Q: So, you're eating a cookie? There are no restrictions, no Harvard diet or anything?

Rose: Not for me. Not today. I'm having a bit of a sugar low so I couldn't resist pigging out already.

Q: Tell us about your experience working on this film.

Rose: Um, It was wild. The rehearsal process was unlike anything I've ever done before. It was so um. It was like a boot camp adventure camp. I'm sure the others have said, there were lectures and then film screenings, and them the , we went scuba diving, we went out to British Airways to Petro and we flew 747 simulated flight cockpit. I've never had that before. It was such an ensemble too, I don't think I've ever done a film with such about a group of people. I loved that because everyone was really nice and no kind of egos and it was a very democratic kind of set. I loved it. Working with Danny too has always been a big fantasy of mine in the wish list of directors that I've wanted to meet or whatever so to me it was like one of the best experiences I've had as an actress.

Q: When did you discover him? Was it Trainspotting?

Rose: Um, Shallow Grave. Even before that, I loved Shallow Grave. Then obviously Trainspotting. I loved Life Less Ordinary, I loved The Beach, I was really entertained with that. Say no more! I'm a bit of a groupie.

Q: So was there anything unexpected with him that, since you've been a longtime fan, you did not know?

Rose: Yeah, I guess first of all I thought he was Scottish because of Trainspotting but he's not Scottish, he's from Manchester, he's English. He's so endlessly enthusiastic, he's just contagious. His energy, he's like a wizard or something, he's sort of mad. When you see his films he's like that. Like when you go into a Danny Boyle film, it's distinctive. He's not middle of the road. He does his thing and he goes for it and I admire anyone who does that. I just think, cause you go out on a limb and you take a chance, and you don't just run of the mill please people and you know. You really give your vision of things. To be part of that world was so thrilling. To say Yeah! I haven't actually seen the film. I've seen bits and pieces but I keep missing the screenings. It's dreadful but I'm dying to see it, dying to see what he's done with it especially you know it's like Danny Boyle in space. How much more exciting can you get?

Q: You have Michelle Yeaoh in this movie with you, but otherwise it's all men.

Rose: Yeah! All of these guys, we've had a few of these questions. If was fine. Michelle's wonderful. It's such a shame he didn't have her here today. She's such a gracious person and she's just a very inspirational lady. I found it fine. It was good for me. I'm not particularly, I'm more of a girls girl too, I grew up with three sisters, I have girlfriends, I'm not surrounded by guys all the time by any means. In some ways it was kind of good and so, OK you know. Learn a little something, having alpha males around, but no, it was a lot of fun.

Q: And your own character, what did Danny tell you about it?

Rose: He was great. He kind of… Yeah, I think there was something like Cassie's was the more emotional character in the film obviously, I mean she's kind of the moral conscience of the story. You know the emotional barometer for the audience in a lot of ways so we would have dialogue about that often about how she would be feeling. I don't know how much he would talk about that with other people cause I think a lot of the other characters were pretty remote in a lot of ways and Cassie was… I guess she wore her heart on her sleeve a bit more so we had a lot of dialogue about that and he would be all over it. He's very into the narrative of the story, the human being in connection between the people. I never felt drowned out by the science fiction genre. It wasn't just like Ah, big explosions, Scream, scream, it wasn't like that at all. It was always very much about the story and the demise of these people and how their mind kind of starts deteriorating as they get closer and closer to life/ the sun, we're actually getting closer and closer at death. So it's this huge kind of philosophical concepts that we were dealing with so that was unlike any other film that I've done in that sense and especially talking about it today, it's like, whoa! All the ideas that is brings up in people.

Q: Did you have any sort of influence on your character? For instance, while you were shooting could you say, I'd like to take this in a different direction?

Rose: Yeah, definitely. There were times when, I guess I didn't want her to become too weepy or anything like that, and I still wanted her to be as assertive and as much of a decision maker as any of the other men in there. Do you know what I mean? I didn't want her to just collapse into a hysterical mess. She could have kind of gone that way and I didn't want that at all. I wanted her to be as stoic as the rest of them in a way. That interests me more and it makes it a lot more interesting to make complex idiosyncratic, complicated kind of character.

