Professional Cry Babies On The Graham Norton Show 😭

Now in terms of acting techniques, Matt, I don't know, you must remember those famous episodes of Friends where Joey would explain his acting techniques. Oh yeah. Joey acting classes and stuff. Smell the fart acting. Was that Joey or was that you? No, that was the writing staff. We had some great writers, but that was really funny. So talk us through Smell the Fart. Well, the Smell the Fart acting was when he was on Days of Our Lives. I can help you out with this. When you forget your line, you kind of go... and you continue and you remember it. I was captivated. It's very similar to... Yeah, you can do it more subtle too. And then we did another one where Joey was teaching an acting class for soap operas. Like if you have to cry, you cut a hole in your pocket and you take the tweezers and you just start pulling. Good idea. I've pinched myself a few times. The problem is I like it. If you have to be perplexed, you just think of some long division. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. But that wasn't improv like these guys do. I can't take any credit for that. It was all the writers. But you still got it. I mean, I had to sell it, but it was... So now that you know those things, do you find yourself ever when you're actually properly acting thinking... I just did Smell the Fire. No. Do you have tricks, Zach, when you're acting? No, I'm just good. What's the thing about your daughter wanting to make you cry? Oh, we were talking about what I do for a living and I was explaining how I try to make myself... I just make believe like she does when she plays. And she's like, can you make yourself laugh? And I said, yeah. She goes, can you make yourself cry? And I said, yeah. And she goes, do it. Honestly, you got to give me a story. So we made up a story. And I've done it before for people about sriracha. I don't want to go back into this. No, no. No. OK. What is sriracha? Because the sriracha plant is... They're shutting it down because the fumes kind of go into the community. And yeah. But I've done this. This is redundant. Oh, my God. It's really weird. It's weird. Everyone's like completely weirded out. They're like, I don't trust her at all. They've got to pay me to do something like that. That's amazing. Yeah. It's almost kind of creepy. It is, right? It's amazing. You should be an actress. I know. Yeah. You're pretty good. You can do that. Why don't you... Chris O'Dowd, you can make yourself cry as well. Yeah, do it. Cry. Cue. Now. Go. There's this sriracha plant. I guess... I don't know if I can make myself cry. I do that thing where... Definitely if you're in the midst of a scene, you can start... You know, if you're really in it, it's kind of fine. But then when you get to... As you guys know, on to take kind of 15 or 16, then you've got to start playing some tricks to make your subconscious cry or something. And you start thinking of sad things or... For me, it's like Battersea Dogs Home commercials. Or for some reason, I don't know why, because I'm a pacifist, I keep watching these videos on YouTube of, like, soldiers coming back from war and seeing their animals. Yes. Have you seen them? Yes. It's a killer. So when I... Like, sometimes when you're watching me on screen, that's what I'm thinking. I couldn't fit, but I just wanted to put it in my pocket. You can be your fan with your hazmat. In my helmet? Yes. You can see in them. Yeah. I also eat curry. Yeah. But isn't there a thing that... Because your... The mobility of your face is not something that our lovely Queen shares. No. So... LAUGHTER How hard is that for you? I'm suspended from the ceiling. LAUGHTER It's quite hard. Well, so if other characters are saying something that's sad, I naturally can't help myself. I go... And burst into tears, which is not what the Queen does. She is our rock. Not often. She is not often. And not caught on camera. Yeah. And so they film quite a lot from the back of my head on those days, and also they've come up with a trick. So they give me an earpiece and they play the shipping forecast to me. So I just have to try and tune in to the shipping forecast. And that, which is rude, because I'm not really listening to my fellow actors. I'm just trying not to listen to them. That's good. We'll remember that when we watch it. Yeah. I hope you can faintly hear it. Yeah. It's like it's down in the next room. Talking of crying, I have to say, you know, actors often talk about how doing difficult roles, you take it home with you and it's hard to take off. But because of the amount of crying in this film, just in terms of headaches and that kind of terrible tight head you get from crying, you must have had all of that. Drunk a lot of water. Yeah. Do you do a lot of crying? Quite a bit in this, yeah. And it's, you know, when there are three different setups and you're doing it eight times each. And, you know, those kind of extremes you hopefully only ever have once or twice at most, hopefully, in your life. I wish it on nobody. But, you know, we all go