As critics have already noted, there are a lot of close-ups in Les Misérables. A lot. (Our own David Edelstein put it thusly: “When an actor begins to sing, the camera rushes in and fastens on the performer’s face … “) And so at last night’s Les Miz premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater, we surveyed the cast to find out: What was it like to get bum-rushed by cameras? Was it just plain awkward? And who hit their head? Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:
Amanda Seyfried (Cosette)
“I hit the camera a million times, I’m sure. There was one time when Hugh [Jackman] had a laughing fit on my close-up … it ruined my moment!â€
Daniel Huttlestone (Gavroche)
“I got hit in the eye with a mic once.â€
Eddie Redmayne (Marius)
“It was continually awkward. But Tom made us very aware of that early on. In rehearsal, we sat across the table and he’d go, ‘Right, let’s rehearse it … Action!’ And then he’d come right up to about here [demonstrates by putting his hand within an inch of Vulture’s face]. So we knew what was in store.â€
Samantha Barks (Éponine)
“Because Tom Hooper would actually dress the cameramen [in costume] as students, they’d all run around, and one time, I was like, ‘Bah! There’s a camera right there and I didn’t know!’â€
Aaron Tveit (Enjolras)
“At first it was something we had to get used to. It was a lot of handheld cameras, so it was a camera and a cameraman — some dude dressed in period costume with a camera in my face. But then, just like anything else, you just have to forget the camera is there, so eventually, we did.â€