Q: So you didn't want her to be a cliché, obviously.

Rose: Yeah, exactly. I didn't want that at all. Exactly, that didn't interest me at all, and didn't interest him either so I definitely tried to steer away from that. Cassie is a lot brighter than I am as a person and a lot smarter than I would ever, ever, be. I mean these people who are in that world of science and astronauts and all that stuff, they're just the brightest people you'd ever meet. We had a group of quantum physists come to the set one day and they're just on another planet. Literally, the things that, the concepts they're dealing with… the big bang, things like that. "What did you do today? Oh, I was re-creating the Big Bang." "What did you do? Oh, I had a coffee and…" so it was very kind of…

Q: Did you like science fiction or horror when you were a teenager?

Rose: No, I wasn't really a fan of science fiction, so for me it was very educational in terms of the genre, cause I watched a lot of sci-fi films, 2001, all the Alien trilogy, things like that so I was um, Event Horizon, yeah, so I was really educated in a lot of that and grew to appreciate it.

Q: Which kind of movies did you prefer, as a teenager?

Rose: Well, I guess I loved horror films. I loved A Nightmare on Elm Street. I used to make my mom go and rent it for me cause I was too young. I'd be twelve or thirteen and you had to be eighteen in Australia. My mom would go and get like Nightmare on Elm Street part 1 and 2 for me and I'd sit there under the blanket and scare myself stupid. I loved that, I used to totally get off on horror, yeah. Then probably like Pretty Woman, you know. Freddie Kruger and then second choice, Julia Roberts.

Q: Now you're working, or did you already wrap the Twenty Eight Weeks Later, sort of a horror?

Rose: Well it was a bit of a childhood fantasy doing Twenty Eight Weeks Later, cause that was obviously dealing with the infected, not vampires but um, Yeah, it was, I loved it! It was awesome just running and screaming and jumping and… It was still scary. I was sort of scared on set. A lot of my fear is not fake. I was like, "Oh my god, there's a dude running at me with his head cut off!" or whatever it is, you know. I can easily terrify myself.

Q: What was it like working with Danny on that?

Rose: He produced it, he didn't direct it. I definitely got picked because I just worked with [him] on the other film definitely, but Juan called us to do another director and we also met and everything like that and he was lovely. I'm about to go there and do re-shoots actually, tonight.

Q: What are you shooting right now?

Rose: Twenty Eight Weeks Later.

Q: I know, but I mean what specific re-shoots are you doing?

Rose: I don't know yet. I'm not sure what they're um, I know I've got to bunch of ADR and then I'm not sure what the scene is yet. I think it's something between me and this wonderful young actress called Imogen who's in it and I think it's between us.

Q: Where will you be?

Rose: London.

Q: Do you prefer London and Europe?

Rose: I guess, I lived in LA for a while about a year or so and I've always really loved London, loved Europe, and I've got family there so I decided to go there just for a different experience and I've been there for two years. Yeah, I guess I feel more myself in London whereas here I've always felt slightly not quite myself, so… Since I've been to London I've done like three great films. I've done Marie Antoinette, Twenty Eight Weeks and Sunshine. So I've had more luck over there essentially than I did here.

Q: What did you think of the response and the critics about Marie Antoinette?

Rose: It was very divided wasn't it? Yeah, Ken really stole the thunder of the whole film in a way. It was a bit of a shame. I thought the film was really beautiful. I thought it was kind of poetic and gentle and it wasn't… I don't know I think everyone tried to take it too seriously, or is it that it just wasn't about that. That wasn't what she was trying to do, and she kind of captured the vacuousness of it, of the court and what it was like, and anyway. I really so I really enjoyed it and I thought it was visual feast. It was so beautiful Milena Canonero, she wanted this costume and she's obviously a genius. It was really divided. I mean you always hope that you're project is going to be a winner. I think that's innately in everybody. You know, you want it to succeed for everyone. You want it to touch people and all that stuff. Yeah, it was one of those ones that was kind of mixed.