through it. And it's a very important part of why I was proud to make a small independent film about this subject. We don't talk about it much. We don't deal with it very well in life. And especially as men, to be able to talk about it and deal with it, which is what Max's work is about, what the film honors. And so I'm not going to sit here and bemoan the fact that I had to cry a few times because the real thing's much worse. But, yeah, you go through it a lot. Yeah. And also, is it easier, actors discuss, is it easier to cry if you're going to a very dark place like grief and losing someone? Or is it easier to cry in, like, a rom-com? Like, say, at the end of Notting Hill, squeezing out a tear with Hugh Grant. Did I? Yeah, you did. When? Why? During I'm Just a Girl. Oh, yeah. Did you? I did. No, you're absolutely right. Oh, that. Probably one of the most famous moments in the history of romantic comedies. Is it very hard to produce tears at a moment like that, where it's happy and light? No, I mean, I think when anything is authentic, obviously what Benedict is talking about is so deep and profound and dark and bleak, but if you, if I attach myself to it in a sweet, truthful way, I mean, that was just, I mean, it was a beautiful scene and beautiful words to say and obviously touching to me. Yeah. And that's how I portrayed it, but that's a very different place that you're in. You know tears have actual stress molecules in them? Is that right? Yes, they do. And coming out is you are releasing stress and pain, so that's why they say cry it out, because it really works. I think you're lovely. The idea about this film, that we don't talk about grief enough, it's a huge thing, and that we don't talk about death. Like, I know that sounds, of course, obviously morbid, but the word. Chat show, Colin. Chat show. That we don't talk about death. Chat show. Springtime for it. Yeah. We were talking about the video, Nothing Appears to You, and the crying in that video. I mean, because it's been copied since, that kind of style, but at the time it was really new, that locked off shot of just you and your face singing. Oh, look. Oh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. She's crying. So can you cry on demand? Well, no. You see, we had a whole other plan for the video. It was never planned that that was going to be the video. That was just going to be one, you know, take, and they were going to edit in a whole lot of other stuff, but just the song made me cry. I was thinking about something, and the song made me cry. The song would make you cry, and that's why people like it, I think. And could you cry on demand as an actress, or do you have to kind of...? Yeah. I'm not going to ask you to do it now. I say cry when I hear this song, I know I am. Aw! But do you have other songs that make you cry? No, just this one. LAUGHTER Very good answer. You would answer the same? I would say anything by Celine Dion makes me weep. LAUGHTER One really lovely scene where the family take you, as the grandmother, to the movies. Chitty Bang Bang? Yes. Had you seen Chitty Bang Bang? Not at all. LAUGHTER How did you miss this? I've not seen anything. How did you miss this? Well, I'll tell you how. LAUGHTER Because when I was little, I was taken to see Snow White, and there's that terrible queen, biting an apple and being very nasty to Snow White. Then I was taken to see Bambi. LAUGHTER There's the mother going up in a fire. And then I was taken to see Dumbo. And Dumbo, there's a scene, I've never forgotten, there's a scene with either Dumbo or his mother, somebody in a cage, not being able to get the other one, and they're both crying. I mean, you know, they set out to frighten and make you cry films. So you were done after those three. No, I'm not going to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, because I've obviously been in floods of tears at something. But the casting does seem perfect, the four of you as a kind of father-son. We think so. Sure. I assume the dysfunctional purveyor of tough love. LAUGHTER Whereas I am just sloppy, sentimental, brimming over with emotion. And is that you? Well, it's a sort of extreme version of me. I'm a little bit sentimental myself. You know. But apparently... I am too. But you're emotional? I am too. That's what connects us. They're always crying. I can cry at insurance ads. I found myself crying on a commercial airline flight watching The Parent Trap. LAUGHTER And my wife looked over at me and was like, what is going on? And I'm like, because, you know, you know what's going to happen, they're all going to get back together, but I just couldn't help it. Tears were just streaming down my face. Snot, everything. John, apparently you made yourself cry on a plane. I was watching Terms of Endearment for the first time in many years. A movie that I was in. Weird version of narcissism. The sound of your own performance. I'm so damn good! LAUGHTER So, Q, more crying. Do you find crying really easy? When they go, oh, she cries, and then all you get are parts where you cry. But