Can two world-famous actors and auteur Simon Stone bring 19th-century Norway screaming into the modern world? They talk mean directors, bathtub revelations and reinventing Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea
… Lincoln wasn’t completely sold on Ibsen’s play. He laughs that he was “ambushed” into the role of Edward – it was only halfway through their initial meeting that he even realised he was being offered a gig. “There’s a thriller aspect to the original that I loved. But I honestly think it’s oppressive. When someone mentions Ibsen to me, I don’t think of gut-belly laughs. But Simon’s got a track record.”….
Lincoln, who is 51, has developed his own important work-life rules. One is to do his research on the directors he works with: “The question you always ask is, ‘Are they a shouter?’ Life is too short to work with people that are going to be oppressive or unkind.”
He talked to his friend Piper, whose work in Yerma he had admired, before committing to working with Stone. “She said, ‘It’ll be probably one of the most intense and frightening experiences, but you have to do it.’ It changed the way she worked for ever, and it gave her legitimacy that she felt she didn’t have before.”
Lincoln is thrilled with the role that Stone has written for him; he has also, he says, noticed that he has entered the time of life where he is asked to play cuckolds. “But even when you were young, you were the other man,” says Stone. “Look at Love Actually!” Lincoln nods: when he made a film about Apollo 11 he played Michael Collins, the only astronaut on that mission who didn’t get to land on the moon. “Maybe I’m just the guy that doesn’t get the golden ticket.”….