Q: But actually, don't you think it's better that people talk about it in a passionate way, rather than say it's "Ok"?.

Rose: Yeah, I agree, it's good to have a kind of diversion. I know what you mean, you'd rather people kind of hate it than just be like mediocre "Oh, it's rather…" It's better to have more of a real reaction than just like a middle of the road kind of thing.

Q: And the experience of working with Sofia Coppola?

Rose: It was lovely. We got to improvise a lot which was really fun so we'd sort of get to setting the scene, we'd have a couple of lines of dialogue and she'd say "Ok, just feel free, whatever you want to say or do…" and the first few days I was like "oh my god", but Kirsten was wonderful she's very kind of easy person. She would just start to improvise and so it was kind of like an acting class, it was wonderful! My character was a lot of fun, she was so flamboyant, irreverent, kind of piss-headed so it was really good. I just got to be kind of trashy all the time. Sofia is lovely, she's very gentle, kind of restrained, very polite, and really good with actors, very sweet. It's interesting to see movies directed by women.

Q: The Dead Girl [just released] is directed by a woman.

Rose: Oh, The Dead Girl! Have you seen it?

Q: Yeah.

Rose: Oh, it's beautiful isn't it? I loved that film.

Q: It was incredible, wonderful!

Rose: Really moving. Oh, I agree, Karen's a smart lady, she's really one to watch, Karen Moncrieff, she's excellent.

Q: And in this film, Sunshine, the topic is like controversial. Here we have god, energy and life and death situations.

Rose: Yeah, totally sort of diverse subjects, yeah. I liked the story.

Q: What do you make of the title, Sunshine?

Rose: I guess I'm not an innately scientific person. I've always more English literature at school or drama or music or whatever it was. I was never very good at science or math, or using the right side of the brain I guess it is. I found with this film that I really was educated on science and I just realized how it is in a way how beautiful as a religion. So mystical so wonderful and offers so many questions still and answers but it's just constantly studying the beauty and the mystery of the universe. I think that's kind of a religious quest in a way, in it's own way, to me. The way they describe things and the beauty of it and the language within science is actually a really kind of mystical wonderful sort of subject. So it was quite an eye-opener for somebody who felt that science was dry and removed and cold and counterintuitive, it's not like that at all. It's actually all around us, you know what I mean? So for me, I found it really quite a blessing, very beautiful.

Q: Did you act in front of a blue or green screen, mostly?

Rose: No, I didn't really, It was always with the other actors and I was quite lucky it wasn't like we were stuck in a weird room looking at a wall. All the sets were really around us and was quite, I didn't feel like I had to conjure up huge images in my head at all. I think I had one scene like that, one out of five months, four months work, however long we did it for so… I didn't find that… I did a little thing on Star Wars years ago, when I was like twenty or something and that was a lot of green screen stuff. I was on it for like two weeks or something so that was… I remember thinking that was kind of a challenge where as Sunshine, there was the whole sets were there. We didn't have to make too much of a stretch really. Of course, the context of being in the middle of the universe, that was the stretch rather than the sets around us.

Q: Even though there was no love scene in the movie between Capa and Cassie, do you think they had some kind of a special relationship different than the others?

Rose: There was a love scene, in the first few drafts. By the time… It's kind of a hangover from that. I think it's really important to have that. I think as an audience member, you want to hang on to any sort of intimate sort of thing between characters and I think it's totally true to the situation as well that some people you're going to be closer to than others and they took the love scene out because they felt it belonged to another film. I totally understand that I was like "Yeah, I can see…" but there was one for a while, and um, I'm sure that if you really were in that situation people would be shagging all the time! Hello! It's like college or something or whatever, university, so… But yeah, there is a hint of that. They do have a closer friendship than the others.

Q: They're in space and everything is different there, so…

Rose: Yeah, different rules!

Q: Since you're working in London, can you talk a little bit about working in Los Angeles, too?

