NEW YORK TIMES – When it comes to award shows, always listen to Julianne Moore.
Richard Madden knows this now, though he didn’t in January, when the Scottish actor found himself seated next to Moore at the Golden Globes. Madden had received his first Globe nomination for playing a British politician’s PTSD-stricken protection officer in the hit mini-series “Bodyguard,” and before the names in his category were read, Moore leaned over to strategize.
“She was like, ‘O.K., sweetie, if you win, do you want to come out behind me or do you want to go around the other way?’” Madden recalled. He responded incredulously: Of course he wouldn’t win.
But he did. And as the orchestra began to play, Madden had no idea where to go. With a professional’s ease, Moore stood up, stepped back and coaxed Madden past her to the stage. “And then when I came back to the table after,” he said, “she was like, “I asked you which way you wanted to go!’”
When it comes to navigating his path through Hollywood, the 32-year-old Madden prefers to figure it out on the fly. This week, you can catch him in the musical “Rocketman,” where Madden plays a cunning music manager whose seduction of Elton John extends past the boardroom and into the bedroom. It’s a far cry from Madden’s best-known role as Robb Stark, the virtuous, doomed “Game of Thrones” character who perished during the show’s notorious “Red Wedding” episode.
That series only got bigger and bigger as it went on, but after his third-season exit, Madden was no longer around to partake in the spoils. Still, being killed off early has its benefits: It let Madden gradually age out of callow-prince roles and start playing complicated adult men. His role on “Bodyguard” last fall served as a reintroduction of sorts, a signal to the industry that Madden’s matinee-idol looks had grown gratifyingly flinty. Even his vulnerability now seemed dangerous.
“I’m so used to playing the good guy that bad things happen to,” Madden told me in a Cannes hotel room this month, just days after “Rocketman” premiered at the film festival there. Initially tired from a day of doing press, Madden became warmer and more animated as he spoke, his blue eyes widening often for emphasis. “I was interested in playing a slightly darker character, with different motivations to him.”
His “Rocketman” role, John Reid, lets Madden play the Machiavellian type with a jolt of sexual electricity: When Reid tells the young, untested Elton John, “You’re so humble, it’s embarrassing,” Madden makes his taunt sound like a come-on.
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