In Total Control
Profile of young actor Sam Riley
by Jed Medina

For those who have already seen the film Control, majority have considered Sam Riley's performance as Ian Curtis, as nothing short of extra-ordinary. Let's go back to the story of how he got the part. It seems it was not an easy process...

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Sam Riley is Ian Curtis: If the film’s foundations were built on good intent, the single most influential factor to maintain its authenticity was undoubtedly the actual casting of Ian Curtis. While it was never the filmmaker’s intention to simply make a look-a-like bio-pic, the actor chosen would have to both resemble the singer and carry the spirit of the man.

If the recent books and growth of the internet sites have lifted the cloak of Ian’s enigmatic mystique, his allure hasn’t dampened. It presented a catch-22 situation: while a well known singer may green-light the movie immediately and possibly increase the budget, they would ultimately distract from the performance.

After doing a series of casting calls in London, the search expanded to the north of England and Manchester.

Having originally dabbled in TV and theatre acting in his youth, Leeds-based Sam Riley’s energies had been focused into music. The band he fronted, 10,000 Things, had secured a major label for the release of its first album, but after the band suffered at the hands of major label politics, its release stalled for a year, and the band were soon without a contract. As a result, Riley found himself taking a job in a local warehouse to make ends meet. Disillusioned, Riley reluctantly decided to give acting another shot.

“When I first did acting I was auditioning for TV parts, so it gave me a bit of crisis to be a musician with integrity and auditioning for TV parts. It doesn’t really go together,” says Riley, “But I rang up my old agent and Control was the first thing that came up, which was pretty incredible”.

With his musical roots and physical resemblance to Ian Curtis, getting him through the door, Riley laughs, when he recalls his first audition in Manchester.

“After a few minutes of going into the room, Anton asked me, ‘Can I see you move?’”, recalls Riley, of the director wanting to see if he could match Curtis’s trademark jaunty-armed onstage moves. “I knew that was going to happen, because I’d seen the guy before me skip past the window, so I went to the toilet and practised in the mirror a couple of times. They strapped an i-pod to my arm, and Anton did a little bit of the footwork to help me out.”

After a second audition, Riley got a clue he was in the frame for the role when he was told by Corbijn not to cut his hair, in preparation for playing the adolescent Curtis at the beginning of the film. Months later, with his hair getting longer, Riley finally received the news he had been awarded the role on his birthday – the same day as Elvis Presley and David Bowie’s.

A few years previous, Riley coincidentally auditioned for the part of Stephen Morris, the drummer of Joy Division for 24 Hour Party People, before actually getting the walk-on role of Mark E Smith of The Fall (which was later lost on the cutting room floor). That experience in a film touching on the same period of Manchester’s music legacy, did little to prepare him for Control though, as Corbijn’s film had little interest in mythologizing the period.

“The first thing people asked me was, what it was going to be like to play an icon,” reflects Riley. “It’s true, but I didn’t want to think about him in that respect. You can’t play an icon without lending an edge of pomposity to the role. He was just a normal guy. It was just his young death that always fascinated people.”

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As well as the expected research for the role - reading background material and watching any available footage of Ian, such as the video compilation ‘Here Are the Young Men’ - one of Riley’s initial tasks was to gain a better understanding of Ian Curtis’ epilepsy, that had plagued the singer in his later life. He was already familiar with the condition due to the fact the guitarist in his own band suffered from it, but he spent a day and night at the National Society of Epilepsy in London to further his understanding.

“I met with neurologists, who were kind enough to answer my questions and also show me what the body does during a seizure,” recalls Riley of the experience. “I watched people having fits. It was hard, as you don’t really want to watch people when they’re going through it, but that was what I was there for.”

It is not known whether Curtis actually suffered any traits of epilepsy earlier in his life; he suffered his first Grand Mal attack on the car journey back from a London Joy Division concert, aged 21.

“I think there were some signs of epilepsy in his adolescence, but never a Grand Mal seizure,” says Riley, of the uncertain roots of Curtis’s condition. “It can happen to people in their adolescence and leave them in their early twenties, and then can come back later in life.”

As well as recreating the physical effects, which he did without rehearsing, Riley also had to grasp how Curtis’s epilepsy prayed on his mental state, to help inform his character towards the later part of the film.

“It was about trying to appreciate how a healthy person goes to living in this constant fear. You know you can drop dead from an attack, as well as running the risk of physical harm. It can also be humiliating, because you can loose control of your bodily functions, and a lot of people don’t know how to react to your condition.”

While possessing a similar physical frame to Ian, the only stumbling block to Riley passing as Ian Curtis on screen, was down to Curtis’s distinct haunting saucer-like eyes.

“There was a period when they thought my eyes were going to be an issue,” informs Riley. “We tried contact lenses, but the problem was the pupils never moved, so I looked like an android. I was with Alexandra Maria Lara, who plays Annik, in the make-up trailer having them put in, and the look on her face said it all really. I was wearing them in rehearsals for a couple of hours, as during rehearsals people were fairly convinced it was the way to go. But I’ve never worn them before, so I was praying I wouldn’t have to use them. At the end of the day, it’s an interpretation rather than an impression. I don’t have Ian’s eyes, but I’m not Ian!”

With Riley’s acting inexperience, the film’s two-week rehearsal period helped Riley find his feet and build confidence. While afternoons were taken up with band practise with his fellow actors that made-up Joy Division, the mornings were spent – a week with each – with the actresses who played the two women in Ian Curtis’s life: Samantha Morton (playing Deborah Curtis) and Alexandra Maria Lara (playing Annik Honoré). In helping form their character’s relationships, the actors were getting to the heart of the story of Control that existed behind the legend of Ian Curtis and Joy Division.

“Anton always maintained the crux of the story was of young love and family life,” concludes Riley. “I might be wrong, but Anton wanted the band and the rise of the band Joy Division to be secondary to that in the story.”

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Control is Sam Riley’s first lead role in a feature film. He has appeared on television in ‘Lenny Blue’, ‘Peak Practice’ ‘Tough Love’ and in the BBC pilot, ‘Sound’ by David Kerr. On stage, the 27 year old has appeared in productions of ‘Stags and Hens’, ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, ‘The Tempest’, ‘Dirty Linen’ and ‘Dumped’. Sam is also the lead singer of Leeds based band, ’10,000 Things’, and since filming Control has been busy recording the band’s second album.

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