Mark Rylance has admitted he “hated” starring in the 2011 action thriller Blitz.
The film, directed by Elliott Lester, starred Jason Statham as a violent, homophobic police officer who partners up with a gay cop, played by Paddy Considine, to catch a serial killer.
Rylance’s character, Chief Inspector Bruce Roberts, is bludgeoned to death near the start of the film.
At the time, The Independent’s critic Anthony Quinn wrote that the film was “faulty in suspense and notably gruesome in its violence”.
In a new interview with The Big Issue, Rylance said: “I gave up film acting in around 2010 when I was in a horrible film called Blitz. I so hated it that I got rid of all my agents… I thought, f*** this and stopped promoting myself in film.”
Rylance did not elaborate on what it was that he hated about Blitz.
Speaking in another interview with The Irish Times, Rylance reiterated his displeasure with the film, saying: ‘I thought: no, this is terrible; I am done with this.”
Referring to his return to film, in Steven Spielbergs’s 2015 historical drama Bridge of Spies, Rylance added: “But nature abhors a vacuum. Spielberg came along to [my play] Twelfth Night and it all kicked off again.”
Since Bridge of Spies, Rylance has had a successful film career, with roles in The BFG, Dunkirk, Ready Player One and The Trial of the Chicago 7.
He can next be seen playing the “world’s worst golfer” Maurice Flitcroft in the family comedy The Phantom of the Open, out in cinemas on 18 March.
