Is it true you got hooked up with a family while you were filming so that you wouldn’t miss watching soccer on TV?
(Laughing) “About a month before I started filming, the director sent me a tape of a friend of his just reading the paper. And it was a guy who he claimed had an accent from the town where I was gonna be from, but had a very soft way of talking that wasn’t an extreme southern accent. So I’d been listening to this guy speak on this recording for about a month and when I arrived there, there was this big tournament on and I’d been wanting to watch it. The only person who seemed to have a satellite dish on the top of his house was the guy who I’d been basing my character on. So we ended up spending these afternoons together watching these matches. He knew nothing about it and I was explaining to him the ins and outs of European football and he was explaining to me about life in Winston-Salem. It kind of worked out well.”
So you really are a huge soccer fan?
“Yeah. I’m from an Italian family so I grew up playing and watching and everything. I actually just finished this film playing a big sort of David Beckham-isque soccer star with a fake tan and a mullet.”
A mullet?
“Well not quite. It’s just sort of trendy, bleached bonnet as they call it over there. Yeah, I just finished that and then I’m going to do this adaptation of a Martin Amis novel called ‘Success.’”
And you also have “The Darwin Awards” coming up?
“Yeah. A friend of mine produced that and he asked me to do a cameo in it. It’s just this one scene when I jump out a window and kill myself.”
So you’re obviously playing one of the possible award winners then…
“Exactly!”
Were you familiar with “The Darwin Awards” before the film?
“No, that’s why he sent me the tape and said, ‘Will you jump out this window?’ And I said, ‘Allright…’ It’s like I’m telling my colleagues that I’ve got this new office because I’ve been promoted and I keep trying to convince them it’s got bulletproof glass. They don’t believe me so I go and hurl myself against it and go right out the window.”
And that’s based on a true story?
“Apparently they all are.”
You’re also in “The Sisters,” right?
“Yes. ‘The Sisters,’ I play… It’s based on the Chekhov play ‘The Three Sisters’ and I play the brother who in the Chekhov play is called Andre and in this is called Andrew. Andy. And then I did this little Irish movie with Colm Meaney and Tim Hutton called ‘Turning Green’ where I play a bookie for the dog races who’s kind of a thug.”