you're so good at it. Because it's sad, isn't it? It's upsetting. LAUGHTER But no-one's really dead. The whole point is you've got to pretend they have died. No, I get the idea. LAUGHTER I get the basic concept. You're just good at pretending. Yeah. I would try... I think my emotions are quite close to the surface and I've got a bit of an overactive imagination. So if there's a real person lying on a slab and you've been told it's your niece, you know... LAUGHTER Crying watching herself. I'm so good! LAUGHTER By the way, crying, I take my hat off to you. I cannot... I would have to get a stuntman in to do crying. I quite liked doing, you know, falling over stairs and things, but crying, I would have to get someone in to do that. Do you cry watching One Born Every Minute, things like that? It's A Wonderful Life is about the only thing that'll get me. That'll get me. Yeah, yeah. But not much else. You can physically do it. Yeah, no. LAUGHTER No, the duck's removed or anything. I can still... Yeah. Now, we mentioned the two of you working together, you and Emma. Obviously, brother and sister in Love Actually, which I sort of... You forget the German brother and sister in that movie. And then lovers in Sense and Sensibility. CHEERING Beautiful. LAUGHTER He was so grumpy all the way. I was. So grumpy, he knew me, he'd known me for years, there was nothing there for him. He knew that I wasn't going to come up. LAUGHTER He couldn't have been less interested. I'm trying to make him feel good. But, in fact... I did let you down on that. I was grumpy, fat, bad... You were richer than God as well. ..and got arrested halfway through. Well, you were so famous, because you hadn't been famous. We'd done two films together where neither of us was famous, and then you were suddenly very famous, because of Four Weddings. What were those other two films? Impromptu, where you played Chopin in a terrible wig. Yes, yes, yes. And Remains of the Day, where you got killed in the war. Yes, yes, yes. Very sad. Very sad. LAUGHTER And, of course, famously directed by Ang Lee. Yes. Now, did you both feel the same about Ang Lee, or was one of you keener on Ang Lee than the other? Could that be a leading question? It sounds like it. I think we all ended up adoring him. We loved him, we adored him. But the opening, the first initial scenes were tricky, because he was a man of very few words, partly because his English wasn't great at that time, and also because he was this great sage from Taiwan, and he was like Grasshopper, and you waited for his words of wisdom. I remember doing quite an easy scene with Emma, walking down the hill underneath some trees. I thought we were being rather good. We went up to Ang Lee, who was sitting at the monitor afterwards, and we said, What do you think, Ang, what do you think? And he said, Very... Boring. LAUGHTER And it was crushing. He hadn't developed the thing of telling... You know, English actors, me in particular, I have to be told I'm marvellous all the time. I hadn't got any of that. So I remember him saying to Kate Winslet, You will get better. And he said to you, Could you do one like a bad actor? Yeah, and I said, I think you've seen that one. LAUGHTER But the scene that I think everyone remembers... Funnily enough, we called him Fang Lee, I won't do that. LAUGHTER Which wasn't hilarious at the time either. LAUGHTER But the scene that everyone loves is the proposal scene, where the whole way through it, you think you can't get together with Hugh because he's married. Yes. And then finally, you discover that he's not married. It's supposed to be funny, that was the point. I started crying. We got halfway through it and Hugh said, You're not going to do it like that, are you? Well, I don't like anyone being good in a scene with me. I hate that. I was supposed to be full of love for you and I felt nothing but undiluted loathing. LAUGHTER Did you really not know she was just going to bawl the whole way through it? No, because you've done that thing that really good actors do in rehearsal of sort of almost nothing, so they keep it, they save it. And then I get that bloody thing. No, because you kept going. Yeah, all the way through, that's the gag. But you are incredibly good at crying, Emma. I mean, there's that one, there's the remains of the day, that crying... A lot of crying, yeah. ..is sensational at the end of it. And, of course, Love Actually, everyone loves the Love Actually crying. Heart-wrenching. No, see, look? Everyone loves that crying. Do you have a shortcut to crying? No. Like a dead dog or whatever? No. LAUGHTER No, no, I don't. No. But are you upset when you're crying or are you just crying now? Yes, generally speaking, pretending to be somebody else. LAUGHTER And that person, whoever it is, is in some difficulty for some whatever reason, and that produces the emotion required to, um... But fascinating. Fascinating. I could no more do it than fly. LAUGHTER I have to have a woman come and blow Vicks Cynics into my eye. And even then, all you get is three yards of snot. LAUGHTER