Mark Rylance, who is to star in the lead role of Steven Spielberg’s BFG adaptation, has revealed that he turned down the director’s offer of a film role almost 30 years ago. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Rylance said he auditioned for Empire of the Sun and was offered a very small part but declined, partly because he had a bad experience appearing alongside Bob Dylan in the film Hearts on Fire. Spielberg then offered Rylance a bigger role in the film but at the same time the theatre director Mike Alfreds asked him to take part in his upcoming season at the National Theatre.
“I did all the lists of the benefits of both, they were completely equal, and I turned eventually to the I Ching,” said Rylance, “and you just ask it, ‘Where now?’ and it gives an answer and the answer it gave if I went to the theatre was ‘community’ and that swayed it for me and I thought, ‘Yes I had never experienced community on film sets because the community is amongst the technicians, the actors come and go, but in the theatre you go through the deaths and the births and the happy and low moments of a group.’”
In 1987, Rylance appeared at the National in both The Wandering Jew, based on Eugène Sue’s novel, and Countrymania by Goldoni. He met Claire van Kampen, musical director on the former production, and they married in 1989.
Elsewhere in the programme, Rylance said that he didn’t speak properly until he was six, that he had “troubles with authority figures” in his 20s and that he felt like he had “dodged a bullet” by achieving fame later in life rather than as a young man.
Rylance’s discs included music by Claire van Kampen as well as Coleman Hawkins, Nina Simone, Beethoven and Justin Hinds and the Dominoes.
His book choice was a collection of writings by the Sufi poet Rumi and his luxury was a stand-up bass bought for him by Van Kampen when he left Shakespeare’s Globe, where he was artistic director until 2005.
Rylance on acting:
Acting is a mixture of reaching out to people, which I would call a kind of electric thing – you have to stir and engage their imagination at times – and at other times be more like a magnet and drawing them towards you. It’s really about hiding and revealing.
If you go to a restaurant you don’t want them to come out and say ‘We’ve got some things we served last night that we can reheat for you.’ You want the meal cooked fresh for you - and likewise in the theatre.
Mark Rylance on Desert Island Discs: listen to the full programme
