There Will Be Oscars

Speaking of acting with kids, Daniel, was your acting process any different on "There Will Be Blood," because you had a lot of scenes to play with a 10-year-old who had never acted before?
Day-Lewis: No difference, but it certainly would very much depend upon the 10-year-old. And this was just a remarkable young person. He was just a great companion. He was my partner. I miss him a lot, actually. His mom was a state trooper, and his dad was a cowboy. They didn't know anything about the movies. There was a moment which could have gone awry at the very beginning, when his mom quite rightly thought, "What kinds of people are going to be involved with my son?" She wanted to see what I was going to be like, because she knew he would be spending a lot of time with me. So she rented a copy of "Gangs of New York." [Laughter] And there was a flurry of phone calls. And the studio dispatched a copy of "The Age of Innocence" very quickly.

You also were in a very strange position, because you had to reshoot a lot of scenes that you had done because Paul Dano replaced the original actor playing Eli Sunday. Was it hard to gear yourself up to do all that again—redo about three weeks of work? Or did you see it as an opportunity?
Day-Lewis: Quite honestly, I can't imagine doing that with anyone else except Paul Dano. I really can't. He made that possible. Often when you're making a film, even on a good day, you feel like you're wading in quicksand. And to take a big step back like that—it felt like a pivotal moment, but Paul made it possible.

How did the director tell you that this was going to have to happen?
Day-Lewis: We talked about it for a while beforehand. It wasn't something that happened just overnight. It was something we tried to avoid at all costs. I hope I'm never again in a situation where a young actor is replaced, because you understand how devastating that can be to somebody. I found that the hardest thing to deal with, really.

Have any of you been fired?
McAvoy: No, but I've been on a job where an actor was replaced. It wasn't a young actor, either. He must have been 40, and it was devastating. Absolutely devastating. I mean, it's ridiculous. He was told every day that what he was doing was "iconic." That was the phrase. "What you're doing is iconic. Brilliant, it's genius, iconic." And then he's sacked in three weeks.
Day-Lewis: So if anyone says "iconic" to you, just punch them straightaway.

George, didn't you once have an experience like that in television, where someone was telling you that what you were doing was brilliant and then the next week they hired an acting coach for you?
Clooney: Yeah. I was doing a pilot. It was a Western sitcom in a whorehouse. It seemed like a good idea to me. [Laughter] I came in and they kept saying, "It's great, it's great. You're the next big thing, you're the funniest thing we've ever seen. You're great." And then literally four days later, nothing was working. The script had problems, I was probably terrible in it. [Writer] Barbara Corday and a couple of other people came in and said, "We want to bring in an acting teacher for you." It was like, wait, so I'm not lightning in a bottle anymore? It's over? It was humiliating. TV can be really brutal, because it's so quick. You'll do a pilot and there's so many subtle ways to fire you if the show gets picked up. You'll get the first call—"The show got picked up for 13 episodes!" And you're like, "Yay!" But you're not picked up yet. Your agent says, "OK, they have four days to call and activate your contract." So now you're going, "Uh, yay?" And then you wait and you wait and you wait and then they call and say, "Listen, they're going to replace your part. But it's not because of you—you're lightning in a bottle."
mcavoy: "And keep the mullet. It looks great."

George, is it true that you are getting involved in the writers' strike?
Clooney: That just happened the night we were at the awards show. It's actually Harvey Weinstein getting me involved.