- Title: Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman talk 'Lion'
- Date: 17th November 2016
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (NOVEMBER 6, 2016) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR DEV PATEL SAYING: "We're breathing life into something that actually happened, you know, real people went through these emotions. There was a small boy that was torn away from his family, it makes it all the more sacred and it makes me want to work all the more harder for it but it's kind of been the most nourishing experience of my career."
- Embargoed: 1st December 2016 20:39
- Keywords: adoption interviews film Australia India Dev Patel Nicole Kidman Lion
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS
- City: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS
- Country: USA
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Film
- Reuters ID: LVA00258U4F9P
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman say making new movie "Lion" was a "remarkable" and "nourishing" experience.
The film tells the story of a five-year-old Indian boy who gets lost on the streets Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home, and is eventually adopted by a couple in Australia. Some 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
Patel plays the grown up boy, Saroo, while Kidman, who has adopted two children herself in real life, plays his adoptive mother.
"I understand the unconditional love and I understand, just being a mother, the power of that. I think the themes of this movie being motherhood and also memory, when you deal with memory and his memories and how he's able to pull those memories in a Proustian way and find his birth mother through just sort of a sense memory work almost, it's fascinating and true," Kidman said.
While he was making the movie, Patel got to meet the real life Saroo, which he found to be a nerve-wracking experience.
"I was very worried because we'd shot the whole end sequence of the movie first and I was like, 'I hope he likes me because we've got a lot of it in the can.' He is so confident, he's so charming, he's so ferociously driven and that's why he could find his mother, this needle in a haystack, using this Google Earth, find her from space, it's an incredible feat of resilience and perseverance. He's very inspiring," Patel said.
Shooting in India also turned out to be an important of his own personal journey.
"I've been lucky enough to shoot five films there, and I just am constantly surprised by India. It's so enthralling to me and exciting and it has this tendency to bring out the inner most feelings of your soul, if you're anxious it will heighten that, if you're lost it will bring out a sense of journey and push you somewhere that is kind of nourishing and beautiful. I spent a lot of time, growing up, trying to distance myself from my culture so I've been there and all those preconceived notions I had a young boy were broken and it's a love affair with it now," he said.
"Lion" is in theaters now. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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