Emma Thompson on Nanny McPhee

London24, 28 October 2005.

Actress Emma Thompson had only one pressing concern when she took on her latest movie role - not to frighten the life out of her five-year-old daughter Gaia.

Hardly surprising since the 46-year-old star had to wear a false snaggle tooth, cover her face in warts and don a not very fetching prosthetic bulbous nose for her part as the mysterious Nanny McPhee.

But Emma needn't have worried. When young Gaia saw her mum - warts and all - she didn't bat an eyelid. "Gaia was actually on set with me quite a lot," explains her proud mum. "But when I put on the make up, she didn't notice any difference at all. She'd just say 'Hello Mum'. There was no reaction, so I don't know what to make of that. Maybe I should feel slightly worried."

Happily, it wasn't just Gaia who approved of mum's new look - the actress herself relished the chance to dress down.

"I appeared at the costume test in full Nanny McPhee regalia," she recalls gleefully. "Complete with two large ears, two hairy warts, thick eyebrows that join in the middle and a squashed tomato nose."

Nanny McPhee is clearly a dramatic departure for the actress known for her poignant roles in films such as Howard's End, Love Actually and Sense And Sensibility but Emma was so keen to bring the character to the big screen she spent more than seven years toiling over the screenplay.

"It took a long, long time to write it," she smiles. "About five years in, I was just sobbing down the phone to the producer in Los Angeles, saying, 'I can't change it any more'."

Based on the Nurse Matilda series of children's novels by Christianna Brand, Emma's big screen version focuses on the mysterious Nanny McPhee who magically restores calm and order in the unruly Brown household of seven badly behaved children and their harried widowed father (Colin Firth).

"I found the original Nurse Matilda books on my bookshelf," explains Emma. "They weren't my main fare but I loved them and I loved the illustrations. The books were very dry and witty and dark, but also very sweet. I came across the first book again about seven years ago and thought, there's something rather interesting about this."

But though she's purely fictional, Nanny McPhee did bring back some not so magical childhood memories for Emma herself. "I remember having a particularly evil Polish au pair who ate all my Meltis Newberry Fruits after I came out of hospital after my tonsillectomy when I was seven. Paula the Polish Au Pair," she laughs.

"After that incident I ran away from home. I took my sister with me and filled a bag with Marmite sandwiches, went around the back of the house, ate the sandwiches and came back.

"I rang the bell and Paula came down in her dressing gown and I said, 'We ran away from home but we're back now, and she let us in'," she adds sheepishly.

Paula the Polish au pair seems to be the only blip on an otherwise idyllic upbringing. Emma and her actress sister Sophie are the daughters of talented veteran thespian Phyllida Law and Magic Roundabout narrator Eric Thompson, who died in 1982.

The London-born actress has made no secret of the fact she'd love a second child and says little Gaia, born following IVF treatment, takes top priority over her extremely successful and prolific career. "It's why I don't want to direct films," she reveals. "That's a 24 hour, seven days a week job. If you can tell me how to direct a film and be an effective mother at the same time then I'd do it."

Instead the multi-talented star is happy to concentrate on the magical Nanny McPhee. She admits she's already working on an idea for a follow up and says the film has been given the thumbs up by the most important critic of all - her daughter. "She's seen the film and loves it," smiles Emma. "We have it for her at home and after she watches it, she always points at me and says, 'You're the Nanny McPhee who will never leave'.

I star in the new Nanny McPhee movie

CBBC Newsround, 23 October 2005

Imagine getting the chance to star in a big feature film alongside major Hollywood stars.

Meet Sam - he's one of the lucky few who's been given a part in the new Nanny McPhee film!

It tells the story of a father (Colin Firth) who struggles to control his seven kids until the arrival of a magical Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson).

Sam Honywood, 9 years and plays Sebastian.

Sam plays one of the children and here he tells us about the auditions and why he's excited he got the part.

"I have been acting since I was four - I've been in quite a few adverts so far.

For the Nanny McPhee auditions, I had to pretend I was ill.

I had to make it sound like I had a blocked up nose. It was quite embarrassing. Good job my mum wasn't there!

Excited!

I had to audition about 11 times before I found out I got the part in the film.

They called my mum and I was really excited - I can't remember what I did, but I probably went yeaaaaaaaaa!

I was filming for four months at Pinewood Studios last year. I had tutoring at the studios to keep up with schoolwork which was fun.

Most of my friends were natural about me being in the film - until they found out that I was on Blue Peter.

Then they were after my Blue Peter badge!

Premiere

The premiere was excellent.

I was sort of nervous when I saw all the cameras at first, but then I got used to it.

I can't tell you too much about the film, but it's about a magical nanny with a funny face.

The kids hate her at first. But every time they do something good, a piece of her face changes. The kids are amazed!

My character Sebastian is known to eat too much.

He's just a kid who loves food, and the food he likes is junk food.

We are similar because I like to nick food and Sebastian likes to nick food too.

I like being naughty and Sebastian likes to be naughty!

Good for everyone

The great thing about getting this part was that I got to make new friends, and I got to act.

I also liked meeting all the actors and the director, and getting time off school!

I've watched the film myself a few times and I really loved it.

It's good for adults, kids, teenagers - it's good for everyone!"

Sam, 9, Croydon

Meet the children from Nanny McPhee

CBBC Newsround, 21 October 2005.

Interview with:

Eliza (13 years), plays Tora,

Raphael (11 years), plays Eric

and Sam (9 years), plays Sebastian.

The seven children of Mr Brown are so naughty and out-of-control that every nanny they have runs screaming from their house - until Nanny McPhee arrives that is!

She appears from nowhere one stormy night and sets about working her magic on the children - despite their best efforts to make her job as hard as possible...

Newsround met three of the children who star in Nanny McPhee: 13-year-old Eliza who plays Tora, 11-year-old Raphael who plays Eric and nine-year-old Sam who plays Sebastian.

Read on to find out what it was like being in the film.

How did you get the part?

Raphael: My mum's friend is an agent so she spotted me and my brother.

Eliza: The agency came up with the audition and there were so many kids we had workshops with lots of children. It was a long audition process - we went through eight or nine before they were able to put the family together.

Sam: I got it through an agent.

How did you behave while you were on set?

Eliza: Well there was a bit of teasing and stuff but we weren't that naughty really.

Sam: I was - when doing the beach scene I kept stealing doughnuts and the props men weren't very happy as they weren't there for the next scene!

What was it like working so closely with so many other children?

Raphael: It was actually pretty good because there were some like me who were new to the filming world and then there were experienced ones like Eliza and Simon.

Eliza: We got on really well because we are all such different ages and played such different characters. So it was like we were one big family.

Did you learn anything from your co-stars?

Eliza: Working so closely with Emma Thompson you are forever learning and getting tips.

As Emma wrote the script she had an idea in her mind what the characters would be like and she really helped us along the way to build up our experience of the characters.

There are pigs, chickens, dogs, a donkey and a spider in the film - what was it like working with so many animals?

Raphael: I had to hold the spider and I felt very bad about that. I have a fear of them which I didn't manage to overcome - I just had to stand very still and get on with it.

Sam: In one bit we were pulling the rope of a donkey and the prop man let go - we didn't know he was going to so we fell down! He did it on purpose though as he wanted to catch us by surprise so it would look realistic.

What did you get up to while you were waiting on set?

Raphael: We had to have three hours school tutoring a day.

Eliza: We also had a chill-out room for our breaks with bean bags, play stations and TVs.

What was the best bit about making Nanny McPhee?

Raphael: The money!

Eliza: Meeting all the really experienced actors and actresses. The whole thing was a really fantastic experience.

Sam: Everything - like getting to act and getting paid to do it. It means I have extra money for when I'm an adult so I will be able to buy my own house.

Would you like to continue acting?

Raphael: Not really no.

Eliza: I would love to carry on acting.

Sam: Yes - I want to be in Harry Potter! I could play one of the new characters from her next books but if I could play anyone it would be Ron - he's my favourite.

Have your lives changed since getting the part?

Sam: Not really - it's just the same as being an ordinary person.

Eliza: Not at all - I go home and I'm told I have to tidy my room and go to school - doing a film doesn't make anyone any more special.

It's Nanny McMe by Rick Fulton.

