For Tony Revolori, the scariest moment of making The Grand Budapest Hotel was meeting Bill Murray, not least because the actor was threatening to throw his dad in the hotel’s swimming pool.
“He was like, ‘I’ve thrown parents in the pool before, don’t make me throw you,’” says Tony, adopting a hangdog look and mimicking Murray in the lowest, most droll voice possible. He wasn’t joking: according to Revolori, Murray gave a stage parent an unwanted dip on the set of Wes Anderson’s previous film, Moonrise Kingdom.
Thankfully for Revolori’s dad, the former Ghostbuster went up to him after the wrap and said, “Actually, I’ve decided you’re OK. I won’t have to throw you in the pool after all.” Revolori theatrically wipes his brow as if to say: thank God for that.
We’re sitting in a quiet wing of the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, a five-star monolith directly opposite the Brandenburg Gate and with a lobby somehow busier than The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s pre-Second World War resort in the fictional European republic of Zubrowka. It’s all a bit new for the unheralded Revolori, who is 17 years old, 5ft 6in, and peers through large, thick-rimmed glasses. The night before our interview, the film premiered at the Berlin film festival and Revolori walked the red carpet for the first time, Murray and Anderson on either side, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Ralph Fiennes and Saoirse Ronan in tow. Each A-lister has a supporting or cameo role in The Grand Budapest Hotel, but Tony, in his first big feature film, stars in almost every scene.
He plays Zero Moustafa, a lobby boy with a refugee past now under the strict command of Fiennes’s high-mannered hotel concierge M Gustave. After Tilda Swinton’s ancient patroness bequeaths them a priceless painting, the unlikely pair become embroiled in a noir caper that could not be more Wes Anderson if it tried: nostalgia-tinted, gently charming yet unfolding at a breakneck pace, as if the miniature figures of an ornate doll’s house have been brought to life and instructed to undertake all sorts of forgotten fun, from jail breaks and pistol fights to vertiginous chases down a mountainside on the back of a rickety bobsleigh.
At the premiere, Tony signed the autographs, smiled for the paparazzi and answered the press pack’s questions like a veteran, yet in person he is nervously playful, quick to joke, keen to stress how overwhelmed he is by it all. “I was in Mumbai last month,” he says, recalling the Hindi film he was shooting there with Life Of Pi’s Suraj Sharma. “Trust me, I did not get the same sort of treatment out there. It’s all pretty strange.” He starts talking about Saoirse Ronan, his on-screen girlfriend. “I was petrified, because I knew she could kick my lights out if I tried anything,” he says, referring to her role as an assassin in Hanna, before jumping out of his seat to karate-swipe the air.
Early roles
Yet stardom has always been Revolori’s plan. He grew up “near Disneyland” in Orange County, California, “just another standard kid with an easy life near the beach”. Not that it sounds like a standard childhood at all. He got his first acting role at the age of two in an advert for baby food. Along with his older brother Mario, he acted throughout his childhood, bagging roles in TV series such as My Name Is Earl, Entourage and Shameless, and starring with his brother in The Perfect Game, a film about Little League baseball. They also perform “new-age folk” songs together, the questionable results of which are on YouTube. “But I need to stress,” says Tony, “I learned guitar solely for the purpose of meeting women. I’d heard it’s a great lady-catcher.” And how’s that working out? “So far the acting’s doing a bit of a better job.”
The brothers both auditioned and got to the last two for the lead part in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Mario thought he’d done enough to get the part, but Anderson chose Tony. “I beat him to it,” Tony says, his sibling rivalry muscling through, “so he has a bit of a sad air around him.” Have they managed to smooth things out? “Oh yeah, absolutely. As long as I bring him home a German girl, he’ll be fine.”
Tony is “a kid at heart but with an old man’s soul”. At least that’s how he describes himself on Voice123, a website for actors to advertise their voiceover skills. It’s a fitting summation of his character Zero, with his pencil moustache and large, woeful eyes. As cameo follows cameo, Tony remains on-screen, getting punched by Willem Dafoe and carrying on a constant ricocheting dialogue with Fiennes. It’s a highly calibrated performance, communicating depth and feeling with the most imperceptible shifts in facial expressions before rattling off quick-fire jokes. “We didn’t have to learn those comedic moments,” Tony says of his dynamic with Fiennes. “The timing comes from the writing, so we never had to rehearse it. We read poetry together instead of going over our lines. Fiennes never, ever gets his lines wrong.”
He begins to talk seriously about the high craft of acting and Wes Anderson’s famed attention to detail. “He’s just so meticulous. Every costume, every set, every moment is considered very seriously,” he says. “He had a very clear idea of who Zero is, so we talked about the character for months before the shoot. I’d act the scenes out at home, with Mario playing the concierge. Once I got the lobby boy costume on, it naturally flowed.”
The filming sounds just as fun as the scenes themselves, though it wasn’t always that way for Tony. As the escapade nears its climax, Harvey Keitel makes a guest appearance. At the end of the scene, he bids farewell to Gustave and Zero and slaps Zero in the face. “We had to do that scene 42 times, and Harvey Keitel is an ex-marine,” Tony says. “He’s tough, even for his age. And I didn’t know I was going to get slapped. Take one, wa-tish!” He mimes Harvey Keitel giving him a mighty whack. “Wes kept on saying, ‘Let’s do one more, just for the pleasure of it.’ And every time Harvey would do 10 push-ups to pump himself up. I was ready to die.”
The Grand Budapest Hotel finished filming in March last year. What has Tony been doing since then? “I’ve written a 104-page screenplay, which I want to direct,” he says. “It’s a drama about brotherhood and America, set on the East Coast and in California.” He pauses, before offering: “I want to be one of the youngest actors ever to direct a feature. That would be a nice thing to hear. It might prove to be a bigger challenge than I can take, but that’s the career I want, like George Clooney.” So he’s aiming for the stars? “Yeah, of course!” he exclaims with a large, genuine, Hollywood smile. “What else?”
The Grand Budapest Hotel is out in the UAE on Thursday, May 1.
