Taron Egerton lived with Sir Elton John to research for ‘Rocketman’.
The 29-year-old actor plays the ‘Your Song’ hitmaker in the new biopic about his life and he has revealed he ended up living with John to get to know him better.
He said: "I spent a fair bit of time with him before we started shooting. He didn’t come on set, thank God, I’d have found that really hard. But I went and stayed with him before we started shooting and he let me read his diaries and I hung out with him and got to ask him thing … which certainly protects me a bit.
"He lends a bit of an air of authenticity and it gives this a bit of a seal of approval really, which is great. I still speak to him once or twice a week now. He’s very in my life. It’s nice … and a bit f***ing surreal!"
And Egerton has also opened up about the process he underwent to sound more like the famous singer – as he admits it is "inevitable" that there’s a bit of himself in there.
He added: "I have to say, I think when your primary objective is sounding like someone, then you slightly sacrifice a purity of expression and a real humanity. It can become a little bit sterile … And I absolutely didn’t want to do that because this is about illuminating someone’s life and what’s really going on with them.
"So there’s inevitably a bit of Taron in there because we’re talking about the spirit of someone and about their inner life and their drug addiction, not about the way they move their mouth in an interview."
The ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ star is glad they are telling John’s story in "a slightly less conventional way" as it gave him a "little more licence" as an actor.
Speaking to Man About Town magazine, he shared: "For me, it’s really fun telling this story in a slightly less conventional way because it means you can bend the character slightly. So me running around like a lunatic and dancing as if my life depended on it in this kind of wild, anarchic way, is not necessarily something we’ve seen Elton John do before. But that’s fun. We get that little more license."
Taron Egerton lived with Sir Elton John to prepare for Rocketman role
