第197期：艾米莉亚·克拉克：极致的平衡

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《艾米莉亚·克拉克：极致的平衡》 The Gorgeous Balance of Emilia Clarke Years ago, when I was a grad student, I worked at an ice cream shop in Oxford called George & Davis’. Students from Teddies, one of the local private schools just up the road, used to come in all the time. One of them was Emilia Clarke. She’s thirty now, one of the stars of Game of Thrones, the mother not just of dragons but of John Connor1) in the latest Terminator movie. It’s Sunday lunchtime. I’m going to interview Emilia. Her Family My taxi pulls up2) at a house in Hampstead, an inner London suburb. Emilia’s house is part of a beautiful Georgian “terrace3)”. She comes out of the house to meet me. Today she has to hang out with someone she’s never met, who is supposed to take her to Crystal Palace to play something called Game of Phones—a Thrones-flavored quiz and treasure hunt put on by a social-networking company. It’s aimed at people who want to make new friends in a strange new city. There’s the worry that she might get mobbed4), which is why she’s going in disguise. I’m supposed to provide the disguise. It’s possible that I’m supposed to be the protection, too. In England what you do, when you’re nervous about something, is you make a cup of tea. Emilia offers me a cup of tea. “How do you take it?” she says. “In my family we always argue about the order of pouring. I’m a milk-first kind of girl.” Emilia’s father was a working-class kid from Wolverhampton, a depressed industrial city near Birmingham. He was desperate to do anything that would get him out of Wolverhampton and became a roadie5), then began working as a sound designer for a number of big-budget musicals in London. Her mother went to secretarial college, and must have had driven by the bucketload, because she started her own business and ended up as a marketing VP6). Whether they meant to or not, Emilia’s parents were pulling their children up the class ladder of English life. “They didn’t want me to go to boarding school,” Emilia says. “I wanted to. My brother was already going [he’s two years older], and I fancied his friends.” “Did you end up going out with them?” “Of course.” There’s a kind of change of tone or pace that Emilia Clarke’s very good at. She uses it in her acting, too, and can go from sentimental or angry to comic at the drop of a hat7). It all shows up in her face if she wants it to—she’s got great mobility of expression. Accents play a part in these shifts. Her own accent is a nicely plainspoken kind of “well-brought-up,” but she dips into8) others, northern English or American for jokes or to make a point9). There are stories she’s told about being taken to see Show Boat (her dad was in the crew) when she was three and falling in love with the theater and deciding then and there that she would act. But she also liked attention, she says. She liked playing games. And she liked winning them. “And your father was in the business?” But she shakes her head. “He was crew, not cast; there’s a big divide … He wanted me to be very realistic about the whole thing, about how nobody makes any money. His realism turned out to be off the mark10). Sometimes surrealism comes closer to the truth. I brought along three disguises: a brown fedora; a glittery, vaguely ethnic shawl; and an Oklahoma City Thunder