Rising star Dominic Cooper plays dumb in new Brit comedy Tamara Drewe - and brutal in Lee Tamahori's film about the son of Saddam Hussein. By Stephen Jewell.
After appearing in the original National Theatre production of Alan Bennett's record-breaking The History Boys, Dominic Cooper feared his career had peaked before it had even began. But the Greenwich-born 32-year-old need not have worried. Since then he has co-starred (with ex-girlfriend Amanda Seyfried) in the popular chick flick Mamma Mia! and helped lead Carey Mulligan's naive Jenny astray as conniving con-man Danny in An Education. This year he will first be seen as rock star Ben Sargeant in wry British comedy Tamara Drewe, out on Thursday, before his most challenging part yet, in twin roles of Uday Hussein and his doppelganger Latif Yafia in the harrowing The Devil's Double.
"History Boys was like a double-edged sword because you're confronted with the fact that one of the first jobs you've done is probably some of the best writing you'll ever work on," he explains. "It helped us all and it also made us very aware of how much useless rubbish there is out there."
Cooper spent three years playing charismatic student Dakin, first in the sell-out West End season and then the 2006 film. The stage show also toured the world, including a short stint at the St James Theatre during the 2006 New Zealand Arts Festival. "Wellington was one of the best places we performed it," recalls Cooper. "It just seemed to go down so well there. The audience absolutely loved it and understood it completely. It was wonderful and a beautiful environment to be in. It was quite a magical time. As a group, we'd go off into the hills and meet farmers in the middle of nowhere who'd welcome us into their homes. We did loads of outdoor activities like canoeing and it was one of the most adventurous sections of that whole experience. I've never been back since but I really loved it."
With his eyes cast to the ground during most of our conversation, Cooper doesn't seem like a natural extrovert. "I've always felt comfortable performing," he says. "I went to a very free-thinking school in London where if you didn't work then you didn't achieve anything so thank God there was a drama department and something I could latch onto. It just seemed like good fun, pretending to be someone else. It was complete escapism."
Although many of his female admirers would beg to differ, Cooper claims to not be a traditionally handsome leading man. "I'm a bit strange looking so I get weird, squidgy roles," he says with a smile. "But I'm pleased about that because it means that I get to play Uday Hussain and then the drummer in some band. I'd hate to be pigeonholed."
Clad in a tight leather jacket, Cooper is the epitome of indie cool although, unlike the irrepressible Ben in Tamara Drewe, he is not so fond of makeup. "There's nothing wrong with guys wearing eyeliner," he laughs. "I've worn it many times before but I won't wear it again unless I'm required to. There are lots of people who work in movies who continuously wear it but never admit it. It's a little secret."
Like the herd of cows that feature fatefully in the film, Ben invades sleepy rural Dorset village Ewedown, sweeping Gemma Arterton's feisty journalist Tamara off her feet. "There was a danger of audiences disliking him but I didn't want him to be a baddie," says Cooper. "Drummers are usually the dullest member of the band as they're always in the background. But I thought he should be more of a frontman, slightly more arrogant and self-involved. But I didn't want him to be so showy that you'd hate him. People actually feel sorry for him, as he is so thick. I was really drawn to playing someone as ridiculous as that."
Based on a Guardian newspaper cartoon-turned graphic novel by Posey Simmonds, Tamara Drewe is loosely inspired by Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. In one memorable moment, Ben woos Tamara by banging tunefully on some pots and pans with a couple of chopsticks balanced between his toes. "In the original book, it's a really swooshing, elegant display of swordsmanship," says Cooper, who is full of praise for director Stephen Frears (The Queen). "He created a real sense of freedom and ease in which you felt like you could do anything, you could try things and he'd tell you if it was too much. As a seduction scene, it's totally ludicrous but she went for it."
Cooper was initially unsure about the film's appeal but was won over by Frears' enthusiasm. "I didn't know what to make of it," he says. "It had these quirky caricature-like characters in it but after Stephen first spoke about it, you knew that he had a complete vision and the ability to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end."
Meanwhile, Cooper's other project, The Devil's Double, helmed by Kiwi director Lee Tamahori, couldn't have been more different. "I'm playing two characters, one of which is a psychotic, murdering, raping lunatic, who had no reins on him," he says. "There was no police control, he could do whatever he liked. Then later the same day I'd do the same scene opposite myself as this passive guy, who was forced through no fault of his own into becoming this person and then I'd play that character pretending to be that other person."
The Devil's Double premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival. When concerns were raised over the authenticity of Latif Yafia's story, Tamahori declared that the film was "not a history, not a biopic". Cooper believes it will rank among the Kiwi's best work.
"Lee was the only man who could do that job," says Cooper. "It was so rushed and such a fraught environment in which to film such difficult subject matter of such epic violent proportions. It takes him very much back to Once Were Warriors. I describe it as Scarface set in a lawless Baghdad in the 80s. It's such relevant and recent history that has had a great impact on all our lives but we don't know much about it."
Tamara Drewe is in cinemas this Thursday. The Devil's Double has no release date for New Zealand yet.
- Herald On Sunday / View
