The Talks

Brendan Fraser: “I am not a stranger to that”
Mr. Fraser, after a few years away from the limelight, you’re having something of a career Renaissance. How are you feeling about that?
I was never that far away. (Laughs) You can’t get rid of me that easy! But I guess I’ll just say: I know not what will come, but come what will and I will go there laughing. And that is our friend Herman Melville, 1851.
That’s a good perspective to keep — especially in the film industry, you never know where you’ll end up next. You recently went from playing a reclusive obese father in The Whale, to playing a lawyer in a 1920s Western in Killers of the Flower Moon.
It was eye opening and an education really, a masterclass working with Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon. That talent! Of course, you are in the presence of a master, working with him. It’s like a shop where everyone around him brings him the tools and the things he needs.

Sarah Polley: “It felt so revolutionary”
Ms. Polley, do you think going to the cinema might be falling out of fashion?
Well, it was interesting in the fall to see that no one was going to see anything! I mean, unless it was Top Gun, for sure, or Avatar. But people also weren't going to see the other films that I think everyone expected to do well, like The Fabelmans or Tár, these movies where it felt they were going to have big audiences, but they just didn't. I think it's to do with abandoning the idea of a collective experience in a theater, which is so sad. I think it's a completely different human experience to absorb something in a room of people than it is to do so on your own and stop 800 times to check your phone.
Do you still have time to go to the cinema yourself these days?
Not as much! And as much as I bemoan that, I also don't judge it because I have three little kids. You're trying to juggle a life and there's other options, you know, it's not the only way to see a movie anymore. It's hard to carve out the time. But I'm always thrilled when I do.