged and blank, an Elizabeth Peyton painting gone rogue. “Lynne Ramsay is ineffable; maybe she’s my favourite everything. She’s awesome, and I thought so before I was hungering to be in this film. I was routinely watching her films before, and those who know about her are passionate about her work. You don’t need to have ‘the conversation’ with a fan of Lynne Ramsay’s films because if someone has seen the work, you already know you’re on the same page.” . . . {ID}