It's hard to make Andrew Simpson blush. Just as well, given the Co Donegal actor's role as Cate Blanchett's young lover in Notes on a Scandal . He talks to Róisín Ingle.
I have just asked Andrew Simpson a direct question about his sex scenes with Cate Blanchett that he has batted away expertly, smirking all the while. "Are you blushing?" I ask the Co Donegal teenager as he strikes another pose for the photographer. "Takes more than that to make me blush," he replies without blinking. Having seen Notes on a Scandal a couple of nights ago, I know what he means.
In the film - a dark, creepy tale of manipulation and betrayal - this new star plays Steven Connolly, a schoolboy who becomes sexually involved with his art teacher, Sheba Hart, who is played by Blanchett. At the core of the story is Sheba's relationship with Barbara Covett, a bitter and not-alittle-twisted older teacher played by Judi Dench, whose character has an unhealthy obsession with the gorgeous art teacher.
"The question is not whether this would happen in real life," he says. "It's more like how would this not happen? I mean, it's every schoolboy's fantasy. Everyone has a crush on their schoolteacher. I know I've had one. But I have to go back to school soon, so I'm not saying anything else." You are blushing now, I tell him. "Well, yeah," he says.
The 18-year-old gets up to pour water - "sparkling or still?" - in the Dublin hotel suite where for most of the day he has fielded questions about his numerous and graphic sex scenes with Blanchett. Yes, he was nervous; no, he didn't enjoy it (well, not in that way); and, yes, filming 13-hour shoots in the freezing cold, even with someone as beautiful as Blanchett, was still work.
Simpson doesn't mind talking about the sex - "everyone wants to know," he says - but he is more interested in teasing out the morality issues at the centre of the film than he is in discussing the mechanics of pretending to make love to a woman twice his age.
"The director, Richard Eyre [ who also appears on page 10 of this magazine], asked me in one of the auditions whether I could see it happening, a young schoolboy falling for one of his teachers," he says, running fingers through spiky gelled hair. "School is so full of hormones; you are cut off from the world, and flirting between students and teachers happens every day. It's an interesting topic, and school is an interesting place. There's a fine line between what is acceptable and what is not. I think a lot of it goes unrecorded."
He believes the film, based on Zoë Heller's novel, poses an interesting question for society. It's one he has clearly pondered in the two years since the film was shot. "If it's not right for an older male teacher to take advantage of a young girl, then is it okay if it's a woman doing the same thing with a young schoolboy?" he asks. "I've been guilty of adopting that attitude, seeing it as less of a crime, but that's not right. And I know the media would be going mad if this story was about a male teacher and a female pupil."
It's all rather removed from Mrs Biddle's acting class at Foyle School of Speech and Drama, in Derry, which he and his three siblings attended from an early age. Early roles included one of the three wise kings and Fantastic Mr Fox. Simpson, who is from Fahan, got his break when an agent contacted Biddle, looking for "rough boys" for an audition that led to a part in Song for a Raggy Boy. "There was a scene in that film where I had to haul my brother over a wall, and two people started crying on set. I remember thinking I'd love to have that impact on people," he says.
Smitten by professional acting, he was put up for a few auditions; he played a thug in an ad for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Then, after scouring England, Scotland and Wales for teenagers to play Steven Connolly, the producers came to Northern Ireland.
The process of auditioning for Notes on a Scandal was "very long and very boring" but, essentially, after being seen by the main players in London he went on a school rugby tour of the southern hemisphere and had to be flown back to audition with Blanchett. He says it was a terrible audition, as he had a sore throat, but he remembers being struck by the actress. "Your eyes just go to her," he says. "She is the sort of woman who even if she tried to remain in the background she couldn't. She was just wearing an overcoat, but she still stood out. It's a serene beauty she has."
Having landed the part, he quickly developed a rapport with Blanchett, who he says mothered him on set. "We looked after each other. She was missing her two sons, so I was aware of that, and she was protective of me in that motherly way. She was always asking if I was okay, and she got on really well with my mum and dad. That made her more like a friend. You have to feel comfortable with someone you are going to push the boundaries with."
His mother, Marian, was supportive. "It's not the kind of thing you want to think about your son, but she was great about it." She accompanied him to Los Angeles for a fashion shoot for Teen Vogue last summer. "LA was so fake. Every woman had plastic surgery, and I was there with this freckly back and white body. It wasn't the place for us. I prefer New York. It's more real."
He says the most embarrassing part of the film was the first scene he shot, in which "I had to take off my thong. Cate looked away, thank God. I think they were making a European version and an American version, with different levels of nudity," he says. There was a lot of talk between lawyers about the amount of "crevice" that could be shown. He's definitely turning scarlet now. "Nothing to do with me. I was prepared to do everything except full nudity. I didn't want to do that, but everything else was okay."
It turns out he is still unsure if there is a version of the film that features his entire derriere. "Did you see my ass in the film?" he asks. "Can't remember. Maybe I missed it," I say. "Nah. If it was there you wouldn't have missed it," he says, grinning with a movie-star-in-the-making confidence that endears rather than irritates.
He's waiting to hear whether he's won a part in The Dark Is Rising, a fantasy movie due to be filmed in Bulgaria. In the meantime he's heading off to network at the Oscars, and he's still got plenty of promotional work to do for Notes on a Scandal. Plus, he has his A-Levels this summer.
Naturally, everyone he talks to will want to know about "sex" with Blanchett, but he still seems to be working it out. "I don't know how it felt, to be honest. It's really difficult to describe; it was surreal."
Anyway, there are other moments from his time on the film that he will treasure more. "I remember sitting in Judi's trailer, listening to The Archers with her. Somebody came to call her for a scene. It was five past six, and she said, 'Tell them I will be there at quarter past,' which is when The Archers is over. This is a woman who wouldn't go to the premiere of her movie Pride & Prejudice because she had a scene on Notes on a Scandal, yet she wouldn't miss The Archers for anything," he says, laughing.
Dench and Simpson have since become text buddies. "I congratulated her on the Oscar nomination the other day. She really deserves it. She is a class act." Andrew Simpson's not too shabby, either.
Notes on a Scandal is on general release