Rose: I guess people… I think you ignore LA at your peril as an actor, I think it's definitely the Mecca of filmmaking. There are possibilities here that are kind of second to none for an English speaking actor you know, if your lucky enough to do that it's a very… You can't ignore the place but it's um… I know the biggest actors in the world live all over the place, so I don't necessarily think you have to base yourself out of LA, no. If we listed them all here they'd probably all live all over the world like Russell Crowe is in Sydney and or wherever they all live, it's like, Yeah at a certain stage, not that I'm saying I'm there but it's kind of irrelevant where you are. For me now, I can't really base myself out of Australia, I have to be in Europe or America to be available to audition and all that stuff. Six is fine cause more than anything I just think it's good be in a different part of the world for your growth for yourself as a person in life you know. It's wonderful to be privileged and to live and work in London like a lot of Australians do you know. But for me, yeah, it's more about opening your mind to the world rather than just focusing on a career.

Q: What is your preference to working with Asian actors?

Rose: I did a film with a Japanese actor when I was nineteen and a Taiwanese director. Her name was Clara Law and the film was called Goddess of Nineteen Sixty Seven. The Japanese actor was called Rikiya Kurokawa. Hiro was wonderful, he's wonderful. He worked really hard too. He had to do a lot of stuff with the accent and with his English and everything. He's lovely, he's a lot of fun. He's really funny, bright, bright sense of humor. I saw him recently just in London before he started Rush Hour. We had dinner with Danny and Benedict and I. He's gorgeous, yeah, he's lovely.

Q: Was it a passion for you to be an actress? Did you desire to be an actress when you were in school?

Rose: I started doing classes when I was eight years old and I just loved it immediately, yeah. It was just fun, like playing games. Then I got my first job when I was thirteen and that was when I just got the bug. I was just like, "Yeah, I can do this!" I was then lucky enough since then to be able to work pretty regularly. I mean I finished school when I was eighteen. I was very young, I mean technically I've been doing it since.

Q: Are you competitive? There is such strong competition in LA.

Rose: Yeah, oh yeah.

Q: To live in London, I think it is more quiet.

Rose: Takes the pressure off of you, yeah. Yeah, I definitely think I'm competitive. I think you have to be. I think all humans are innately competitive, but I think you have to have a healthy amount of competition in you other wise your not going to fly. You might survive, so That's what you sign up for in a way. That's part of the whole deal. There's hundreds of talented, young, pretty women out there. It's luck of the draw really.

Q: You mentioned having to audition from time to time. For this film, were you chosen, did you audition, do you know if they were considering anyone else?

Rose: I auditioned in LA for Donna Isaacson initially and then I auditioned in London for Danny and Alex Garland the writer and Andrew Macdonald. Then I got cast really last minute. They were going to go another way and then it fell through with that actress, and I came in so I was very lucky.

Q: Are you allowed to say who that was?

Rose: Maggie Gyllenhaal. I'll have to send her some champagne.

Q: Now you said you haven't seen the movie [Sunshine] yet. Do you watch your own movies. Are you able to separate yourself from the picture and just kind of get lost in the movie?

Rose: Not the first time I see it. I'm always in shock. I don't particularly like watching myself, I find it kind of depressing. I get pretty down. It takes me a few days to recover. It's only down the track, like years later, now I can watch a bit of Troy and Ill be ok, now, like five years later. It takes me a little while. I actually think it's better if I don't watch it because I get in a real funk. I just think I'm terrible and I'm ugly.

Q: A lot of actors say that.

Rose: Yeah, do they? It would better to be more constructive so I could learn something from it but I just run and bury my head in the sand. I hate it, it's terrible.

Q: Do you think that movies can change other people?

Rose: Yeah, definitely I think a movie can inspire change, absolutely. Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it's a small change or a big change but you know there's novels I've read or a scene in a film that I've seen where I definitely inspired something and made a change or addressed an issue in my life or done something cliché like make a phone call. Absolutely, that's the power of art you would call it because it inspires movement within yourself. You know it's only really powerful when it reflects on you and you can relate to it or are moved by it in some way.

[end]

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting