KIEFER Sutherland talks about appearing in new horror film Mirrors, as well as what to expect from the forthcoming season of real-time drama series 24.

Q: What first brought you to Mirrors?
Kiefer Sutherland: Alex did something with The Hills Have Eyes that I haven’t seen in a long time, which reminded me of The Omen that reminded me of what I liked about Amityville Horror, which reminded me of The Exorcist. And even though the characters in The Hills Have Eyes weren’t as developed as I think the characters in Mirrors are, he still managed to weave a concern for the child, a concern for the family and somehow even without a lot of interaction and dialogue, even before everything falls apart, it gave me a strong enough basis in which to identify with the characters on a much more personal level so that when they were in danger, when their lives were threatened, it moved me.

And that’s what Mirrors did – it worked on two levels for me. It’s genuinely scary but you have concern for the family, too. And from an actor’s perspective what was really interesting. I think Alex showed what he could do with The Hills Have Eyes and that was why I was attracted to him as a director and then I was deeply rewarded when I actually went to work with him.

Q: Did he live up to your expectations as a director?
Kiefer Sutherland: He surpassed them. I think Alex has an unbelievable sense of vision as a filmmaker. It was very interesting to watch someone work in a second language and I find this with a lot of people who that actually learn English as a second language, they have such an interesting perspective on things and they become very literal and so his dialogue was really concise and that’s a really interesting way to work. So on so many different levels I really, really did love working with him.

: It’s a visually striking film. Was that important to you?
Kiefer Sutherland: His visual sense is extraordinary and he managed to take the set and make it a character in the film and that’s not something that you can easily do. And we were working in Romania, New York and Los Angeles but the main body of the film was shot in Romania for that location – the building that was our Mayflower. So you are dealing with a crew that doesn’t really speak English and at first there was a kind of a weird separation which was different to what I’m used to on 24 where the crew is unbelievably involved.

Q: Did that cause you problems?
Kiefer Sutherland: No. Alex and I knew exactly what we wanted to do and we were both very specific and we would get very excited about certain things that were happening but, at first, you had a crew that was very nonplussed. But then, about 10 days in, we saw a couple of guys on the crew getting closer and closer to the monitors – and before this they had been very distant and removed – and one of them was saying something to the other in Romanian and Alex asked what they had said. And one guy just said: “This isn’t like the other films we’ve worked on here..” And at that moment we felt we might be doing something special.

Q: Was it important that building you filmed at in Romania – the old department store in the film – became a character in its own right and how did you do that?
Kiefer Sutherland: It definitely was. It was the most incredible place and perfect for what we wanted and I don’t know of a sound stage that would have had the height we had there. And one of the reasons why it worked so well was that we could have these unbelievably long tracking shots from one room into another. We’d actually go from the top of the stairs, wrap around the corridors and down the stairs and into the basement where there was all this water – exactly what we needed.

When I walked in there for the first time, OK, I was very impressed with it, but what Alex managed to do over the ten weeks we shot there was make it come to life, give it an extra dimension with that camera of his. There have been times when I’ve been on a magnificent set and then you end up seeing the final product and it’s not so great. With this, it was the opposite. As much as I was impressed when I walked in there, I found it much more impressive when I saw it on the screen.

Q: You’ve said that you find it hard to watch films like this…
Kiefer Sutherland: Yeah but making of one is different and it’s fun. It’s the ability to know you are stringing someone along to this big jump. From the time I was five, I loved to hide behind the chair and scare the shit out of my twin sister – so the desire to do it has no correlation to my ability to watch it.

Q: Sometimes horror films become all about the effects that the story gets lost in the process. Had did you ensure that didn’t happen?
Kiefer Sutherland: Alex and I got along from our very first meeting. And we talked a lot about the structure and the balance of a film like this. And it’s not rocket science but what I think is lost sometimes is the ability to make a film where if you took out the scary bits you still care about the characters. You have to care about the characters and have that balance. And so we struck this deal. I said: “Look ‘you’ve written this script and I believe I can make you care about this man, his isolation, the fact that no one believes him and his absolute desire to protect his family. I think I can make an audience care about that.”

But I said: “What I need to know from you is that you can scare the hell out of me..” And he took a long beat and he looked down and he went: “Oh yeah..” in that French accent [laughs]. So we knew our jobs, we knew our roles. I think that Alex did a wonderful job and at least from my perspective, he kept his word in maintaining a balance between those things – but that’s ultimately for an audience to decide.

Q: Do you believe that, letting the audience decide?
Kiefer Sutherland: Yes, I do. I was the actor who went to see Stand By Me and thought my career was over. I thought the film was great, but I thought I was terrible. And that’s when I learned: “Maybe I’m not the best judge of that..” Just feel it and then let an audience decide. I remember when I first read the script for 24 and I never really read the ‘real time’ thing. I mean I read ‘real time’ whatever the fuck that means, but I didn’t really think very clearly about it. (laughs). And with Mirrors I didn’t think very clearly about the fact that I would be looking into mirrors performing scenes and that I would have to watch myself act and it was the most unsettling part of the film.

But it also gives you a great insight into what you are doing because you start to watch yourself do things that are purposefully manipulative as an actor – things that are thought out and meant. And to be confronted with that all the time when you are working was very disorientating. But it was interesting, too.

Q: Visually the mirrors give the director some very powerful images to work with…
Kiefer Sutherland: Absolutely. I also really like the religious overtones to it. You know, we’ve become so proper that the idea of making a film that really deals with good, bad, God and the Devil, is a little unexpected. But at the same time we like this idea of another plane of existence or something being out there that we’re desperate to understand – almost to the point where even if it’s a bad thing, that’s OK. Because the idea of it simply being over when life ends simply isn’t acceptable.

Q: And that’s what the film plays with?
Kiefer Sutherland: Exactly. This idea that stuff that is working beyond us, behind us, that is out of our control is incredibly alluring and as it becomes alluring it becomes more frightening and more dangerous. And then you get into the whole fable aspect of mirrors and the Narcissistic aspect – the guy who thinks he’s so beautiful he doesn’t want to break the surface of the water with his image reflected on it – and the religious aspects, too. In certain cultures in Asia if you take someone’s picture then they believe you are stealing their soul. So it’s about of all of this self imagery and I find that fascinating.

And what’s interesting is that obviously certain people will go into the movie theatre and they will have been exposed to that and other people will have not. And this is why I think movies are wonderful – each person makes it their own experience. But I think Alex has just done such a beautiful job layering all of this together – you can go to this movie and have the pants scared off of you or you can go in and find a lot of other stuff – it’s really up to you.

Q: It’s also interesting, and very frightening, the way that the film uses an object that is very much part of ever day life – the mirror – and turns it into something incredibly sinister.
Kiefer Sutherland: It’s rooted in a potential reality. There are mirrors everywhere and you are sitting there going ‘I’ve got a home like that..’ You know I had a tendency when I was a child, I would certainly tell a lie to get out of trouble and then came the day when I had done really well at school in that particular week and I got the red star sticker for the week and I took it home and my Mom thought I was lying. And I’ll never forget the frustration. And everything I did to insist that I was telling the truth made myself sound like I was lying even worse. I think, on some level, that has trapped us all and this is just taking that to a greater extreme. At first no one will believe Ben Carson when he tells them what is going on. So I think immediately an audience will understand the frustration that this guy is going through and anything that you can do to have an audience personalise their interaction with a story, you are winning.

Q: Do you find that taking on something completely different from 24 reinvigorates you when you return to the show?
Kiefer Sutherland: Yes. And oddly enough I’ve found for me that I do better working in the break (from 24). To play a different character and then get to go back to do Jack Bauer, yes it does reinvigorate me. As opposed to the times when I have taken the break off, I go through a very odd process of trying to get back into it because I haven’t been working for a while. I tend to do better like that.

Q: Where are you now in terms of 24?
Kiefer Sutherland: We’re filming at the moment. Because of the writer’s strike we will finish the entire season by November. And it will be the first time in our history that we will have finished all 24 episodes before we show one, which is fantastic. That alone has allowed the writers to really craft something as opposed to having to work under such a tight schedule and disappointing as the writer’s strike was, not least for an audience – and for everybody who works in this business on both sides, a strike is a hard thing to go through – it allowed us to make what I believe is the best season of 24 we’ve ever made which I’m very excited about.

