♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." shakespeare's famous tragedy "macbeth." "variety" said "it deserves to be viewed as near-definitive." here's the trailer for that definition.

>> macbeth shall be king. >> i feel now the future. hale now the king that shall be. >> my dearest love, duncan comes here tonight. all hail macbeth, who shall be king thereafter. ♪ >> but a walking shadow. >> hail macbeth.

charlie: great to have you back. marion: thanks for having me. charlie: here's what you said -- i always knew that one day i would play lady macbeth, but i thought it would be onstage in french. it is amazing to play her in shakespeare's english. it was unexpected, but it felt right. i have to do it. marion: i was doing another movie, very dramatic role, and it was the movie "two days, one night." i have decided not to work after that movie, because i had done really heavy dramatic roles, and this opportunity, i could not

miss. i mean, as i said, as you said i said, i always knew that i would be -- charlie: you thought it would be onstage. marion: because theater, shakespeare, i mean, because i am french, i would not have expected to have this kind of offer. i talked to the director. it was his second movie, so i thought, this man must be mad. first of all, directing death as a -- macbeth as a second movie is really risky, and asking a french actress to play lady macbeth, i was very curious to talk to him and to discover what kind of person he was. he talked about his vision of the play, how he wanted to adapt

the play, and how he wanted to find the humanity in this character. i thought his vision was very unique, and was very different from the amazing movies or, of course, versions on stage that i had seen. so, that was a gift. for me. charlie: he sounds like a man who knows who he is, and what he wants to do. marion: justin? yeah, he's -- i don't know if an artist is ever confident in his own talent, but what i felt when i talked to him for the first time, was that he was a true artist who needed to express himself this way, with a camera and actors and a strong story. that's really what i'm looking for today, to have this

relationship with a director who will want to go as far as we all can to tell a story. he, i don't know if he is confident, but for sure he has a talent that makes him one of the best directors i have worked with. i just did another movie with him, "assassin's creed," with michael fassbender. he puts the same passion. it is a totally different movie. charlie: do you and michael prepare for your roles the same way? marion: well, i never prepare the same way. charlie: the role is different in terms of how you prepare. marion: i don't have, like, a specific method. it's going to come out, how i will prepare and how i will find the character will come when i start preparing.

i just, like, let it happen, and the way i'm going to prepare for the movie creates itself as i start working on a character. it depends also on the director, how he or she wants to work. and the character, the story. it's always different. charlie: is part of the preparation looking at other actors who played lady macbeth? marion: i saw the movies a few years ago, and i did not want to see them again, because it was so good. what was in my mind, one thing that was really, really hard for me to get rid of was -- i did this movie a few years ago called "nine," by rob marshall,

where i worked with judy dench. at the time, i had worked, i watched her version of lady macbeth, and it is perfection. it is -- what can you -- i mean, she ruined it for all the actresses after her. i say that as a joke, because of course, i, i really thought that it was impossible to -- not that i wanted to -- well, i wanted to reach something, some place that would be as good as, i don't know what -- not her, because it was impossible -- to find my way, my lady macbeth. i really had to get rid of her perfect interpretation of lady macbeth. and then i thought, you know, it's a different movie. with judi dench, it was not the movie, but some pieces of the

play that i had seen on youtube. but this is a different version, justin's version, and i need to put myself in his hands and i will find my lady macbeth. it was hard to, like, runaway from this perfection that judi dench reached with lady macbeth. charlie: let's take a look at a scene. this is lady macbeth, urging her husband to play the perfect host during king duncan's visit. >> bear welcom in your eye, your hand, your tongue. look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent. you shall put this business into my dispatch.

for all the nights and days to come shall give you sovereign sway and masterdom. charlie: can you define who your lady macbeth is, as you saw her, under justin's guidance? marion: he said something at the beginning of the movie, and interpretation of one sentence that she says in the play. she says that she breast-fed a baby one, so, so we started from this point, they had a baby once. so i really created her with this pain and fear, um, and i

think that when you don't face your fears and pain and try to escape them, the way she tries to escape them is with violence and power, and the illusion that power will allow her and them to have a new life, to have a new beginning. so there is a humanity in this lady macbeth, a humanity. charlie: and that's what you were looking for? marion: that's what justin was looking for, and we totally agreed. that was his vision, so strong and so beautiful, that we just jumped into this vision. charlie: listen to this. this is from youtube, you as well. you said, it was a hell of a thing to take on. i have been through very deep

experiences with many dramatic roles, but this was the darkest of them all. all the roles i experienced have some light in them, but here there was no light. lady macbeth is a piece of work. marion: she is a piece of work. it is really the darkest darkness i have ever experienced. there's no hope. there's no light in her. they might have been, but it's gone because she took this road of violence, and the illusion of power that is, in my opinion, if you do not face your fears and pain, there's nothing good that can come out of it. it leads you to madness, and that's where she's going to go. ♪

♪ charlie: take a look at this. this is a ghost of a man macbeth murdered, and lady macbeth tries to cover for her husband, who is having what appears to be a breakdown.

>> sit, where the friends. pray you keep seat. you will offend him and extend his passion. feed, and regard him not. >> are you man? charlie: how much difference does it make to have an actor where you have the same kind of chemistry? marion: well, i think you cannot, if you don't have chemistry, there's something that you will miss. charlie: there will be something lacking. marion: totally. and, yeah, there was something -- it's funny, because when i met michael for the first time, he made me think of a member of my family, of my brother. he has the same, i don't know

how to explain, but, i mean, my brothers and him could be brothers. so there was something you cannot explain. his dedication to this, to cinema, is so beautiful. i was very touched and very inspired by it. again, to be able to attend his preparation for a month and a half during the rehearsal period -- charlie: a month and a half of preparation. marion: and we really rehearsed like a theater project. charlie: you also had a shakespeare in expert nearby, a dialect coach. marion: neil swain. the first thing we did was to study the script with the play, because we needed to understand all the subtleties of shakespeare's writing to make our choices.

because there are different meanings, different interpretations that can be given from only, like, one sentence. and sometimes you don't see it right away, all the different levels of meaning. and that was very interesting for us, when we would actually play and rehearse like a play, to understand all the meanings of what shakespeare wanted to say. that was really, really interesting, and so rich. charlie: this is a scene in which she is wracked with guilt and imagines she has the blood of king duncan and other victims on her hands. here it is -- >> what need we fear? when none can call our power to account?

yet who would have thought the old man would have so much blood in him? his wife, where is she now? what, will these hands now be clean? no more of that, my lord. no more of that. charlie: you did joan of arc here in new york. what kind of characters are there that you have not played, that you want to play, like joan of arc, like lady macbeth, like people who we all know, or have some experience with who are the

least bit interested in theater or literature? marion: i would honestly love to do a little comedy. charlie: a little comedy? marion: yeah, because i need to explore. i have explored a lot of dramatic roles, and i think lady macbeth must be like the ultimate germanic role. dramatic role. and i think it's time for me to explore something different, and i love to take risks. i think the risk i could take right now is comedy, because i don't -- i mean, i did very few comedies, and i would have a lot of work. it would be totally different work. but yeah, that's pretty much -- charlie: it is harder than drama. a lot of it is timing.

marion: honestly, i need to confront myself to this -- because drama is a flow that, if you get the right emotion, everything comes together. comedy is, as you said, the timing, the rhythm of it is really something. charlie: the music of comedy. marion: yeah. i don't know if i have it. i would have to -- charlie: here's what's interesting about you. you mentioned risk. there's a sense that you like the challenge. marion: yeah, i think that i do. charlie: yet at the same time, you said to me in previous programs, even here tonight, that no actor has complete confidence, you know. marion: i don't think so. charlie: that, you said artists, rather than actor, no artist has complete confidence in their

