Award-winning and popular co-stars Penelope Cruz and Michelle Pfeiffer from Murder on the Orient Express speak about working with a fabulous cast and director Kenneth Branagh on a classic murder mystery. Excerpts from an interview:
Tell us about your character.
Penelope Cruz: What I like about my character is that she is so different from me. That is what I always wanted but it not always up to you; you need the trust of the director to give you that kind of material.
Q. What was your experience of working with such an amazing cast?
PC: All the characters are very interesting. They all have small parts because there are many of us but all of them are very interesting. Can you imagine the feeling of walking into that train every morning and seeing this incredible cast together?
We would wake up at five in the morning every day to shoot this movie and that would be the thing that would really wake me up. It was not about competition, it was about being there together as a team supporting each other and enjoying every second of it.
Q. Did you read the original book or watch the original movie before shooting?
PC: I read the original book when I was 16 or 17. Then I saw the movie in my 20s. Kenneth said he didn’t need me to watch it again because when you watch something it’s going to be recorded in your brain and you are going to try to do something similar even if you don’t want to. So he said, let’s start afresh and he did something to keep the essence of the novel and reinvent it.
Q. You play the role of Caroline Hubbard, what was your experience of playing the character?
Michelle Pfeiffer: She’s a little bit, in a 1930’s kind of a way, like a bull in a china shop for that era. She is a little too curious at times but she is a lot of fun and a little lonely and loves to travel!
Q. How was it working with Kenneth Branagh?
MP: I don’t really know how he did it but he would, at the end of a take, almost replay every moment. I don’t know if he has photographic memory or something.
I would watch him as he would replay every scene and go through it moment by moment and he would pick out his notes to me and it was like a check list and he was just sort of checking it off and it was extraordinary!
Q. Does the murder mystery genre still work with the audience?
MP: In all whodunits there is a murder and there is always a murderer involved and there is always who did it! They are timeless, I think whether it’s a novel or a film, people love being challenged, they like trying to figure something out, they want to be the first person to figure it out and they like to be a little scared, they like to be a little titillated in that way.
Catch Murder on the Orient Express tomorrow at 1 pm only on Star Movies Select HD.