It is hard to give any single human being the title of “hardest working person in show business,” but actor Dominic Cooper seems to be actively lobbying for it. On the day that I meet him, Cooper seems to be running instinctively on adrenaline and tea. The victim of delayed and cancelled flights, Cooper has been granting press interviews from the moment he got off the place. When I arrive his day is winding down, but rest seems to still be a far off luxury. Following a roundtable conversation with local journalists for his latest film The Devil’s Double, Cooper will go back to manning his cell phone as he awaits further word on a long gestating John Gotti biopic that he has been reportedly attached to [Ed. note: the role has since gone to Ben Foster].
Cooper, who can also be seen onscreen now as Howard Stark in the blockbuster Captain America and will soon have a pivotal role in the much buzzed about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is in Toronto to promote his first big onscreen lead, and the eloquent and candid actor knows exactly what is at stake. The Devil’s Double is based on the true story of Latif Yahia, the proud son of a furniture manufacturer living in Iraq in the late 1980s who is tortured and coerced into being the body double and stand-in for Saddam Hussein’s crazed, drug addicted son Uday. Cooper is not only starring in the film, but is also pulling double duty as both the soft spoken Latif and the cocaine fueled Uday. The dual role was a very satisfying experience for Cooper, but it was not without it’s drawbacks. Simply doing one role would have been one of the hardest experiences of Cooper’s career. Here he had to work on two incredibly difficult roles opposite himself on a day-to-day basis.
“The rewards were endless and I loved every minute of it, but I was completely exhausted and going slightly schizophrenic. I still kind of feel like I am just thinking about it,” Cooper said as he talked about the challenges of playing two vastly different people, one of whom had boundless energy and one of whom was soft spoken and reserved. “You’re working in such a strange environment. If I am playing a scene as Uday, I have to pretend I have no idea what is going to happen as Latif. I have to immediately imagine what I possibly will be doing for the scene to work.”
The British actor and stage veteran, possibly best known for his roles in The Duchess and Mamma Mia, knew that it would take some convincing to get the part he so desperately wanted, but as he has been showing on the day of the interview Cooper is nothing if not tenacious.
“I was so passionate about it when I first read it, but it wasn’t offered. It wasn’t even a possibility. Someone else was attached. I just had this burning desire to play it. What on Earth made me think I could play the son of an Iraqi dictator? I had no idea. I kept hounding people and asking about it. Eventually an audition came up and I had these two ideas to approach with and we were very much on the same page, myself and [director] Lee [Tamahori]. From that moment and meeting Lee and understanding what he wanted it to be as a film it became interesting. I had never done a gangster film before.”
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