The Glasgow Daily, 12 October 2005

"So it was a bit obvious to do her as a Scot. But God knows she's got Celtic steel in her spine The daughter of Glasgow-born actress Phyllida Law, Emma has been coming to Scotland since she was three months old.

And she and husband Greg Wise were married in Dunoon in July 2003 and have a second home there.

Emma, born in London said: "I do feel Scottish. Not only because I am half Scottish but also because I've spent half my life here.

"I think Scotland is the most beautiful place in the world and I've been all over the world."

Emma added: "I'm really looking forward to Saturday. I've got a lot of friends coming from Ardentinny and Dunoon.

"My mum and dad (Eric Thompson, who died in December 1982) bought a place in Ardentinny when I was small. My uncle ran the tearoom in Ardentinny until I was 15.

"We never went abroad because my grandparents were there and my uncle ran the Primrose Tearoom.

"Dunoon is my place. I come here every holiday. So my daughter now has the same upbringing as I had. She goes to school in London but has this vivid country life during her holidays in Scotland."

Emma won a Best Actress Oscar for Howard's End in 1992 and for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense And Sensibility in 1995She is one of Britain's best known actresses thanks to films like In The Name Of TheFather,The Remains Of The Day, Love Actually and in the television series Tutti Frutti.

But motherhood is her greatest achievement. Her daughter Gaia, who'll be six in December, was born with IVF treatment as Emma suffers from polycystic ovaries.

Emma and Greg tried for three years to conceive a brother or sister for their daughter, a time which Greg later described as 'brutal'. He needed psychotherapy to get over the depression which gripped him towards the end.

Emma said: "It was a hard time but you have to get on with things.You can't wander around miserable."

But the couple have adopted a Rwandan teenager called Tindyebwa, who lost his parents and sister in his country's massacre. Emma met him at a Christmas party for the charity Care International when he was 15-years-old. Now at college, he lives with them at weekends and holidays.

She said: "I don't work more as a result of not having more children. "I've unofficially adopted a Rwandan son who is 18 now. And that's how I like it.

"I enjoy every minute of being a mum."

Colin Firth stars alongside Emma in the new movie.He plays widower Mr Brown who has seven children: Simon,Tora, Eric, Lily, Christianna, Sebastian and Baby Aggy.

With 17 nannies scared off by their bad behaviour and the agency claiming there are no more,Nanny McPhee arrives to sort them out. But Aunt Adelaide, whose allowance keeps the family together has threatened to stop supplementing Mr Brown's wage unless he remarries in a month. So the hunt is one for a suitable wife.

The film also stars Angela Lansbury as Aunt Adelaide, Kelly Macdonald, Celia Imrie, Imedla Staunton and Derek Jacobi.

Nanny McPhee, with her hideous face and magic stick, is a bit like Mary Poppins but she only arrives at the worst possible time, saying: "When you need me but do not want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go."

With Channel 4's Supernanny sorting out unruly children across the nation, childcare has become a major talking point.

Emma admits because both her parents were actors, she and her younger sister Sophie had a series of au pairs.

One of whom Emma never forgets. She said: "I just had my tonsils out when I was seven and this girl called Paula who was looking after us nicked my box of sweets.

"I was so angry I ran away from home.

"I can't believe she ate my sweeties. I still feel quite bitter about it.

"I took my sister, dressed up in our balaclavas, made some Marmite sandwiches and went round the corner to sit behind a tree next to our nursery school.

"We ate the sandwiches then went home and Paula opened the door.We said: 'We ran away but we're back now.' She let us in but never told anyone about it."

Greg and Emma juggle looking after their daughter with a family nanny called Viv who has been with them since Gaia was nine months old.

The actress, who was previously married to Kenneth Branagh, met Greg on the set of Sense And Sensibility, is becoming something of a children's favourite.

She voiced Captain Amelia in Treasure Planet and was also Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

But next up is comedy Stranger Than Fiction, co-starring Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Queen Latifah, which will be released next year.

However, Nanny McPhee may be back again.

Emma said: "Let's see how this one goes, but I have one up my sleeve if we think that people want it."

