TORONTO — There are so many reasons for Kate Winslet to feel great about the new “Steve Jobs” movie that it doesn’t matter that critics panned the 2013 film “Jobs,” which was also about the Apple Computer co-founder.
“I have no reservations whatsoever and so excited to be a part of this project,” Winslet said in a recent interview at the Toronto Film Festival. She plays Joanna Hoffman, who worked closely with Jobs from the early days of Apple Computer.
Winslet’s confidence comes in part from the approach taken by the film’s Oscar-winning team: writer Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle. Both have a knack for tackling contemporary subject matter. But Winslet also feels that with a figure as prominent in the public conscience as Jobs, it’s hard to do a critically acclaimed biopic. So she’s happy it wasn’t made that way.
“It’s actually very much not that. It is deliberately not that. Aaron Sorkin decided that there was no interest for him in writing it in that way,” explained Winslet, who was in Toronto to promote another film, “The Dressmaker.”
Based on Walter Isaacson’s book of the same name, the film was shot like a play, rehearsed like one, and told in three acts.
“Each act covers a different year: 1984, 88, and 98 in Steve Jobs creative working life,” Winslet said. “We shot each act in chronological order, one act at a time.
While the actress expressed that making the film was educational, she also admits it was a “tough, but fascinating process.”
“It was very, very challenging. It’s 187 pages of continuous dialogue of just people talking,” she said. “It was very hard for all of us to really come up with what Danny (Boyle) wanted and needed to put this film together.”
“Steve Jobs” plays the New York Film Festival on Saturday, before opening nationwide on Oct. 8.