Having won a legion of fans playing Aimee in Sex Education, Aimee Lou Wood is ready to take on the big screen – and there's every chance she'll make the same impact.
Wood had a minor role in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain as one of Louis's five sisters, but Living – out now in UK cinemas – marks her first major movie role and, as firsts go, starring alongside UK acting royalty in Bill Nighy isn't too shabby at all.
The movie is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru and centres on Nighy's Mr Williams, a veteran civil servant who reassesses his life after some devastating personal news. After living a shadow existence, Mr Williams attempts to understand what it means to truly live life to its fullest.
Wood plays Margaret, a former colleague of Mr Williams who ends up playing a key role in his late-life resurgence. The scenes they share prove to be the most affecting of the movie, including a devastating pub conversation, with Wood's Margaret proving a vibrant and charismatic foil for Nighy's heart-wrenching performance.
We can only hope that this is the start of Wood's big-screen career and to mark Living's release, Digital Spy sat down with her to talk about movie aspirations, learning from Nighy and, of course, plenty of on-set tears.
Congratulations on this truly beautiful movie. Were you actively looking for movie roles when you signed up for Living, or was it just something that came your way?
I really, really want to do films. Films were where it all started for me. At drama school, you have to kind of pretend like the reason you got into acting was for theatre because that's what everyone says.
Everyone is like, "It was this play that made me realise I wanted to be an actor". Whereas actually, for me, I didn't really go to the theatre that often and so it was very much film that really, I would watch. If I found a film I liked I would watch it over and over and over and over again.
So I've always wanted to be in films and I'm definitely actively sought that, but I never thought that my first kind of proper role in a film would be in one as beautiful as this. It's kind of not sunk in properly yet because I just think it is such a beautiful film. I'm so happy to be a part of it.
Had you seen Ikiru before working on Living, or did you try to avoid it in order to allow Living to become its own thing?
I hadn't seen it, neither had Bill, and we both were in two minds about whether to watch it or not. Because, like you say, you want to treat something as its own entity and approach it completely as what you've got in front of you, the script and also your instincts about the character and about the story.
I did actually end up watching it and so did Bill, but because we were in lockdown, there was a lot of time between when I got the part and when I actually played the part. I watched it and I obviously thought it was just absolutely beautiful and stunning, but there was enough time then to just spend with our script, with our story.
I'm glad that I did actually [watch it] because it feels very much, in many ways, like its own thing. It didn't really inhibit me watching it or watching someone else's performance and it didn't really mess me up.
It was weird because once it got the part, everyone I was meeting seemed to say that that was their favourite film. You know that thing that happens where something comes into your life and then you see it everywhere.
Working alongside Bill Nighy isn't too bad for your first major movie role, so like Mr Williams learns from Margaret, did you learn from him?
Oh my god, I learnt so much by osmosis, from the advice that he was [giving]. What I love about Bill is he is an actor who cares so deeply about the work and is so detailed and has so much depth when it comes to his performance.
At the same time, he doesn't talk really about his process or anything like that. The chats that we had were very much about us as people and were about life and we kind of didn't really talk about acting a lot. I learnt so much about how to be a person from Bill.
I just admire him so much as a person. He's so kind, and he's so generous, and he's so open, and he's so playful and curious. I found him really inspiring as a person, and I think that also is exactly what he is as an actor.
When you're in a scene with him, he is just so open, every take is going to be different because he's so responsive to you and to the words that he's saying. There's always something new to be found with Bill, and that is what he's like as a person.
There's just infinite wonder to that man and I just loved being around him. On an actor level, but also just on a human level.
Living is often heartbreaking, but especially so in a pivotal conversation between Margaret and Mr Williams in a pub. When filming that scene, was it the case that you didn't have to find the emotion because of what Bill Nighy was delivering opposite you?
That is exactly it. To be honest, the film required very little acting and that's what happens when you're with amazing actors because you just responding to them. That scene particularly, I mean, I was inconsolable, hours after I could not stop crying.
I had to do the opposite, I had to actually draw it in. I had to remember that in the pub, it's the 1950s. There's gonna be more restraint than I wanted, because I just wanted to hug him and cry and sob.
It was a great acting challenge because it was like, "Okay, all that you feel, everything that you feel for Bill, everything you feel for Mr Williams, it all has to be held a bit more", even though Margaret is a very open person.
I did really have to concentrate on not just losing the plot. In between tapes, people were just running in with tissues, make-up people were coming in, because it was an endless stream of tears.
Like Mr Williams does, Living can't help but make you consider your own life and what it means to be fulfilled. Was there anything in particular that you've found has bled into your own life from working on it?
When I was playing Margaret, she was teaching me so much playing her because she's so in the now and so here, and she doesn't take things for granted. She is also very dynamic, like if something's not working for her, she tries to change it.
I find that really inspiring because I can get very stuck, I can get very frozen in thought and I think that it was really whilst doing this film. I was very much like, "Come on, Aimee, stay here, stay in the now, stay in this work, appreciate the small things, find the extraordinary in the ordinary".
It was such a lovely break from me playing Margaret. I really, really did appreciate it and it taught me a lot.
Living is out now in UK cinemas.
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