It’s said that the secret of political success lies in the meeting of the man and the moment.

You could easily argue that the same is true for film stardom, a point well proven by a man named Matthew Goode and a moment defined by the world premiere of his latest movie, Burning Man, on Saturday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

It’s not that Goode hasn’t had his time in the limelight before now. As soon as he burst on the big screen in 2004 with projects like Chasing Liberty and Match Point, he was obviously a presence to reckon with, an impression intensified by his later work in Brideshead Revisited and A Single Man.

But in all these films, Goode was the stalwart supporting player, always the best man, never the groom.

“I never complained, because it’s great when you’re not in something too much. That way, if it bombs, you don’t get blamed,” he jokes over the phone from Nashville, where he’s currently shooting a film called Stoker, opposite Nicole Kidman.

“Besides, if you’re going to do a lead, then you have to do more than look pretty and open a door.”

The uncompromising Australian drama by Jonathan Teplitzky certainly finds Goode doing a lot more than that.

He plays a British chef named Tom, working in a restaurant on trendy Bondi Beach, just outside of Sydney. At first, he just seems to be “a bit of a major dick,” in Goode’s words, treating his son, his staff, his customers and all the women in his life with a brutal sort of disdain.

But as Teplitzky’s story unfolds, we gradually become aware of a personal tragedy in Tom’s recent past and we turn on a dime from loathing him, to pulling for his emotional and mental survival.

“I feel it’s the most fascinating script I’ve ever been involved with and you know I’d have no hesitation in telling you if I felt the opposite.”

Goode’s speaking the truth. His gift for candour in discussing some of his earlier films (Leap Year, anyone?) hasn’t always gone down well in the business, but he claims now that “people can’t always tell when I’m joking around.”

He’s got a point, because there’s a wonderfully breezy quality to Goode’s conversation that makes you feel like you’re hoisting a few with him in the pub after a long day’s shoot, not jumping through the hoops of film promotion.

When you ask him about the film’s opening shot, a close-up of Goode, naked, from behind, indulging in an activity which is said to make one go blind, he laughs and relates the first time he read the script.

“My other half (partner Sophie Dymoke) shouted down from upstairs, ‘What are you doing in this script?’ ‘I’m masturbating over a hooker.’ ‘What page are you on?’ ‘Page One.’ ‘Oh my God!”

But it was the dramatic content of the script that proved even tougher to deal with.

“I had to shoot an amazingly emotional scene in a car with the young actor who played my eight-year-old son. Well, I was supposed to shoot it with him, but the Australian child labour laws are so rigid and our shooting schedule was so tight that I had to do it without him even being there. I’d never approached anything as hard as that in my life.”

Normally, an actor turns to a director for help in those kind of moments, but matters were complicated here by the fact that Teplitzky made no bones about telling everyone that the tragedy at the script’s core came from his own life.

“There were some things so personal, I didn’t feel I could ask him about them,” admits Goode. “I used to fear that I’d be on the set one day and he’d come over to me and say, ‘It didn’t happen like that, mate, what are you doing?”

What kind of a journey brings an actor to a place like that in his life?

For Goode, it began in Devon, England, where he was born on April 3, 1978, the youngest of five children.

Despite the upper-crust accent he’s affected in many of his roles, Goode is the first one to fervently insist “I’m not posh, not in the slightest. My parents spent some money on my education, but I wasn’t born to the purple. My dad was a geologist and my mum was a nurse who directed amateur theatrics.

“She was an orphan, was my mum, and she always had it in her head that she was really Laurence Olivier’s love child.”

Although she propelled Goode into some of her productions as a child, he thinks that “it wasn’t until I was 17 that I caught the acting bug,” a path which led him to the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London and, for a brief while, onto the stage.

“It’s kind of ironic that I trained for the theatre, but hardly spent any time there at all. I think I need to go back to do it again before I lose my nerve. I don’t have any great pressing need to do ‘my’ Hamlet, but I’d love to play Tom in The Glass Menagerie or something new by one of our amazing British playwrights.”

By the time Goode was 24, he was making his TV debut in the revisionist Cinderella saga, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and from then on, his career took off.

He modestly attributes his success to “great agents and good luck. To this day, I remain extremely grateful as well as slightly afraid.”

Fear was certainly one of things motivating him in shooting Burning Man. “It was so hard to grasp sometimes how to play him, because the script deliberately fractures the narrative and my character’s behaviour may seem erratic at first, but it all comes together in the second half, when his past catches up with his future.”

Just as he was reluctant to go to his director for help in translating the real-life events to the screen, he also didn’t want to spend too much time training as a chef, although his kitchen technique (as well as his temper) make him seem like a younger, cuter Gordon Ramsay.

“I did some chef work in advance so I wouldn’t look like a bump on a log, but I didn’t talk to anyone about what drove them as a chef. You can feel like a parasite if all your characterization is built up from other people. In the end, it has to come from what’s on the page and what’s inside of you.”

The primary thing that bothers Goode about his career so far, is that on a lot of occasions he’s had to be on location for months at a time and “I just don’t like being away from those I love,” he says, speaking primarily of his longtime partner, Dymoke and their 2-year-old daughter, Matilda Eve.

“But don’t get me wrong, I love the work. You just keep going out there and doing your best. Making a film is very hard work and you live or die by the sword just a little bit every time you do it, but I wouldn’t chuck it in.

“My dream is to one day own a country house on the shore in England, have gotten married, wipe some debt off and get a few more good films. I hope I’m doing this for my whole life, not just a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am”

MATTHEW GOODE FIVE FAVE FILM ROLES

CHASING LIBERTY — What’s not to like? It was wonderful shooting in Europe, you gather great friends and have great experiences.

MATCH POINT — It was very intimidating at first, working for Woody Allen and for the first few days I kept saying ‘I’m definitely getting fired.’ But it turned out to be the most relaxed shoot I’ve ever been on.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED — It can be troublesome if you’re the narrator of the story and you barely speak in the film, but when you work with extraordinary people, you only get better yourself.

WATCHMEN — Wearing a neoprene suit is gosh-darn hot. That’s what I learned. I also learned that the bigger the budget, the more time you spend sitting in your trailer.

A SINGLE MAN — Tom Ford was one of the most prepared directors I ever worked for and Colin Firth is the kind of mate you want to chum around with forever, especially after a few drinks.

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2011/09/08/the_big_interview_matthew_goode_is_burning_his_way_to_the_top.html