Christopher Nolan: filmmaker, auteur… cheese connoisseur? Oppenheimer actor – and renowned director in his own right – Benny Safdie has revealed that Nolan gave him an un-brie-lievable piece of advice on how to affect his character’s voice in the WW2 biopic.
According to a feature in Variety, Nolan wanted Safdie to eat cheese to "age up" the voice of physicist Edward Teller in the 1960s-set scenes which saw Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) receive a scientific award from President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Away from the dietary advice, Safdie said he was impressed by the "openness" of Nolan’s work on set.
"You’d come into the room and Chris would say, ‘All right, let’s go.’ No camera. Everybody’s in makeup, and we’d just do the scene. And then it was like, ‘let’s figure out where the cameras go’," Safdie said.
"This is a huge movie and he’s still operating with that level of freedom. As an actor, it made me feel awesome."
Oppenheimer, the highest-grossing biopic of all time, took home over $950 million at the worldwide box office and became one half of 2023’s greatest meme: Barbenheimer.
Now, Oppenheimer has its sights set on Oscars glory. It may have missed out on the shortlist for Best Visual Effects, but there’s more than a gouda – sorry, good – chance that it takes home its fair share of awards come March.
For more from Nolan, be sure to dive into Total Film’s interview with the director after it was crowned the magazine’s film of the year. Then take a look ahead to 2024’s biggest movie release dates.
