Freddie Highmore

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Most child actors tend to go by on their cute looks alone. As a result, very few child actors manage to have their careers survive into their adulthood.

However, there are those rare child actors like Natalie Wood, Jodie Foster, Haley Joel Osment, and Dakota Fanning, who manage to show at very young ages a real gift for acting and performing. One of these actors is London-born English actor Freddie Highmore.

He has already made a significant mark in Hollywood with roles as Peter in Finding Neverland and as Charlie Bucket in the Tim Burton adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's literary classic Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Highmore pushes even higher with his first starring role in the drama August Rush, in which he plays the title character, a musical prodigy who uses his talents to help him find his birth parents.

The film has him alongside much older acting greats running the gamut from Keri Russell to Jonathan Rhys Meyers to Terrence Howard to Robin Williams. When we first sat down with the 15 year-old actor, we first asked Freddie whether he had a lot of musical experience prior to playing such a role.

'I played the clarinet beforehand,' Highmore replied, 'But, no, I learned how to play the guitar for the film and learned how to conduct and play the organ for that scene. About six months beforehand, I started all that, preparation for it, because I wanted to be able to learn how to play it for real and actually be able to play the songs so they could use me for the whole time.'

The actor also discusses his excitement for conducting an orchestra in front of a large audience in one of August Rush's most pivotal scenes.

'It was fun, it was great 'cause the sporting artists were there and they were musicians, so they could play a little bit of the piece and stuff, which was good,' Freddie describes, 'I mean, sometimes, I would, after they turned off the backing track or it would be cut, I would try to carry on for a bit and hold it all together and conduct and try and play along. I mean, you know, it was a good laugh.'

We asked Freddie whether playing the role of a child prodigy conductor had any bearings on his own musical taste.

'A bit, I mean,' he claims, 'I guess it sort of broadened my view of music and also especially getting to play and conduct it and I don't know. I mean, for a time afterwards, it was this thing where I was practicing quite a lot the conducting. It turned to be one of the hardest challenges of doing the movie. And so, you know, sometimes I'd listen to music and I'd start conducting the beat of it and stuff like that.'

Also asked was whether the actor still plays any musical instruments.

'A bit, actually,' Freddie says, 'Jonathan Rhys Meyers actually got me a guitar at the end of shooting so it was great. I try and keep going. I mean I'm not excellent, but apart from those few songs I had to play in the film. It was an acoustic/electric so you can plug it in, but yeah, I mean the acoustic guitar was nice. It was funny, they brought it in for construction and then, they just attacked it. You know, they come in and they just attack it and scratch it all up to make it look beaten up, get in all these new guitars and just wreck them.'

One of the many locations that August Rush was shot in was right here in New York City. Highmore says he was delighted by the opportunity to film a movie in one of the biggest cities in the world.

'It was good,' he enthuses, 'It was great to work in New York and go around and we went to Manhattan and Harlem. And we did a bit in the Bronx as well, which was amazing just to get it and go and see different places around New York and get to work actually in New York, which is an amazing place.'

In playing an American, we asked the English-born actor how he approached adapting to the regional accent.

'I work with the dialect coach obviously before doing the film and then, when you're in New York, you can come in and pick up little things there with everyone speaking American,' Highmore recalls, 'I would try to talk in an American accent as much as I possibly could. I wouldn't go home and pretend to be August Rush or anything, but I still go home and talk in an American accent. And so, when I actually did it for the filming process, in the scenes, it wouldn't feel odd and it would just come naturally.'

One of the great actors Freddie got to work with is the incredible Robin Williams. The young actor spoke of what it was like to work with him.

'He's great,' he gushes, 'Working with him was just fantastic. They set up this person to come round and talk to him during subway school, which he came round sort of offering any help or any guidance you needed. And Robin was off on one of his great jokes that he does, but working with him on the whole was fantastic.'

'He's got so much energy and brings a real life onto the set when he comes on,' Highmore adds, 'Well, it takes him a while to come, because when he's walking from the train, so many people stop him. He had to leave about an hour before hand or something and then, they stop him, he does one of his routines, and etc.'

Freddie also happily obliged when asked whether he had any memorable stories to share working alongside the comic actor.

