Dominic Cooper
Interview by: Rocco Passafuime
Dominic Cooper is one of the world's more relatively unknown actors. He is focused not so much with image or money, but the perfection of his craft in the patient hopes that he'll soon enter a much wider realm of possibility and success.
For two years, Cooper has been solely known in the world of theater for his work in the very successful English play The History Boys, which he has done not only in London's West End, but on Broadway. Now, Dominic is cast in Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hynter's film adaptation of the successful play as class stud, Dakin.
When he first learned that playwright Alan Bennett was planning to put together a film version with himself as screenwriter, Cooper jumped at the opportunity take part. He revealed, however, that the initial reading for him and his fellow cast mates did not go very well.
'Alan thought we were all terrible,' he recollects. 'He must have trusted Nick so much as his director as they worked together so many times that Nick managed to persuade him that we were wrote for it.'
Once Dom got the chance to prove himself, he said he found the transition from acting the character on stage to on film a welcome challenge.
'It was scary,' Cooper reveals. 'But I think it was the most comfortable situation you can be in as an actor, having done it for a year, knowing it that well, and having such faith and trust in your director. It was a time to be able to really experiment with the work on a set that you felt so comfortable on. Such wonderful writing, in a way, lent itself to the screen because you could become much more intimate and delicate with those moments that you had.'
Dominic was comfortable doing an adaptation of a play he had worked on stage for two years straight because he learned such a great deal while playing his role.
'It was so rewarding,' Cooper recalls. 'We discovered stuff continually. On our last performance, we were discovering new moments, new laughs in the scenes. We wouldn't have been able to do it for that long if the writing wasn't that way.'
Dom went into great lengths to explain the difference between acting The History Boys on stage and in front of the camera.
'As an actor, on stage, and in front of a live audience, I learned is just the tiniest of moments that you put into a phrase or into a bit of dialogue and how that changes the reaction of an audience,' he explains. 'What was difficult about making the film was making that choice there and then, deciding which way you were going to do it. We didn't do many takes of scenes. We did a few scenes in the space of one day. We had to completely trust Nick that he knew the performances that well that he could choose the correct one.'
Dom expressed that there was much opportunity, artistically as well as commercially, in making a film adaptation of something he and much of his fellow cast were used to doing on the London stage.
'We were always very aware that the age of our audience normally had big mountains of grey hair,' he explains. 'That's the audience that comes to the theater a majority of the time because they could afford it. Maybe it wasn't the performance that we definitely wanted to give and maybe there were many more performances we could have given, but we are so lucky. It's such a reward to have this hard three years of work reach a new, different, and younger audience that Alan should find. He should have a young audience and his words should appeal to them.'
When The History Boys premiered in the U.S., Dominic noticed the uniquely different reaction of a foreign audience not normally akin to English culture or humor.
'They were different. Absolutely enthusiastic,' recalls Cooper. 'My character has a couple of lines and says phrases that are very English. An example of one is, 'I thought we might push the boat out.' It's quite a funny line in England. Suddenly, in New York, not a whisper, nothing. It was sad to lose some of the laugh.'
When the 26 year-old actor was asked how he'd be able to effectively follow up on something of such high quality as The History Boys, Dom says he's cautious of the options he has.
'We've been spoiled and that is really hard on any level,' he admits. 'It's a good time for us and I think we do have to be particularly careful with our choices. I found something that I'm doing in December that is almost perfect. It's a film called Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which is based on a book. It's a very low-budget, small independent film, but it has fantastic writing and it's a very dark, in-depth character that I could do a lot of work with.'
However, no matter where the road lies ahead for Dominic Cooper, he will always have a special place for his fateful days as one of The History Boys.
'We grew with the characters,' notes Cooper. 'We've been doing them for three years. We did kind of resemble the characters and you notice their nuances.' He, then, goes on to joke, 'We're hassling Alan a lot to write another part for us: History Boys 2: The Older Days.