work, because it is such a personal thing for an artist. it is interpretation. it's a unique vision you have to have. marion: yes, yes, absolutely. but i think it's interesting to discover new territories, and that's what i love to do. that's what i have been very lucky to experience with a lot of movies that were different, and a lot of genres that were very different from one another. and i think that comedy is, yeah, is again a different way to explore the human soul. and i would actually love to -- i think, sometimes i think that i should take acting class, and

experience comedy. because when i was a student, i barely experienced comedy. i remember once i did a comedy, and people were laughing and the audience. that was really amazing. i had a hard time not to laugh myself, which tells me that i have a long way to comedies. but i might do this. i might experience, and allow myself to be very bad in a drama school, rather than on screen. [laughter] charlie: i suspect lots of people want to do comedy. may i talk about your real life? you are a parisian. paris has had a terrible tragedy. tell me how it is recovering, and where is the french attitude to her three weeks after?

having already gone through it once before with charlie hebdo. marion: what i love about french people is that we are, we think about what happened. it's something that creates discussions between all the people. we need to understand. and i think we are smart enough to not fall into something that is fear. and even if the last elections doesn't show that -- charlie: you mean the rise of le pen? marion: the rise of the extreme right wing. i think that because it happened once a few years ago, before the president election, the extreme right ended at the second round,

but was beaten by the right. the right did 80%. we need sometimes to alarm, to tell the politics that we need something that is a real sign of, um, of reality. i would say. charlie: sometimes an event like this can take a leader who was struggling and give him or her a sense, a mission, a sense of how to lead. do you think that might be happening with hollande? because he has dealt with this, and by all accounts that with this well -- or not?

or not? you were there. marion: i mean, i really believe in people gathering together and forming a unity. i unfortunately, i mean, from any left or right, have been very disappointed by politics. what i really believe today is that all together we can change things if we share, if we talk, if we think together. if there's a reflection on what we are living, not only in france, but in the whole world. because today, there's, we live in a global system, and what happens in a country affects the whole world. charlie: it is the interdependence. marion: yeah. it is a good thing. keeping our differences --that's what makes the world an amazing and rich place, keeping those

differences who they truly are, our cultures. french culture is an amazing culture. charlie: perhaps you are avoiding the question i asked, because you had not thought much about it, whether hollande had grown in the job, because he had to be the voice of the nation at a time like this. at the same time, are there, at the same time in the last week, the last two weeks, the climate change has been taking place, the cop21 in paris. you feel strongly about that, and that is an international issue everyone has to come to work together on. marion: yeah, and everybody, the politics and all the citizens of the world. because politics are like traps into this commercial world we

live in, but the citizen has a real power, the power to, i mean, to live and to change his way of living if it is disrespectful towards the planet or towards other people. we must realize we have this power, and of course we need politics to take decisions and take actions, because, because all of those countries who will be the first countries to, well, where the impact of the climate change will be terrible, are all the poor, what we call "poor countries" who are not responsible for the climate change. so they need to sit down

together and find the way to give money, because that's how we are going to help those countries to face the climate change. this is, that's why it is called climate justice, because those countries are not responsible, and they will be the first ones to be harmed by it. we obviously need politicians to take those decisions, to be bold and to be fair. charlie: ever since i first met you, you have been engaged, committed, outspoken, passionate about the world around you. marion: you know, i think there are a lot of human beings that are not aware of their impact,

but i love humanity, i love human beings, and i think that some people do amazing things, and some people have solutions. for example, a chief said, we should listen to them, because they know how to re-forest the world. you can't just plant trees. there's a whole ecosystem that goes with the forest, and we have a lot to learn from those tribes. we have a lot to learn from the people who work for the planet, who work in harmony with nature. and a lot of people on this planet are doing amazing things, and we should, you know, listen to them a little more than we listen to a brand that will sell you something that will give you

the illusion to be happy, and it's not going to last. i mean, a new pair of shoes will make you happy for an hour, maybe three days, but it won't last. it's a new way to see the world. we are at a turning point, because we really messed with this planet. we have, like, it's a turning point. charlie: it's also a ticking clock, too. marion: that's why it's like, what are we going to choose? it's interesting. it's interesting. but we are so smart. we should use our brains and hearts, connected together, to really be honest with what we are doing. charlie: when you make that comedy, come back to see us. marion: yeah. charlie: good to see you.

marion: great to see you, too. ♪

charlie: roger deakins has created some of the most iconic movie images of the past 30 years, the cinematographer behind films like "sid and nancy" "the shawshank redemption" and "prisoners." his collaboration with the coen brothers has been particularly celebrated. together, they have made 12 movies, including "no country for old men."

here's a look at some of his work. ♪ charlie: pretty damn good. roger: it's interesting, as i see that. a lot of people going away from the camera. charlie: victoria did a great job, one of my colleagues here who put that together. i thought, this is so good, you must have brought it in here. well done. you look at that, does that say everything about the role of the scimitar prefer? [laughter] roger: i look at that, and i think of my career. [laughter] i think about the time. i tried to remember what it was like. everything about the role of the cinematographer? no, because it does not show the relationships you need to build up on a set. you are really the director's right hand when it comes to the visuals. you run the set, really, you create the world, the atmosphere for the actors to do their part. if you don't have a performance, you don't have anything. charlie: or if you don't catch the performance, you don't have anything. you are empowering the performance. roger: yeah. creating the mood on the set, an atmosphere that allows the actress to feel culpable to do their job in it, is a huge part -- comfortable to do the job in it, is a huge part of the cinematographer's job. charlie: is that what you wanted to be one? roger: i wanted to shoot documentaries. i started off, i wanted to be a painter and i discovered still photography, went to art college, and gradually moved into documentaries. that's basically all i wanted to

do. charlie: so what happened? roger: i started getting offered feature films. a friend who was directing documentary's went into shooting feature films. and it was the right time for me. i started to feel that documentaries were kind of voyeuristic, i suppose. i had been to a couple situations, i had done, the last one, the last big documentary i did was in a mental hospital, following the patients through their treatment. and you realize after a while, you know, you are in there, however you do justice to the subject, you are still there taking something, and then you leave it behind. whereas they have to stay in that situation. that started to worry me. charlie: what was the influence of still photography? roger: well, i can't say i really knew that many still photographers when i took it up. but at art college, i met roger mayne, whose work i had studied, early street photographer. and, i just liked walking around and observing and taking photographs on the street. i still do it in my downtime sometimes.

i wonder around the beaches of south devon and take photographs of things. charlie: i know people like you. [laughter] roger: it is artistic. it's a nosy, i suppose. charlie: the executive producer of this program takes really wonderful photographs, and typically does not set out on a mission, but just sees things. what is the thrill for you? roger: it is about really capturing that moment. on a feature film, i suppose some of the greatest films, i operate the camera myself, which is one of the greatest moments.

i was the first person to see the performance, in a way, to capture that moment, you know? i still get a real buzz out of that sometimes. you sometimes think, wow, that something really special, you just captured that moment. charlie: some directors want to be their own cinematographer. roger: yeah. some directors are very good at it. and some cinematographers have gone on to direct. charlie: let me ask, did you think about that? you had all the tools, the skills. you start off, you know how to take pictures. secondly, you already said how much you love and appreciated the performance. roger: yeah. i think there's a lot more to directing them that. i think you have to understand, you know, your personal --

charlie: you don't think -- roger: to be a director, there's a whole side of it to get a project together. it's very hard. charlie: telling people what to do. [laughter] roger: i love being on a set. i thought about this, and i thought that the idea of spending two years in development on something, not actually experiencing working on a set, it's kind of -- my family, really. charlie: you get to travel to interesting places. roger: there is that side of that. charlie: but there is this, too. directors, with different actors, have different ways of communicating. it might be very soft and light, you know, almost not even using words. roger: yeah. charlie: is it true that different directors communicate with cinematographers differently? roger: directors, just like anybody, come from different strengths, right? directors might come from having written scripts, or they might come from the theater, or they might come from having been a photographer, like kubrick. so working with every director is slightly different, because what they demand, a

cinematographer might be different. i worked with directors who basically said, i don't understand cinematography or lighting. that's completely your domain. and that's fine. but most of the time, i worked with directors like danny and joel and ethan, sam mendes, who really understand the camera, trying to use the camera in a way that is more than just recording what's in front of it. charlie: is it exciting to shoot something like "skyfall?" roger: certainly. i had not done anything like it before. charlie: it's a challenge. roger: and to do it with sam, because i had done a couple films with sam before that. i understood the kind of film you wanted to make. so it is exciting, absolutely. every film is different, you know. every film has its own reasons for exciting you. charlie: you plan ahead.

you are a meticulous planner. roger: i like planning. you can always go in on the day and tear it up, but i like having -- charlie: planning gives you spontaneity. roger: i think it does. it also gives you the freedom to experiment. because you kind of go in the day knowing what the bottom line is, what you need to make the scene work, what the core essence of the scene is. you can play with that. if you have time, you can do some thing else, look at it another way. charlie: is it true with certain actors, and i mean by that male and female, but i am thinking male, that cameras love certain kinds of faces? roger: i think that is certainly true. charlie: that used to be said about redford. roger: you think redford, robert mitchum. charlie: the camera loves that face. tom hanks is often said, the large head, the camera likes large heads.

[laughter] roger: i never thought about that. charlie: that's what i heard. roger: i won't mention who i was thinking of. [laughter] charlie: the camera eats up certain people. roger: certain people have such character in their faces. i think of tommy lee jones. he's very active, but you can just look at him. i have worked with him three times. there is a whole world in that face. charlie: and you can see it. roger: that's part of it. i think sometimes, actors act too much. they don't need to do as much as they do, because the camera is doing so much for them sometimes. charlie: but the camera does what the camera man tells it to do, i think. roger: i suppose. [laughter] charlie: is it true? in other words, you know, there is such a thing as angles and lighting and all that, which are skills, i guess.

skills to be learned. but there's -- roger: i don't think you can learn all of it, really. charlie: you don't? roger: could you say, you know, could you say someone like cartier bresson learned to do what he did? there was some way that he had. charlie: i sort of see it the other way, i think. i think that all the great ones, what they do is create a platform that serves their intuition. but they work their butts off to have that platform. they really do. roger: that i agree.

charlie: it is the things you said. your own planning process. i think that everybody that i know who is very good at something is a student of something. roger: yes. charlie: they care about it. i mean, i remember once having a conversation between ted williams and joe dimaggio. roger: yeah. charlie: and their conversation was really about the doing of the thing they did. they were interested in what size bat, how it felt in their hands, things like that. and i think pros, dancers, painters, painters go to the museum and study. how did they do that? how did he or she do that? roger: i think there's that. but if you don't have that extra individual kind of ability on top of that, the learning -- charlie: but i do think it is a combination. i do think there is an argument about creativity that simply says, you wait for the muses to speak to you.

i don't think the muses speak to you. roger: please, don't go there. [laughter] that sort of leaves me cold. [laughter] but on the other hand, i do think we are in an age in cinema at the moment where technique has become more important than emotional reaction to something. charlie: and that's not good? roger: huston or somebody said, you make a film with your gut, not with your head. charlie: john huston said that? roger: oh, yeah. charlie: take a look at this. this is from "barton fink" in 1991. tell me about what you are seeing. roger: this was, i'm thinking about how we did it technically. we built this corridor. two matching corridors in a warehouse in long beach. and our great effects artist

fill the walls with holes, so you could do the fire coming down the walls. and i have this handheld on the back of a little cart that bruce, the dolly grip i still work with, was pulling. it's interesting. what i said about technology, this is all done in the camera, and today a lot of this would be cg. this would be digital. charlie: how much easier is that? roger: it is easier, but it is something you miss, i think. it is also so much fun, doing it for real. [laughter] john goodman. charlie: we also forget about editing, how great editing is. you go from the page to the camera to the edit.

