Volim da odem u pozorište i kad sam u publici, a sada mi je najdraže kad sa ćerkama Ivom (22) i Lenom (16) gledam predstave / I like to go to the theatre even when I’m in the audience, and my favourite thing now is when I watch plays with my daughters Iva (22) and Lena (16).
post, London-based film The Hitman‘s Wife‘s Bodyguard, with Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek… What is it like to work with foreign- ers from different cultural and geographical backgrounds? - America was never my priority. With Selma Hayek, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson I played a small role in the film The Hitman‘s Wife‘s Bodyguard, which has yet to be shown in our cinemas. The bigger the names in the business, the more natural and spontaneous they are. Some of them knew what I‘d previously done in act- ing and some didn’t. James Ivory and his producer Mer- chant, an Indian guy, remain fondly in my memory. And Selma is wonderful and has a great temperament even off camera. However, it was a greater pleasure for me to perform here with Petar Kralj or Ljubo Tadić than to find myself in the same frame with world stars. Those were treats, like episodes, and everything in Serbia and the region was more significant to me as an actor. You spent more than three years living in Lon- don. How do you remember life in England and are you sorry that you came back here? - Since returning from London I‘ve realised that I want Belgrade to always be my base, with occa- sional working trips abroad. I often miss the smell of Heathrow Airport. Everything is dearest to me in Serbia and I realise my greatest breadth, freedom and emotion in my native language. You were never fascinated by global popular- ity... - What happens behind the starry tracks of actors is a big question. In London I met a lesser-known ac- tor who didn‘t believe how much I performed the clas- sical repertoire in the theatre every day in Serbia. And he asked me, given that, what I was doing in London?! He will probably spend his entire acting career play- ing some roles, but he will not be given an opportu- nity for the top classical repertoire. In Bristol I played an episodic role in a medical series. One of the main actors was stunned when he heard that I was awaited in Belgrade by the role of Hamlet. I felt his envy re- garding that fact, as his chances of landing that role were so far away... You increasingly escape to the region of your birth and have a summer cottage near your hometown of Loznica… - My mother lives there. The Drina is my river, I grew up beside it and adore it. I had a carefree and beautiful childhood. When locals recognise me they call me Kića, which was my first nickname that didn‘t later transfer to Belgrade. I could move there to live in a few years and come to the city by car to act.
of his verses, even when I‘m not on stage. I recently remembered the verse of Claudius from Hamlet: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words with- out thoughts never to heaven go!” In my everyday life I am both saved and concerned by the fact that this work was written 500 years ago and remains current forever. And the older I get the more reconciled I am to human weaknesses, even my own. When I was growing up I had dilemmas similar to Hamlet‘s. His thought: “the readi- ness is all” was my guide for many things. Shakespeare wrote down all the human characters and themes that follow us even now. And then you stepped on the stage of Lon- don‘s Globe Theatre, in Hamlet… - I had the privilege and honour of performing the original Shakespearean verses and doing so in that very theatre, as the character of Fortinbras in Hamlet, and also in the film directed by Ralph Fiennes. In London I had an agent who enabled me to audition for the Globe, which was then doing the pieces The Tempest and Ham- let. I played the character of Fortinbras about 80 times, every day throughout an entire summer, and sometimes two shows a day. There you‘re a long way far from the status of a star and an acting pedestal. London is a huge city. It was wonderful for me to read the work on the un- derground on the way to rehearsals and to think about how and what I will play. I also liked the atmosphere of rehearsals from 10am to 6pm and performing the piece in the evening. There the piece is rehearsed for a shorter but more intensive period, and nothing else can then be done. You‘ve worked on a large number of foreign productions in the previous period - Chi- nese-Serbian film Belgrade Escape, Croa- tia‘s Tereza 33, American series The Out-
Interview » Intervju | 29
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