Matthew Rhys isn’t above getting starstruck.
While filming the new BritBox murder mystery Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero, the actor, 50, says it was “intimidating” working with the legendary Anjelica Huston for the first time.
“I was nervous because those kind of Hollywood dynasties don’t come around very often,” Rhys tells PEOPLE. “In fact, I believe [the Hustons are] the only family to have three generations of Oscar winners. Working with that caliber, you’re always concerned as to whether you’ll be able to hit the ball across a net in a way that they expect. I also grew up with her father [John’s] films and her films. It’s always intimidating meeting big stars.”
Around the start of filming, Rhys says he’d recently watched Huston, 73, in 1990’s The Witches with his son Sam, 8, whom he shares with longtime partner Keri Russell. (Russell also has son River, 17, and daughter Willa, 12, with her ex-husband Shane Deary.)
“I watched it and was like, ‘Christ, she’s so good in this,'” he says.
Rhys says Sam was in New York while he was in England shooting, so he “sadly” didn’t get to meet Huston.
“I was too shy to go, ‘Look, I’m as much of a fan as my son, but it would really blow my son’s mind if I could have a picture with you,'” he says. “She’s a rare person I’d ever want to have a picture with, but then I couldn’t bring myself to ask.”
During their time on set together, Rhys says Huston turned out to be just as great as he’d imagined.
“She clearly has mischief through her,” he says. “She still has a great twinkle in her eye. I was a little bit shy and a little bit quiet around her, so I wasn’t probing or joking in any way, and really, I only had a few scenes with her. I didn’t have as many as some of the other cast, and I was a lot more envious of them. When I was around her, I just tried to be on my best behavior and not say anything stupid and embarrass myself.”
In Towards Zero, Rhys plays a troubled detective who tries to untangle a toxic web of jealousy, deceit and dysfunction. Along with the A-list company, another perk of the job was getting to be “the last one in because you need five minutes in the makeup chair.”
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“You don’t have to worry about if you’ve had a late night or creasing your costume,” he says. “It’s the ideal, really. I’m aging into those parts now like Gary Oldman in Slow Horses where you’re just like, ‘I can be rumpled, I can lie down. I don’t have to worry about looking pristine.'”
Though Rhys and Russell, 49, had to break their usual rule of not going longer than three weeks without seeing each other while he shot Towards Zero, they made it work.
“I went into a fourth week, and then obviously it’s just all the FaceTime and all that stuff,” he says. “It’s a miracle how we survived without it.”
Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero is available on BritBox.
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