During rehearsal, Miller also brought in a movement coach, a key figure in McGregor’s delicate but rigorous physical performance. “We did these extreme exercises of being very, very old and then very young, and thinking about our characters in different stages of their life,” he says. “I spent a lot of time, in his countly days at the beginning, being very upright in his amazing clothes and the way he moves. As I get older, all of that drops away and it becomes more loose—and so in a way, he de-ages physically.” Being able to shoot roughly chronologically allowed McGregor to sink deeper and deeper into the part. He didn’t initially realize the root of his profound investment in both the role and the story’s unique portrait of fatherhood. “In a loose way, he adopts somebody—and I am close to that,” he says. “I have an adopted daughter, and I almost didn’t notice the similarities until we were shooting it…. I felt very, very connected to the count.”
Another development deeper into filming: the romantic arc between the count and Anna, played by McGregor and Winstead—who are married in real life. In one early scene, Anna chides the count for tidying her room without permission—and snubs him for literal years. “To be in love and married to somebody, and then to get to play all those cold shoulder scenes, was just hilarious,” McGregor says. Near the shoot’s end, as the relationship took a tragic turn, the pair found the emotional intensity of their scenes following them home. “You just have to see what she’s done with this role—she’s such a brilliant actor, and the way Anna ages is absolutely heartbreaking at the end,” McGregor says. “We have a scene where we have to part, and we just were an absolute mess [after filming].”
