Kate Winslet on making The Mountain Between Us, DiCaprio’s survival advice, and toilet tips in the cold
British actress tells of how she dealt with the icy elements while making her latest film, in which she and Idris Elba play the only survivors of a plane crash in snow-covered mountains
If modern Hollywood is all about computer technology creating just about anything in the imagination, there seems to be a growing backlash to keep it real. First there was The Revenant , with its frontier story shot in the wilds of Canada. This summer, Christopher Nolan made Dunkirk with as many practical elements – Spitfires, Destroyers – as possible.
Now comes The Mountain Between Us. And, yes, the mountain is real.
Adapted from the novel by Charles Martin, it’s the story of two strangers – played by Kate Winslet and Idris Elba – on a chartered flight to Denver in the Rocky Mountains of the American West, who survive a plane crash in the snow and must either await rescue or find safety.
“I wasn’t interested in doing this in a studio, I wanted to do it in real places,” says Hany Abu-Assad, the Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker making his English-language debut with the movie.
The film was shot in sub-zero temperatures in the mountains on the border between the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, the cast and crew flown in by helicopter.
“It’s so cold that even your eyes, when tears come, they can almost freeze and you can’t open your eyes,” says Abu-Assad, safely ensconced in a warm London hotel for this interview. “Even the hair inside your nose freezes and becomes very painful. But then you need fearless actors with you; you can’t do it alone.”