Rupert Friend was born to play a Nazi. Maybe it’s the high cheekbones,
seemingly cut from granite, the piercing aquamarine eyes, or the slightly
haughty mien that can suggest, at a push, an emissary from the master race.
Either way, the 26-year-old actor, formerly found in tabloid paparazzi snaps
as arm candy for his superstar girlfriend Keira Knightley, or doing solid
support in movies such as Pride & Prejudice and Nick Love’s Outlaw,
has finally hit paydirt with a truly creepy turn as a Nazi officer in the
child-focused Holocaust movie The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
Here, under blond dye-job and tinted eyebrows, Friend plays the mercurial SS
officer Lieutenant Kotler, assigned to the house of child protagonist Bruno
(Asa Butterfield). For the first act at least, Bruno sees Kotler as a
strangely aloof presence, possibly even attractive. Soon, however, the
monster is unleashed and Kotler yells, spits, and fulminates with rage,
eventually beating a Jewish servant to a pulp in the middle of a dinner
party. The role is a revelation for Friend, a somewhat genteel screen
presence so far, and is the first in a series of high-profile parts
(including starring roles for Stephen Frears and Martin Scorsese) that
reveal a star in the making.
“That’s not exactly a compliment, being a called a perfect Nazi, is it?”
Friend chuckles. He is, in the flesh, in denims, scuffed boots and green
T-shirt, depressingly gorgeous, his mesmerising face all smooth angles and
sculpted curves. He is quick to laugh, and is serious-minded about his
craft. “I mean, it’s not particularly flattering to be associated with a
group of people who attempted to exterminate an entire race,” he says,
before explaining that he refused the role of Kotler at first. “I’m not a
shouty person, and not violent either,” he says. “The character scared me.
But then I realised that that was probably the point. It was about putting a
human face on these atrocities.”
The movie, based on the bestseller by John Boyne, explores the innocent
friendship of Bruno with the equally naive Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a child
prisoner of a nearby concentration camp. Some of the toughest scenes involve
Friend’s Kotler berating the boys into a quivering and genuinely terrified
heap. “I just hid in the corner like a dog, after those scenes,” says
Friend, explaining how the boys’ mothers came rushing on set for comfort,
while he dealt with his shame and guilt in private.
He says that, thankfully, his follow-up role, the title character in Stephen
Frears’s upcoming period melodrama Cheri, was far less
draining. “I play the son of a courtesan who’s been shagging everything that
moves, and who’s having an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer.” He allows himself
an almost imperceptible smirk of contentment, adding: “The crazy thing is,
she looks about 28. She’s so beautiful you can’t believe it! And she’s my
mum’s age!”
He has subsequently filmed The Young Victoria for the producer Martin
Scorsese and the director Julian Fellowes (Friend plays Prince Albert to
Emily Blunt’s Victoria), and the Russian romance Buddha’s Little
Finger opposite Sophia Myles. He is keen, however, to downplay his
sudden ascent and insists that he’s still available for minor co-starring
roles.
“My decision-making process is never based on the size of the part,” he says.
“Once you start worrying about the size of your part, you’re in trouble!”
Are you saying, then, that size doesn’t matter? “I don’t want to say that!”
he sighs, “Because I know it will end up as a headline.” What about, ‘Friend
says: My Part isn’t that big!’? “Yeah, that’s what all the girls say!” he
shrugs.
Friend’s obvious weariness around media entrapment is clearly borne out of his
relentlessly spied-upon relationship with Knightley, where the most simple
things, such as nipping to the corner shop, have become a dreaded chore.
“Because there’s 15 big hairy guys one foot in front of you, walking
backwards with 15 flashes going off,” he says, colour rising. “It’s right in
your face, all the way to the shop, all the way through the process, and all
the way back. I now understand entirely why people take swings at
photographers, and if one gets within more than a foot of me I will do the
same.” He pauses, grits his teeth and adds: “I have absolute respect for
anyone who manages to knock one of them out.”
Nonetheless, Friend has always refused to discuss Knightley in the press. In
the past (they’ve been together since 2005), was this because he felt like
an appendage to her stardom, not worthy of the limelight? Now, with his own
star truly in the ascendant is there more perceived parity between them? “I
don’t think about my career that way,” he says, giving a vaguely nonplussed
stare, just the slightest bit Kotler. What about when you’re together? Do
you sit back and compare scripts? “That would be a definite ‘No comment’ ”
he says, dropping the room temperature a notch. And your super-couple’s
uniname? Like Brangelina, TomKat, or Bennifer? How do you like the sound of
Krupert? There’s a nanosecond delay. I wonder if I am going to get beaten to
a pulp. Thankfully, Friend’s face cracks. He bursts out laughing. “That
sounds awful! It’s like a disease!” he hoots. “And that is definitely a ‘no
comment’!”
Later he says: “When you court the publicity and you want to be at every
opening, then you can’t complain when somebody circles your cellulite and
blows it up in a magazine. But if you’ve never asked for it, and I have
never asked for it, then you’re within your rights to say, ‘I’ve asked to
act, so judge my acting. The rest of it is mine.’ ”
The “rest of it” includes a difficult childhood in a small Oxfordshire village
and a local comprehensive where Friend was, by his own admission, disruptive
in class and bullied outside it. “If you were creative you were beaten up,”
he says. “If you wore glasses you were beaten up. If your hair was cut by
your mum you were beaten up. I was all of those things.” The only son of a
solicitor mother and a fine arts historian father, Friend, who claims to
have been “borderline ADD”, demanded that his parents allow him to drink in
his local pub at the age of 11. “There was literally nothing else to do in
the village,” he explains. “And I couldn’t bear the idea of just sitting at
home.”
He says that he was a nerdy teenager, but that when he joined a local band,
and started playing the guitar, the girlfriends followed. On a whim, after
leaving school, he auditioned for the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic
Arts in London, but fled to the South of France after a seemingly disastrous
audition. He was about to set sail, as a deck hand on a round the world
yachting trip, when he got a call from Webber Douglas, saying they were
interested. And the rest, as they say, is a hop and a skip from The
Libertine (his first role, as support to Johnny Depp, snagged while
still in college) to Pride & Prejudice (where he met Knightley)
and beyond.
He says, on reflection, that he is grateful for the success he’s had so far,
but then reiterates that it’s not the size of the roles, or the prestige
that matters, it’s the quality. “I mean, if Terrence Malick phoned and said,
‘I want Rupert to play a short-order cook. Just two scenes.’ I’d be on that
plane.”
For now though, our meeting over, he’s off to the pub. I wonder if he’s learnt
anything in his epic drinking career so far. What has boozing since
childhood taught him? “Well, I started drinking at 11, and I haven’t
finished yet. How’s that?”
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is released nationwide on Sept 12 20089