'He's always on,' he divulges, 'He's always telling jokes. It's funny because his brain must go so much quicker than everyone else's and he's waiting for everyone else to catch up the whole time after he's telling his jokes. There was one time when we were shooting in Central Park and it was this time where this coyote had escaped, so all the police and the helicopters were chasing around. And he teased me because I was English that we were going around and trying fox hunting and that and go, tally ho and let's go chase the fox, which was a good laugh.'

Highmore also shared what it was like to work with co-star Terrence Howard.

'He had this question he asked, when we did the scene in the orphanage when he comes along to talk to me in there,' he remembers, 'We did that during one of the first few days of shooting. He said, what would you do if you weren't afraid, and he had that question he kept asking and in a way it became a sort of thing for August, I guess, because he's not so afraid, he's not like many kids. He doesn't get drawn into the whole thing about, I can't show my emotions, and he just goes for what he believes in. But he was great. He's mesmerizing to watch.'

We asked the actor whether he had enjoyed the experience of working with such an incredibly talented ensemble cast.

'Yeah, it was a shame though because we didn't get to spend as much time together and especially with Keri, because you know, because that's probably the big regret of the film, that we didn't have many scenes together,' he says, 'The weekend actually, one Sunday, we went to a soccer match in London and Johnny, he was there, so it was good.'

In his sharing with us whether he had any acting plans for the future, the incredibly charismatic and pleasant-mannered Highmore's response makes one realize how easy to forget how much the actor is still just a kid.

'At the moment, there's school obviously,' Freddie says, 'At the end of this year, I got some big exams in England, so I'm preparing for those. I mean, there's a few things coming out next year. There's something called The Spiderwick Chronicles, which is coming out in February and I play twins in that. And I get to play two instead of one, which was fun.'

'It was great,' he continues, 'I mean it was interesting to work with how you actually have to do it logistically. And you got to have two people in the same room and the whole motion control thing. I mean, it takes a while to do it, but it was great to have those two characters and get the differentiation between them and things like that. I hadn't read the books actually before I was approached for the movie. They weren't as big in England at the time when it was all getting together.'

In reaction to his reply, we asked the young actor whether or not he's home-schooled.

'No, I go to normal school in England, nothing different about it, any special treatment, no, absolutely not,' he replies, 'I'm not too much in trouble at school, so I'm OK, but you know, if I'm sure if I was, I'd be straight into detention and absolutely. No, I mean, when I'm away, obviously, we have a tutor who comes out inside if I fall behind of school and stuff like that. And the tutor often liaises with the school and gets the work sent out, so I don't fall behind at all. When I do go back, I slip right in.'

'Having a tutor when you're away one-on-one kind of helps because you work at your own pace and pick things up like that,' Highmore adds, 'It's fun to be back. I mean, obviously, I enjoy filming. I mean I think if there was a point where I didn't want to do filming anymore, I should stop, because there's so many people who'd love to be in the position I'm in. All I'd have to do is just step out of the way and they'd all come in and try to take my place, but, no, I mean, obviously, I enjoy filming a lot.'

When asked about whether he's similar in any way to August Rush, Freddie had this to say.

'I'm not a musical genius,' he admits, 'I guess I try to be. I don't know. I like to be like that. I think nowadays, guys are encouraged not to be like that. It seems to me that he goes for something and he's open and he lets his emotions out and he doesn't feel like, oh, you know, I got to keep them inside of me.'

Freddie also shared with us his concerns regarding how his film would fare against modern English boys with how they are brought up today.

'Nowadays, certainly in England, young guys, it's cool not to say it, sort of pretend you don't really mind about that sort of thing,' Highmore notes, 'You know I think males, going to see the film, they might find it hard to look at the main hero, being someone who is not as manly as in a sort of stereotypical kind of way. And he's not like the guy who goes around killing people, he just does it more internally and more inside him.'

However, the young actor is fairly optimistic that August Rush will find just as much of an audience with young guys as with every other demographic.

'I do think that if guys go and see it, they'll enjoy it,' Freddie believes, 'I mean, hopefully, they will, I guess. You know the girls are going to be saying come out to the guys. But a guy should take the girls out to see it because I think they'd enjoy it and it'd make a good date movie or something and you know, anyone who's in love or wants to be in love would want to go and see.'