Matthew Goode is a rude, unprofessional bitch
I’m starting to think Matthew Goode is one of the biggest bitches working in Hollywood today. It’s kind of funny what he gets away with, probably because he has a cute British accent and he’s kind of hot, in that impossibly pasty and posh way some British men are. But the man is an ingrate, a tool and a total bitch, bless his heart. There are so few of us left! Before I get into Matthew’s latest verbal faux pas, let me recap one of the greatest moments in the history of film promotion.
The story is this: Goode was cast as Andrew Veidt/Ozymandias in last year’s Watchmen. As soon as he was cast, the fanboys went into revolt, publicly bashing Goode’s casting. When Goode was asked about the fanboy revolt, he reportedly said: “The negative feedback is relayed by my friends. I think the fanboys aren’t particularly happy – there are a load of people they’d have rather had in before me. It’s already being slated before they’ve seeing anything. But if fanboys still hate the film after going and seeing it, they can all line up and suck my d-ck. I don’t give a f-ck. I’m having a child and that’s more important to me – so I don’t give a f-ck. Grow a d-ck.” Ha! This is how he talks to fans!
After the “grow a d-ck” fiasco, you would expect studio publicist to be wary of putting a journalist’s microphone anywhere near Goode. But his last film, A Single Man, was critically lauded and award-nominated, so maybe the publicists thought Goode could handle himself on the Leap Year publicity trail. Not so much. By the way, Leap Year is that film that your mom wants to see. Amy Adams is the charming American girl traveling to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend on (you guessed it) February 29. Goode isn’t her boyfriend – he plays the roughneck who she hires to drive her somewhere. And they fall in love! So, yeah, it’s going to be a cheesefest. But does this excuse Goode for calling his own film “turgid”? Oh, he also bitches about A Single Man’s promotion and his part in Brideshead Revisited. He literally has no internal monologue:
There was a time, says Matthew Goode, when actors were free to speak their minds, when agents and PRs didn’t control the film industry and it was a lot less bland as a result. I can see a wistful gleam in his eye as he says this and it’s plain this is a time he hankers after – and indeed is on a one-man mission to recreate.
Certainly, it’s hard to think of any other actor who says of his last film, the romantic comedy Leap Year, that ‘it’s turgid’. And, what’s more, that, ‘I just know that there are a lot of people who will say it is the worst film of 2010.’ Possibly he will be carted off in the middle of the night shortly after this interview and re-emerge with his lips sewn together, but for the moment, at least, he seems to be doing very well.
Goode on A Single Man: At first he “found the scenes a little banal.” But when he sat down with the film’s writer/director, fashion designer Tom Ford, he came to see that this banality was deliberate.
On A Single Man’s promotion: After criticising the distributors for putting co-star Julianne Moore’s face on the poster instead of his – thereby implying it was a heterosexual romance – he weighed into the film’s producers, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, for not doing enough to sell it: ‘It doesn’t seem to be getting a push from the Weinsteins too much.’
On how he really feels about the Weinsteins: ‘Do you honestly think I wanted to pick a fight with Harvey Weinstein? To be honest, I’ll know how serious this is when A Single Man premieres over here. He’ll be over for that so we’ll see. He’s a lovely man, though,’ he says, grinning all the harder now. ‘I did get told I would have my wrist slapped as a result, but I didn’t even know about the article.’
On his role as Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited: ‘I got f-cked over,’ he says disarmingly. ‘By the script and by what happened with everything else, because there was just nowhere for me to go as the character. I don’t think it necessarily helped that Ben [Whishaw, who played Sebastian Flyte] went down the path of making it so…’ Goode breaks off – but when I say ‘Dour?’, he does not demur. ‘Still, you know, it’s a film. It’s fine. I can sleep at night now. But I do think that Julian [Jarrold, the director] should have given Sebastian to me. It was perfectly amicable, but I think maybe they’d banked on me becoming a bit bigger as a result of the film – and it didn’t really work out that way.’
On his epic indiscretion: ‘Because of the way my repartee comes out, people tend to think that I don’t care. Actually, it’s often just a result of my being in a situation where I’m embarrassed about having to talk about a film which I don’t think is that brilliant – but obviously I can’t say that. All right… I do think that it’s important that one should be able to speak out without worrying about causing offence, or whatever. And it saddens me that the romanticism has been ripped out of being an actor.’ You mean the raciness, the bad behaviour? ‘Exactly! It wasn’t like that in Peter O’Toole’s time, was it? Maybe that’s what I love.’
On getting paid: ‘Some actors go, “Bing!” and suddenly they’re being paid huge sums. Me, I seem to get screwed every time. It’s a lot better than it was, but people have this odd idea that I must be a millionaire who swans around accepting roles whenever I care to. I’m very much a jobbing actor who’s still trying to find a place to rent down the road.’
On not moving to America: ‘If I lived in LA, I’d be schizophrenic after a week. I’d just sit in a hotel room with a shoebox full of weed going: “I’m not f-cking moving. If they want me, they can come here”.’
On how he‘s ashamed he did Leap Year: ‘That was the main reason I took it – so that I could come home at the weekends. It wasn’t because of the script, trust me. I was told it was going to be like The Quiet Man with a Vaughan Williams soundtrack, but in the end it turned out to have pop music all over it. A bit like Chasing Liberty again. Do I feel I let myself down? No. Was it a bad job? Yes, it was. But, you know, I had a nice time and I got paid.’
[From The Telegraph]
If Goode didn’t want to make a cheesefest romantic comedy, why the f-ck did he sign on and cash the checks? That’s what I hate about actors who bash their own films. Some will applaud their honesty, but I think it’s disrespectful and unprofessional. If you don’t want to do something as an actor, don’t do it. If you do the work, however, sack up and promote the sh-t and, oh I don’t know, ACT like it’s good. That’s your job.
Matthew Goode at the London premiere of A Single Man on February 1, 2010, and at the BAFTA nomination announcements on January 21, 2010. Credit: WENN.
