Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts join Chiwetel Ejiofor in Secrets in Their Eyes

With Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts as his co-stars, Chiwetel Ejiofor could have found his latest role intimidating.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, star of Secrets in Their Eyes.

Initially, Secret in Their Eyes, the new film starring Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman, was a Chiwetel Ejiofor film. Neither of the most notable actresses of the past 30 years was attached to Billy Ray’s adaptation of Juan Jose Campanella’s Academy Award-winning 2009 film (which had a prefixed definite article in the same title) when the director approached Ejiofor.

The British actor, who had been notable in film and television for a decade without breaking into leading-man territory, was enjoying a rich run, topped by his lead performance in 12 Years a Slave. In any year other than 2013, Ejiofor might have won the best actor Oscar for his performance (which was won by the resurgent Matthew McConaughey).

No matter; that performance made him a bankable lead actor and Ray was keen to have Ejiofor play the lead role of Ray, an FBI investigator consumed by a case involving his former work partner, Jess (Roberts).

“In my first conversation with Billy we started to talk about this character and story and it was well after that it became (about) Nicole and Julia,” Ejiofor recalls. “And, of course, that was incredibly exciting (having) these iconic, legendary actresses. With these characters being so nuanced and their relationships being so complex and having a real psychological depth to them, it was wonderful to play with such experienced and brilliant actresses.”

It is also a treat seeing three accomplished screen actors butt heads in an uncompromising, adult film. At first look, Secret in Their Eyes appears to be a procedural crime thriller, although it has the wit to barely focus on the procedural aspects of solving the crime.

Instead Ray, who previously has written hard dramas including Shattered Glass (which he also directed), State of Play and Captain Phillips, chose to focus on the dynamics of the trio in a solemn, moody piece. And that is a little surprising given the billing the actresses usually receive and the glamour they can project. Their casting didn’t change the substance or stakes of the relatively low-budget film, Ejiofor says.

“Because they’re really skilled actors, that distinction means it just enriches the experience of making a film like this,” he says. “They have such a skill set and depth and range and inevitably I knew I’d learn a lot making the film. It was so gratifying for that to happen and work up so close to such terrific actors.”

It was also gratifying for the star of Children of Men and American Gangster to perform in a sharp, adult drama. Not that he takes lighter roles as a rule but the concerns of Secret in Their Eyes are somewhat different and heavier than those of The Martian (in which he starred as the NASA go-between Vincent) and his upcoming role as Baron Mordo in the next Marvel Studio comic book series, Doctor Strange.

He agrees Ray’s drama, adapted from the Argentinian hit, is “a very complex psychological thriller drama the kind that’s rarely made anymore, so I was excited to look at it and these very interesting relationships between people”.

The original film’s setting was amid Argen­tina’s “Dirty War” of the late 1970s in which state-sponsored right-wing security squads hunted and exterminated any guerillas or dissidents associated with socialist causes. It gave that stylish film an allegorical bite.

Ray moves the narrative to the post-September 11 environment in which the politics aren’t so central but they permeate the moods of the characters and their workplace. (Kidman plays a district attorney.)

The director’s sense of assurance in his three lead performers and narrative is displayed aptly in the slow reveal of a major twist towards the film’s end, in which the lead characters don’t speak for minutes. Ejiofor believes that shows the film’s confidence in its audience’s smarts.

“These people develop through the course of this time a very, very clear deep understanding of each other and the hope is also the audience understands their relationship very fully by the end of the film,” he says.

“That allows us to potentially not have to spell everything out and that the audience is right there with these characters.

“That was the hope,” he adds. “That these relationships could be nuanced and subtle and the psychology so detailed.”

The psychology of which, without giving away any plot details, is intense given the story’s trauma and complicated notions of revenge. It was an intense “pretty full experience”, Ejiofor admits. “We all went down the rabbit hole and to a degree did the personal math on all these feelings and emotions that the film kind of talks about,” he says.

A tight shooting schedule, with time to decompress, ratcheted up the tension “so it was a very engaging and involving process making the film”.

And an experience that fits within his current broad palette of performances. Apart from his role in the surprise box office hit of this year, The Martian (which has become, incredibly, Rid­ley Scott’s highest grossing film), Ejiofor has performed on stage for the National Theatre in Everyman, in John Hillcoat’s coming crime drama Triple 9 and now in the new Marvel movie, Doctor Strange.

It’s a wonderful mix of sublime and slightly ridiculous that he regards as “fascinating”.

“I’ve been fortunate I’ve been able to kind of approach very, very different things,” he says. “The journey is always attempting to discover the films where you can kind of explore different tones and colours.

“And create engaging narratives.

“That’s always what I was gunning for and enjoying about being an actor and so it’s been great that I’ve been exploring very different things in film and in theatre.”

Secret in Their Eyes is open nationally.