With a lead role in one of this year's most highly anticipated films, Chiwetel Ejiofor's name is all over awards shortlists. The actor tells Shereen Low how challenging he found working on Hunger director Steve McQueen's study of American slavery
AIF ANY other director had taken on 12 Years A Slave, the harrowing violence that is part an parcel of slavery might have been played down. But in the hands of director Steve McQueen, it is played out in unsettling detail.
As with his previous films - both of which starred Irish actor Michael Fassbender - Bafta-winning McQueen pulls no punches here. Like 2008's Hunger, about the Maze hunger strikes, and 2011's Shame which tackled sex addiction, his latest movie is bold and unflinching.
The true-life story of a free black man illegally kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, where he remained for 12 years, it is an adaptation of the memoir of Solomon Northup. The narrative follows Northup after he loses his liberty and is passed from one plantation to another, before he is finally saved.
Some of the most painful scenes were shot in single, continuous takes, such as the whipping scene - in which Northup is forced to whip his friend, fellow slave Patsey (a superb movie debut by newcomer Lupita Nyong'o) by domineering plantation owner Edwin Epps (Fassbender) - and another which sees Northup being beaten and then hanged by a noose.
Chiwetel Ejiofor, a London-born actor with Nigerian parentage, was McQueen's first choice to play Northup, a role for which he has just received a Best Actor nomination, one of a raft of Bafta nominations 12 Years A Slave garnered this week.
He had no reservations about the graphic nature of the film, which was co-produced by Brad Pitt.
"As an actor, you just have to slip down the rabbit hole and see what happens. There was no other way of telling the story," says 36-year-old Ejiofor. "It's not like I wasn't aware of Steve and his films, so I knew he would go to all those places and that's what I wanted - to tell the story. It's a strange handicap if you can't talk about violence in a film about slavery. You're not going to do justice to Solomon Northup and what he went through. "It's like doing a film about the Second World War and you can't shoot anybody. I don't want to get involved with something that I wouldn't be proud of, or that isn't right."
Ejiofor, who started acting in school productions when he was 13, later joining the National Youth Theatre, then studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, admits shooting these scenes was challenging, though, and the mood on-set would often be solemn. "Days like that were hard and uncomfortable," he says, "but they were also a real way of connecting with Solomon."
His performance has created quite a stir on the awards circuit - he is already up for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild, and talk in the industry is that an Oscar nomination could follow - the nominations are announced this day week. "It's really terrific, really exciting. The reception has been amazing," says Ejiofor.
In the film category, he is up against fellow Londoner Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom), but he doesn't mind. "I'm thrilled for Idris as well," he insists. "We've been friends for a long time now - it's been 20 years - so it's really exciting."
Part of the appeal of 12 Years A Slave was the opportunity to work with McQueen who, as well as being a film-maker, is a Turner Prize-winning visual artist. "I've wanted to work with Steve since I saw Hunger, which I thought was completely brilliant," says Ejiofor.
"I got the opportunity after that to see him in Amsterdam, where he lives, so I went out there. We had coffee and talked about life and films. "I wanted to find a way to work together at some point," he admits.
But when the chance came up (Ejiofor says being chosen by McQueen for the role was "a lovely compliment") the actor initially had concerns. "When I first read the script and then the book, I found it devastating," he reveals. "I knew it was going to be physically, emotionally and psychologically difficult and I told Steve I needed to think about it. "I found the idea of playing him [Solomon] daunting. I definitely felt the weight of that responsibility. The story with its implications and the wider historical context is a deep responsibility. I had a lot of self-doubt. "But the impact the story had on me was unshakeable," he adds. "If I was honest with myself, I knew that there was no way that I wasn't going to be involved with it."
Ejiofor, no stranger to the subject of slavery, having previously starred in Steven Spielberg's Amistad, says his knowledge about the subject has expanded. "I thought I knew quite a lot about slavery, or at least the major highlights," he says. "The incredible thing about having a first-hand narrative is the specifics on the different plantations and the different experiences. "You tend to think of slavery as one homogenous thing but actually, there's a massive difference between cutting timber, picking cotton and cutting sugar cane, and the different plantations have a completely different internal life."
Ejiofor now says it was a "dream" role, and a "phenomenon" of a cast to work with (Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Dano also make up the star-studded cast, alongside Pitt as Canadian carpenter Samuel Bass, who helped Northup find his freedom).
He also admits, however, that he needed time to "decompress" when filming wrapped. "It took me a little while to get out of the mindset," he says. "I took two months to decompress in Brooklyn, where I don't know that many people. But I did live there when I was in my mid-twenties, so I know enough people that if I need to go out and have contact, I can."
Next up for Ejiofor - who is working on a big screen adaptation of A Season In The Congo, which he recently appeared in at London's Young Vic theatre - is a role in JJ Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII, according to rumours.
He's not giving anything away though. "Who knows? We'll just have to see," he teases. "I'm a huge fan of that world and JJ, but I don't know, I can't tell you."
* 12 Years A Slave opens in cinemas tomorrow.