Interview: David Schwimmer

Just two months ago David Schwimmer became a father for the first time. Now he’s jetting around the world promoting his second-ever directorial effort, Trust – a film about child rape.

Entering starkly different territory from his slapstick comedy debut, Run Fatboy Run, starring Simon Pegg, the Friends star admits the birth of baby daughter Cleo in May made a deep impact on the project he’s been working on for seven years.

“Until I held my daughter for the first time, I never experienced that feeling of complete responsibility for her wellbeing and safety,” he says, with an awkward, shy snort.

Trust tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who is groomed online by a paedophile. It stars British actor Clive Owen as the victim’s father, and Schwimmer recruited newcomer Liana Liberato, who was just 14 at the time of filming and had never been kissed, to play Annie, a high school volleyball star who meets a “16-year-old guy” named Charlie in an internet chatroom.

At first, she suspects nothing, but as she becomes infatuated, she learns he’s not who he says he is. Persuasive in his affections, Charlie takes Annie to a hotel room and when her parents find out about her ordeal, it threatens to rip the family apart.

For Schwimmer, who’s been deeply involved with a rape charity in Santa Monica for 14 years, Annie’s story and, through it, those of many victims including two of his previous girlfriends, had to be told.

“About half a dozen friends of mine were child victims of sexual abuse – it’s prevalent a lot, even in my circle of friends,” he says, candidly.

“One in particular was going through a tough time when we were in the second year of our relationship. Everything started to resurface for her because of how close we were and how much she was beginning to trust me, and feel safe with me.

“It opened a door to all this stuff from her childhood, so she had to confront it and be in therapy while we were together. That experience was profound.”

Clive Owen gives a devastatingly raw performance as Will, an advertising executive who is devising a provocative underwear campaign, when he learns his daughter has been raped. He teams up with the FBI to hunt for Charlie and finds himself overwhelmed by the underground world of internet paedophiles.

Ever self-effacing, Schwimmer insists he can’t accept any praise for getting his cast to portray such a sensitive subject so effectively on screen.

He says he was “blessed” to have found young actress Liberato, who shouldered the burden of playing Annie – and he did everything in his power to ensure she felt secure.

Filming such intense scenes inevitably took its toll on the director, and there were tears.

“There were times when I would end my shoot day and drive home to the apartment where I was staying in Michigan. I’d have a glass of wine and suddenly get really emotional. I’d realise the scene I shot earlier had really affected me, but I didn’t process it until later.”

After such an intense seven years seeing Trust come to fruition, Schwimmer’s now keen to return to his first love, acting, but he won’t let the director’s chair get cold for too long.

“I love both, so I hope I can keep both plates spinning. Acting does seem like a breeze compared to the two or three-year journey of directing a movie, but I love acting and would love to get back to it now.

“I’ll probably do that for a little bit and then take a little time before directing again, just because it takes so much time and energy.”

Path of an actor-director

David Schwimmer was born in New York. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended Beverly Hills High School.

It was there where he had his first experiences of acting, cast at the age of 10 as the fairy godmother in a Jewish version of Cinderella.

Schwimmer has dated Natalie Imbruglia and married British photographer Zoe Buckman last year.

He was allegedly paid one million dollars an episode on his 10-series run of Friends.

Schwimmer was planning to play Charlie in Trust to show that paedophiles are often “our neighbours, family and friends”, but he ultimately decided it might “hurt the film”.

Trust is released in cinemas on Friday, July 8.