Nicholas Winton, a British stockbrocker, organized the Czech Kinderstransport, a heroic rescue operation that saved hundreds of Jewish children at the dawn of World War II. One Life tells his astonishing true story along two timelines. Anthony Hopkins portrays Winton in '80s England when his heroic efforts were lauded on a popular television show. Johnny Flynn plays the younger Winton, who springs into action when seeing the appalling refugee crisis in 1939 Czechoslovakia and the imminent Nazi invasion.

Romola Garai co-stars as Doreen Warriner, who led the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia and worked tirelessly with Winton to facilitate the children's escape. "It felt like a real privilege to be offered the opportunity to play her. She was a truly extraordinary person who achieved a lot in her life, says Garai. Garai believes One Life gives her the credit that is sometimes overlooked in historical retellings, saying, "Nicholas Winton was horrified by the thought that he might be singled out for any kind of praise. He religiously mentioned her, Trevor Chadwick, and the colleagues in Prague every time anyone tried to draw any kind of attention to him."

The venerable Helena Bonham Carter is fantastic as Babi Winton, Nicholas' mother, who was instrumental in helping him fund the operation and place the children in British foster homes. Bonham Carter says Babi Winton "must have been a phenomenal woman. A phenomenal mother to create such a phenomenal man." You can watch our interviews above and below and read on for our complete interviews with Romola Garai and Helena Bonham Carter.

Romola Garai as Doreen Warriner

MovieWeb: You're playing Doreen Warriner, a real person who did extraordinary things. There's a lot more gravitas in the role. Talk about your preparation and research for the character.

Romola Garai: It felt like a real privilege to be offered the opportunity to play her. She was a truly extraordinary person who achieved a lot in her life. I wanted to convey many things about her. She was incredibly intelligent. She left Cambridge with a degree in economics which, for a woman in the 1920s, was very unusual. She was a linguist. She was a humanitarian. She was incredibly brave. She was also really funny, and had a good time as well. So, I just wanted to try and communicate as much of that as possible because she's sadly no longer with us. I tried to imagine that she was here while I was playing her and preparing for the role, and that she would feel like she was being honored appropriately.

MW: Let me ask you a hard question. Nicholas Winton is a revered hero and gets a lot of credit. But some people say that Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick were in Czechoslovakia being hunted by the Nazis and Gestapo while he was safe in England. What do you say to those who think maybe he's getting more credit than he deserves?

Romola Garai: No, I think the wonderful thing about that group of people is that they just refuse to be separated from each other in any kind of meaningful way when it came, eventually, to this sort of allocation of historical view. Nicholas Winton was horrified by the thought that he might be singled out for any kind of praise. He religiously mentioned her, Trevor Chadwick, and the colleagues in Prague every time anyone tried to draw any kind of attention to him. I don't think that the separation in terms of him being in the UK and them being in Prague was a reflection of anything other than what was practical.

Romola Garai: Doreen spoke Czech, and obviously, her time in the office predated Nicholas Winton's. But it really was his idea. I think she was so potentially kind of exhausted by the efforts of the ever expanding number of refugees coming from Nazi Germany. She really did need the efforts of an outsider. Somebody who had fresh energy and fresh eyes to come in with this potential solution, one aspect of the problem, which was what was going to happen to all of these kids.

MW: I love Anthony Hopkins and the fact that he's getting so much acclaim for this role. But I also love Johnny Flynn. He's a tremendous actor, so versatile, and he's really the other part of One Life. You spend a lot of scenes with him. So let's give him some credit. Talk about working with Johnny as the young Nicholas.

Romola Garai: I think Johnny is a really extraordinary actor. He's incredibly intelligent and very modest. You don't always get all of those things together. He's very instinctive. He's very natural in his performances, but he really has no interest in the kind of blah. I think he's somebody who feels incredibly in touch. He's a musician as well, with the experience of making art and the transfer between the creator and the audience. He's just a brilliant actor, and also just a really nice guy, and really fun to be around. It was a great privilege to get to work with him. I really enjoyed it.

MW: You're working on Scoop for Netflix about Prince Andrew. What's that all about?

Romola Garai: Yeah, so it's coming out on [April] fourth or fifth, I think on Netflix. It's a dramatization of the interview that was conducted by Emily Maitlis, who's one of the biggest news anchors in the UK for Newsnight with Prince Andrew. That interview became a sort of global sensation because he was interviewed about the Jeffrey Epstein case over the course of this interview. The show dramatizes the putting together of that interview. How they got the palace to agree to it. It really is, I guess, about the British media's relationship with the crown. So, in that sense, it's interesting and always topical. It's a really interesting film. It'll be interesting to know what journalists who obviously operate in this kind of space think of it.

Helena Bonham Carter as Babi Winton

MW: Babi Winton is a force of nature. You can see with Nicolas that the apple did not fall far from the tree. How do you embody a real person?

Helena Bonham Carter: Now what I wanted to do, because I just thought she must have been a phenomenal woman, a phenomenal mother to create such a phenomenal man. I took it all personally. I thought the mother makes the son, you know? So, without taking all the credit, I managed, and I had the luck to talk to Barbara Winton.

Helena Bonham Carter: First of all, I read the book. Barbara, who was Nicky's daughter, she wrote this book. And that was what the film was based on. I had the luck to speak to her. She had a memory of her. Sadly, I literally spoke to her in the last few weeks of her life. She died of lung cancer. She couldn't see when we were filming. But she gave me a sense, I asked millions of questions about her grandmother to try and get a sense of this sort of woman and the essence of her. I don't look like a Babi. She was quite a tall person.

Helena Bonham Carter: But you know what was the best thing? Nick Jr., the son of Nicholas, came up to me after the screening that I went to, and said it's Granny, which is kind of amazing. And so I felt very vindicated. But a lot of it was in the book. That was my luck. I thought I really wanted to read about this man. We need more Wintons. The world needs more Wintons. We need heroes at the moment. We need wise people. What is it about him that made him able to do what he did? So I spent a lot of time with that. I do think that she gave him a lot. She gave him chutzpah. She gave him a sense of 'I can do it.'

MW: Anthony Hopkins is amazing here. But I want to give some credit to Johnny Flynn. I think he is absolutely superb as the young Nicholas Winton. Most of your scenes are with him. Talk about working with Johnny. What was that like?

Helena Bonham Carter: Well, he is another lovely human. He's a really sweet, great soul, a beautiful soul. Although, me and Hopkins are bumping into each other, and he calls me mother still (laughs). We were the second half of the shooting. Johnny could watch Hopkins do that. And just without doing an impersonation, but he just watched him and got his rhythm. He's so genuinely kind. Flirty, I call him. He was wonderful to work with. We had a great time.

Helena Bonham Carter: I had thought it was going to be just shooting up the road because they actually lived in Hampstead. That was another sort of coincidence. The Wintons lived and did everything in a living room just like half a mile away. Would you do that in your living room? But we only did one shot there. And the rest was, of course, in Prague, such as the magic of filmmaking. Let's make Hampstead in Prague.

MW: There are a lot of children still being hurt in war zones. So, without getting political, what do you hope is the message that people take from this film and what Nicholas Winton did?

Helena Bonham Carter: I think that you can contribute whoever you are. You can get up and do it. You don't have to be partisan. You get the children out. That man got the children out. It wasn't because they were Jewish. He was a humanist. It wasn't either one or the other. It was a triumph of humanity. His position was as a human and not any kind of tribal position. We can take that and be inspired. Every individual has the power to make a difference. We have the courage.

One Life is currently in limited theatrical release from Bleecker Street Films. You can watch the trailer below: