In the acclaimed drama film All of Us Strangers, BAFTA and Olivier Award-winning actor Andrew Scott portrays a screenwriter who visits his childhood home to work on a screenplay about his childhood and discovers his long-dead parents are still occupying the home. The film explores the relationship that the living have with the memories and unresolved emotions of their departed loved ones. Speaking about his role in the fantastical film with the Associated Press, Scott talks about his child-like approach to acting in this particular project.
Reflecting on his role in All of Us Strangers, and its emotional and supernatural elements, Scott says, “The challenge of it was to try to go to that place but not gild the lily too much. As an actor, I have to be in touch with that playful side of myself and that part of you that’s childish. I was actually quite struck by how vulnerable I looked in the film.”
In reference to a scene in which Scott’s character wears his childhood pajamas and gets into bed with his “parents,” Scott notes how those kinds of impossible situations are what makes acting imaginative. He explains, “So many of the things that are required of you as an actor are a sense of humor and some ability to be able to put yourself in a situation. Because it’s all down to imagination. For me, that’s the thing you need to keep. That’s the thing — because I started out when I was young — I don’t want to move too far away from. Like when kids go, ‘OK, you be this and I’ll be this.’ That ability doesn’t leave us. What does leave us is a lack of self-consciousness. Our job is to hold on to that.”
