Screaming on the Jobs
Katherine Waterston says fighting with co-star Michael Fassbender in biopic Steve Jobs is like boxing
Imagine being in a screaming match with Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender.
Well, US actress Katherine Waterston did just that in the biopic Steve Jobs, which sees Fassbender as the Apple co-founder and Waterston as his raging ex-girlfriend and baby mama Chrisann Brennan.
The film is currently available on Singtel TV Video on Demand.
Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs depicts Jobs backstage at three of his iconic product launches, including the iMac in 1998. It also covers his rocky relationship with Lisa, his daughter with Brennan.
One standout scene sees Brennan erupt in anger over Jobs' refusal to acknowledge Lisa as his own, resulting in the mother-daughter pair living on welfare while Jobs lived off his wealth from Apple.
"Mike is a great scene partner," Waterston, 36, told The New Paper over the phone from Los Angeles.
"Fighting with him was like boxing: A real challenge.
"He helped me raise my game as he was very focused and that motivated me to do my best."
Waterston was full of praise for her 38-year-old co-star, saying she was "very lucky" to work with him.
"I'm always happily surprised when brilliant performers are also lovely people. And Mike is both a great actor and a kind person, not distant like the real Jobs."
DEBUT
The daughter of Oscar-nominated actor Sam Waterston, best known for his role as Jack McCoy in TV series Law & Order, Waterston made her feature film debut in Michael Clayton (2007) but really broke out in Inherent Vice (2014).
She will next be seen as the female lead Porpetina Goldstein, a down-to-earth witch and employee of the Magical Congress of the United States of America in the much-anticipated Harry Potter spin-off/prequel Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, which opens here on Nov 17.
She will also be reuniting with Fassbender in Alien: Covenant, the sequel to Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which will be released next year.
Waterston admitted she had little knowledge of the real Jobs when she joined the cast but grew to admire his talent.
"Before this, I had only an image of Jobs in a turtleneck.
"I'm not a very tech-savvy person but I'm an iPhone and iPad user.
"I think it was part of Jobs' genius that he successfully designed products for people who are completely hopeless at tech, like me."
To play Brennan, Waterston read her autobiography and watched YouTube clips of her.
"I'm nothing like her physically as I'm nearly six feet tall (1.83m) and she was petite. She has blue eyes while mine are brown," she said.
"But I got a sense of her as a person.
"For this movie, they weren't casting for accuracy - even Michael doesn't look anything like Jobs. They were casting for impressions and for the chemistry between Michael and me.
"Hopefully I pull the wool over your eyes that I pulled it off."
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