roger: joel and ethan always cut their own work. when i watched the film afterwards, we storyboarded the whole film, and i watched how many shots were in a different place, or how many shots were not in the film, and it was i think six. so everything they do is so accurate. whereas in another film, the editor might take things out of order, move things about, and that makes something you really didn't think of, you know? charlie: take a look at this, "shawshank redemption," one of my favorite films. tim robbins making his famous escape. tell me what the cinematographer sees. roger: the way we wanted to shoot the sequence was way, way longer than we actually had time in the schedule to do. so much of what you do is

actually conditioned by the money and the schedule. charlie: right. roger: in the storyboards, we had him get out of the water, run across the field, and catch a train that's going by. but we did not have time to do that, so we needed one kind of iconic shot that actually tells the story of his escape, getting across that moat. so the last shot of the sequence is what people reference, the one that really matters. charlie: and then the lightning. that's the famous shot. roger: the funny thing was, it was made up on the day. how will we should this if we have one night to shoot it? the schedule was so condensed at that point. so you have to figure -- charlie: the third one i want to look at is "the big lebowski." [laughter]

roger: what can you say, really? it is a dream. this was so much fun. working with the brothers is so much fun, because they create these different worlds, then they create worlds within the worlds, like jeff's nightmare within the film. that was just funny. [laughter] again, the whole sequence is storyboarded, so you know exactly going and how you will do these shots. yeah. charlie: look at that. [laughter] how did you do that? roger: this was actually, against bluescreen. but the pushing shot we just did with a pole, and have the camera on a bag, pushing it down the lane.

very low-tech. charlie: tell me about "sicario." roger: sometimes you read a script, like when i read the script to "prisoners," it could go either way, it could be melodramatic or be a gothic horror script, but i could see the direction he would take, so i was really excited.

charlie: it drives forward from the beginning. roger: yeah. that was really important, the introduction of kate's character. the camera is constantly pushing the narrative forward in a very subtle way, i think. charlie: you need, beyond intuition, what are the qualities a great cinematographer has? [laughter] roger: you might have to ask a great cinematographer. [laughter] you know, i don't know, a passion. i think it all comes down to passion. i think that all the great movies, like you were saying, any artist, you know, it is the passion in the work. i don't think it's anything else. charlie: take a look at this. this is a clip from "sicario." >> get your service weapon out. gun. >> gun, left. >> what are the rules here? >> stay in your vehicles. do what they do. when they get out, you get out. move. >> wait, wait.

>> don't move! >> no, no, no. >> [speaking in spanish] charlie: oh, boy. explain your scene, sir. roger: two things that come to my mind about that immediately, every shot in that is storyboarded, and very precisely. we did not have much time to shoot the sequence. the other thing that comes to my mind is how we got to do that, because that shot is basically on a parking lot just outside albuquerque, so the production designer built this border post,

and the fencing on either side of it. the ends of the shot, looking at the american and mexican side, that is cg, a digital addition, but most of it is done in camera. charlie: what did you like about the script of that? roger: well, i thought, i had not done a film that was semi-documentary for a long time, and i felt this was something that was kind of important of a subject, that it dealt with in a very interesting way, especially taking a female lead. i thought that was interesting. charlie: this is going to embarrass you, so be ready. roger: what's next? [laughter] charlie: roll tape. this is from -- >> as an actor and someone who loves film, being in roger's frame is an extraordinary lesson. he's telling a great story, but when you talk about clues, the

entire scene is in silhouette, most of it. and the only moments where you get close maybe you should pay attention to is when the light shines on my face a little bit, or on paul dano's face, you get moments. some things are hidden, some things are not, and there is a puzzle being played with light, throughout the whole film. to know the story like i do, i know exactly who does it the whole time, i know exactly because i was there. but to see the work that roger deakins does to deflect, to reflect, and i know those are all lighting terms, in a way, but what he does is mind blowing. he makes you a better actor. charlie: it's a great honor and a pleasure to meet you. roger: thank you. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> high, dean. hi -- bob. >> from the battlefields to the white house, from hollywood to the heartland. america's entertainer was bob hope.