Spotlight Saturday

Joe Anderson

Born 26th March, 1982, this English actor is probably best know for his portrayal of Max Carrigan in Across The Universe.

His first major role was in the odd but interesting film Silence Becomes You with Alicia Silverstone and Sienna Guillory, This is a very pretty, if overly attempting mystical story of two sisters brought up in almost isolatation, lost in the world their father created for them and the stranger they bring into the house with a clear purpose that gets muddled along the way. Then came playing Jane Austen's brother in Becoming Jane and Peter Hook in the wonderful film Control, which is about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Anton Corbjin's film is wonderful, sad, intense and haunting with stand out performances by Sam Reily and Samantha Morton and the director's history as a still photographer results in some the most beautiful representations of Macclesfield. The black and white format adds the bleakness of the lives being lead and at the same time captures perfectly the grace and beauty which makes their music so enduring.
Across The Universe by contrast is a colour explosion and Joe portrays the enthusiam and chaos of Max who is part of the generation who embraced the freedom and insanity of the 60's while showing the price paid by those who were enlisted to the Vietnam War. It is Max and Jude's relationship that stands out in the film to me, the friendship that springs naturally and means so much to both of them. Since then Mr Anderson (yes, I had to say it) has done horror movies, The Ruins and The Crazies, the Hilary Swank bio-pic Amelia, a heist move High Life, an action-comedy Rogues Gallery with Ellen Barkin, Zach Galifianakis and Emilie de Ravin and a road movie called The 27 club about a rock star whose best friend and lead singer has just committed suicide and who goes on a road trip with a checkout boy and a fan in order to reach the funeral. He is currently filming Flutter with Billy Zane and Laura Fraser.

Also possibly working on being a director? :-

JA - I’m a big fan (of the horror genre), but I’ve also of late been getting really annoyed with the whole genre – why am I not being disturbed? I’m being disgusted a lot of the time, and I cringe a little bit, but I’m not really deeply being affected by what I’m seeing. So consequently I’ve set out to write my own psychologically disturbing thing for myself. It’s sort of a pet project that spawned out of doing research for things like The Crazies – just watching horror movie after horror movie, and asking “how I can change this and get back to where we were?” It’s such a great medium for a first time director as well because you can have a human aspect to it and use the cinematic medium to tell a story, but you have to get it right or there won’t be any jumps or anything. Also, it’s very easy to shoot something on a video camera and do a sort of Paranormal Activity type movie, but I think the genre deserves a little more respect than that to a certain degree. It’s an exciting challenge.

quote from here, an excellent recent interview with Joe by Michael Holder









1. http://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Anderson/+images/2339433
2. http://www.brandimills.com/blog/tag/the-big-lebowski/
5. http://www.screenrush.co.uk/film/galerievignette_gen_cfilm=136101&cmediafichier=19178791.html
The rest are of unknown source. If you know or can claim them then please let me know so I can credit you.