cap. She picks the cap and my wife’s old sunglasses,. I don’t know what she looks like. She looks great. Her Acting Experience On the cab ride over, Emilia explains that she wasn’t anyone’s “favorite” at the Drama Centre, where she studied, but she worked hard—“I was a keen bean11).” After graduating, she did a couple of episodes of Doctors (a long-running British daytime soap) and starred in some movie for a sci-fi channel that she still hasn’t seen. By this point she was living with friends and working three jobs, at a bar, at a call center, and—she didn’t tell me the third one. But she did say that a friend of hers walked in once and saw her face, the face you make when you don’t know people are watching. It had a scowl12) on it. She’d given herself a year to make it in acting and she hadn’t. “And then my agent calls me up and says, ‘Did you ever go up for Game of Thrones?’” The original pilot13) for the show had already been shot but nobody was happy with it, so HBO was digging back into the casting pile to try and save it. This is where Emilia came in. “My agent told the casting director, ‘I know that the breakdown14) for this character is tall and willowy and blonde. I know she’s short and round and brown, but I’d like you to see her.’” “I had two scenes which told me nothing and not very much time in which to read all those [George R. R. Martin15]] books,” says Emilia. “So I did what every good actor does and Wikipedia’d the living crap out of it16).” “Do you have a sense now of what they wanted?” “Yeah … someone who could grow before your eyes in one season, who could gather strength and show vulnerability …” 几年前，那时我还在读研，在牛津一家叫“乔治和大卫”的冰淇淋店工作。路那头的私立学校泰迪斯的学生常常光顾我们店。艾米莉亚·克拉克就是其中之一。 她如今30岁了，是参演《权力的游戏》的众多明星之一，在其中饰演龙母，还在最新的《终结者》里饰演约翰•康纳的母亲。现在是周日的午饭时间，我正准备去采访艾米莉亚。 她的家庭在位于伦敦近郊的汉普斯特德的一栋房子前，我的出租车停了下来。艾米莉亚的房子属于乔治时期那种漂亮的“排屋”。她出门来迎接我。 她之前没有见过我，但今天却不得不和我一起出去。我要带她去水晶宫玩一种叫做“手机的游戏”的游戏。那是一个带有《权力的游戏》特色的问答和寻宝游戏，由一家社交网络公司安排，其目标人群是那些初到一个新奇的城市想要交友的人。 由于担心受到围堵，她准备乔装一下。我就是来给她乔装打扮的，有可能我还要充当保镖。 在英国，人们觉得紧张时，会做的事通常是泡杯茶。艾米莉亚递给我泡了一杯茶。“你是怎么泡茶的?”她说道，“我们家经常为冲泡的顺序争论不休，我是先泡牛奶的那类。” 艾米莉亚的父亲出身工人阶级，来自伍尔弗汉普顿，那是一个萧条的工业城市，在伯明翰附近。他想尽一切办法要逃离那个城市，于是做了巡回乐队设备管理员，然后开始成为伦敦许多大制作的音乐剧的音响设计师。她的母亲上过秘书学校。她当初一定是动力满满，因为她自己创业，最终成为营销副总。不管有意还是无意，在英国的社会阶梯上，艾米莉亚的父母还是把自己的孩子们往上推了一把。 “他们不想让我去寄宿学校，但我想去。我哥(比艾米莉亚大两岁)已经去了，我喜欢他的朋友。”她说。 “你最后跟他们在一块了吗？” “当然。” 语调或语速切换是艾米莉亚·克拉克非常擅长的，她在表演中也经常用到，能够从伤感或生气立马转到滑稽幽默。只要她想，这些都可以展现在她脸上——她的表情很灵动。口音在这些切换中也发挥作用，她的口音坦率地说是受过良好教育的口音，但她也会尝试其他口音，比如开玩笑或表明观点时用英国北部口音或美音。 她讲了一些自己三岁时被带去看《演出船》(她爸爸是工作人员)的故事。她爱上了戏剧，当时就决定将来要演戏。但她说她也喜欢受到关注，喜欢玩游戏，喜欢在游戏中获胜。 “你爸爸也是干这一行的吗？”她摇了摇头。 “他是工作人员，不是演员：两者区别很大……他想让我非常现实地认识整件事，认识到没有人赚到一毛钱。 结果，他的现实主义完全是杞人忧天。有时超现实和事实更接近。 我拿来三个乔装道具：一顶褐色软呢帽、一条有点少数民族风的华丽披巾和一顶俄克拉荷马雷霆队棒球帽。她捡了棒球帽和我妻子的旧墨镜。我不知道她这样看起来怎样，但感觉还不错。 演艺经历 在我们坐上出租车，前往水晶宫的路上，艾米莉亚跟我说在戏剧中心学习时，谁都不特别“喜欢”她，但是她很努力——“我是个急性子。”毕业之后，她出演过几集《医生》(一个很长的英国日间肥皂剧)，演过一些在科幻频道播放的电影，这些电影她至今没有看过。那时她和一些朋友住一起，同时做三份工作，在酒吧做一份，在客户服务中心做一份，她没有告诉我第三份工作是什么。但她告诉我有一次她的一个朋友走进来看见她做鬼脸，就是你不知道别人在看你时做的鬼脸——满面愁容。她曾给自己一年时间，想在演艺事业上取得成功，但她没做到。 “后来我的经纪人给我打电话，问我：‘你去《权力的游戏》试镜了吗?’”这部剧已经拍了最初的试播部分，但是大家都不满意。所以HBO打算重新考量演员阵容，试图拯救这个剧。艾米莉亚就是在这个时候进入剧组的。“我的经纪人告诉选角导演：‘我知道她不符合这个身材高挑、满头金发的角色，她身型矮胖，头发褐色，但是我希望你可以见一下她。’” “我拍了两个场景，拍之前什么都没告诉我，而且我也没有时间读乔治·马丁的整套书，”艾米莉亚说，“所以我做了每个好演员都会做的事，到维基百科上把这些书查了个遍。” “你现在明白他们那时想要什么样的人了么？“ “明白了……一个可以在一季之内在观众眼前成长的人，一个可以养精蓄锐同时展现自己脆弱的人……” 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2017年3月号