Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe star in the new action government flick, Body of Lies, directed by Ridley Scott, and based on The Washington Post’s colummist, David Ignatius’s 2007 novel.  DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a CIA operative, working undercover in the Middle East to bring down a major terrorist leader, while Crowe’s character Ed Hoffman, plays his manipulative CIA boss who wants him to just follow the rules.  We sat down with the gents to discuss their friendship, and why they chose to do this movie.

Filmazing:  You spent more time together doing these interviews than you did filming the whole movie, didn’t you?  You don’t have many scenes together.

Leonardo DiCaprio:  We had a good couple of weeks doing scenes together. First in Washington, and then we went to Morocco. But a lot of our stuff was done over the phone, as he is basically telling me to, giving me bad direction, as far as a CI boss is concerned, making me risk my life consistently in the Middle East. We worked together when we were much younger on The Quick and the Dead, and we’d seen each other one or two times in between that 15 year break.  It was just great to see that Russell is the same guy that he always was, and we got to joke around again.  He’s just as professional, takes what he does just as seriously, and is virtually unchanged.

Filmazing:  Great, do you feel the same way about him?

Russell Crowe:  Oh yeah, he’s a great fellow. I think we got on together so well when we were younger because we were in a situation that was, we were on a movie that was all about status, and he’d been working since he was a kid, and I’d been working since I was a kid.  For both of us, it was our first big budget Hollywood movie, and we had Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman, and all these amazing character actors; Lance Hendrickson and fellows like that.  It was probably intimidating to both of us, we both felt like we were sort of like the new kids on the block so we formed our own little status club. We sort of separated ourselves from whatever battles they were going through, and just enjoyed the experience of doing it.

Filmazing:  That’s fabulous.  What was it about these roles that made you want to take on these parts, and participate in this film?

Russell Crowe:  When Ridley called me, he said think of him as an overweight football player with bad knees, but you can still see his physical grace.  Now physical grace leads you to his femininity, and the femininity is illustrated by the fact that he’s a great multi- tasker. So to me it was a yes to start with because it was Ridley, and I like being on the set with Ridley, and then that description of the character.  Also knowing Ridley as a filmmaker and the worlds he creates made it an easy situation for me to enjoy.

Filmazing: That’s fascinating, that’s great insight into that character, what about you?

Leonardo DiCaprio:  For me it was the opportunity to work with Ridley, Ridley and Russell. More so than that, to be a part of a political sort of espionage CIA thriller like this, that is so pertinent to the sort of political climate of the world, and is what is on so much of the American consciousness right now. Also, doing a film that stood on its own two legs as a great piece of entertainment.  A film that, Bill Monahan wrote, who also wrote The Departed, and who knows how to create suspense, and knows how to create drama, and he knows how to keep you at the edge of your seat.  At the center of this great character who is trying to hold onto a moral value system in an immoral world, he is fighting a war where everyone is deceiving him and stabbing him in the back.  He is trying to forge lasting relationships in order to get the job done, and he is constantly being undermined by his boss to just follow the orders of the country.  It’s a great journey that this character had in the film.

Filmazing: Thank you very much gentlemen.