Q: When will that air?
Kiefer Sutherland: Well, there’s a two-hour movie prequel that sets up season 7 which we shot in Africa. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about and that goes in November and then the season will start in January here (in the US). And I hope that the two hour prequel will go everywhere – Europe, South America, Asia, US, Canada, all at the same time, all on the same night. Because the second it airs in one place it’s on a DVD and people are downloading it. I don’t care about that, I really don’t. But I would like them to see it on a proper screen with proper sound so that it does it justice.

Q: How do you feel about playing Jack Bauer now?
Kiefer Sutherland: One of the great fears that I had, and I think every actor has when they enter into the possibility of television, is you sign a contract and it used to be minimum of five years and then it became a minimum of 7, and you start thinking: “OK, I’m 33-years-old and I won’t be finished with this until I’m 40.” And then you start to think: “Well, those are the best years of your life…” Or at least at 33 you are hoping that they will be the best years of your life. And I’m sitting there thinking about the one thing that every actor has always talked about, and that is ‘what’s it going to be like to have to play the same character over that long a period of time?’

And it wasn’t until the second or third year that I thought to myself ‘what an arrogant thing to say, “oh to play the same character..” Because it’s not the same character – every year informs the next year. When I first started playing him he had a wife and a daughter, by the time I started playing him the next year, he had lost his wife, so the character had changed, just like a human being changes over time.

Q: So it evolves and presents fresh challenges?
Kiefer Sutherland: Yes and it’s taught me more about breaking down a script, it taught me more about breaking down a character, it informed me more about acting. I can go from film to film and make huge, gigantic choices – I can make a film like Dark City and then make a film like A Few Good Men and then do a film like Mirrors and the characters are vastly different. In 24 over the course of the seven years I’ve been playing him he physically still pretty much resembles the same guy, but instead of making a huge change with a beard or hair colour or wardrobe, instead of making five choices to differentiate one character from another, I’m making 20 small ones that together will have an impact of one big change. I can’t express to you how great an education that has been and there have been times when I’ve been successful at it and there have been times when I’ve been frustrated and not successful. The entire experience of 24 has been one gigantic learning process, you know, and I’m grateful, deeply grateful, for that and I love going to work to be that guy.

Q: Do you put a time limit on playing Jack Bauer?
Kiefer Sutherland: It’s still a writer’s medium. We really do believe that we have done something special with season 7. We probably ran into more hiccups with season 6 than we were accustomed to so it put a lot of fight back into us. So I think you have to take each year as it comes because the last thing you want to do is take it from this prestigious height and start dragging it down. It doesn’t deserve that and we’re there to service the show so service it we will. Invariably it will be an audience that will tell you it’s done and that has to be the contract you will have with an audience – they are the ones that put you in a place to do it, they are the ones that appreciated it and they are the ones to tell you it’s over.

Q: You’ve got your own music label, Ironworks. What’s the thinking behind that?
Kiefer Sutherland: My best friend is a guy named Jude Cole who is a phenomenally musician, he’s played guitar for everybody and he is an incredible guitar player. It started out that he would score films I would direct and we would record songs to sell to films and so that the licensing fees wouldn’t be huge or massive and just for background radio and stuff like that and that started to do quite well and then we found a building that inspired us to build a studio. And this was all coming out of the fact that we were watching really great artists being overlooked by big labels.

So, we saw the whole business changing and realised that the business model was at fault, not the music. And companies got so bloated and companies got so big that if an artist didn’t sell a million records it wasn’t worth their time. We can sell a 120,000 records and that artist is buying a house. There’s absolutely no reason that you can’t make it on that small level again.

Q: Do you have to love the bands you sign?
Kiefer Sutherland: Oh God, yes. We’re a tiny label and you have to put everything on the line for it and there’s a reason why we’ve only got three bands. But Rocca DeLucca and The Burden sold close to a couple of hundred thousand records. We’ve got two other records coming out, one from a band called Honeyhoney and another from a band called Billy Boy on Poison. One is kind of a cow-punk band, really a unique sound and Billy Boy on Poison is one of the greatest rock ‘n roll bands I’ve ever heard.

Read our review fo Mirrors

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