Kevin Bacon Reveals Where the Truth Lies by Edward Douglas

Comingsoon.net, 11 October 2005

A mainstay in Hollywood for over 25 years, actor Kevin Bacon has worked hard in recent years to get away from the nice guy image he established in movies like Footloose. In his most recent films, Bacon has played characters of questionable morals like pedophiles and rapists, but in his latest movie, Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, he plays something possibly even worse… a celebrity.

In this dark and erotic murder mystery in the vein of Basic Instinct, if it were directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Bacon plays Lanny Morris, one half of a successful '50s comedy duo along with Colin Firth's Vince Collins, who go their separate ways after a dead girl is found in their hotel room.

It's another challenging role for Bacon in which he has to clown around on stage, performing in a different style than he does with his rock band The Bacon Brothers. He also appears in a number of sexually charged scenes, one of them which almost got the film an NC-17 rating, before they decided to release it unrated.

ComingSoon.net sat down with Bacon to talk about the movie on his recent visit to New York.

CS: Did you get a chance to read Rupert Holmes' book before you got the part as Lanny, and were there a lot of changes made with the character for the movie?

Kevin Bacon: I read Rupert's novel after I got the part. In general, Rupert's book, as all books are, is a lot more complex, and there are more scenes that happen. In Rupert's book, the Vince character's the singer and he's not British. There are definite differences. In some ways, Rupert's book, in a great way, is even more fantastical and sort of over-the-top and even more stylized than the movie in some ways. I think that it has an almost crazier sense of humor than "Where the Truth Lies," but that's just Atom's imprint.

CS: Atom doesn't make movies in Hollywood. Do you think the way he views the starmaker machinery is different because of the distance he has from it?

Bacon: Well, yeah, I think he's making a movie that is a genre film, that is very different than some of the movies he's done before content-wise, in the fact that it all takes place in the States, and that it has an American character like Lanny. It's not really what he's done before, but I definitely think he gives it his own sort of feel in terms of pace and his eye for complexity of characters and secrets, and the darker side of the human condition. These are all things that he's dealt with time and time again in his movies. There is a certain kind of distance being up there in Canada and looking down on the American celebrity thing. It's almost like a refreshing kind of naivety he has, but at the same time, when you see Lanny and Vince moving through the hotel rooms and lobbies, getting off the planes and all that stuff, I lived that and it's like that. He definitely captures that.

CS: This is such a demanding role in so many ways. When you first looked at the script, did that seem daunting and how did you feel about doing those sex scenes?

Bacon: Look, I mean it's always difficult to do those scenes, and I do think that it's harder for women than it is for men. I try my best to make the women as comfortable as possible, plus I've probably done more of it than either of those girls have just by the nature of it. It's always kind of uncomfortable, but I also feel like I want to approach that stuff with as much truth as I can, in the same way as I do a dinner scene or a chase scene or whatever. They're character studios, so their sexuality is just a part of life. When you are in a scene, it should be telling a story. It shouldn't just be its own standalone thing; it's gotta be part of what's going on. For instance, the kind of sex with the publicist at the beginning of the movie is obviously very different than the scene with Alison, which is very different from the scene at the end of the movie. One is kind of comedic, and one is kind of tender and romantic, and one is a very emotional moment in the movie.

CS: Lanny's womanizing nature is a large part of his character, but do you think that's a way for him to not let people in and is that the nature of celebrity?

Bacon: I definitely think that he's someone who has a difficult time committing to one person. I don't think it's the nature of all celebrities. I think that the man who is able to commit to the woman long-term is more of the exception rather than the rule. The movie speaks to the fact that celebrity gives you a lot of different kinds of rules to live by in little ways. You move to the front of the line. People give you stuff for free. That's one thing, or maybe you can kill somebody and not go to jail for it. That's another example. One of those aspects is the ability to use your celebrity power in a sexual way. You see some ugly little guy who has got a gorgeous girl with him, but he happens to be a movie star. I wonder how that happened. Lanny certainly uses that to his advantage, and he's young and having a good time.

CS: How would you describe Lanny's relationship with Vince?

Bacon: It's like a love affair, like a marriage. They're very very close, and they have a real strong connection to each other, which is born out of a true affection. When you're on stage--I notice that because I'm in a band--that sort of danger that comes from playing music live with people, that kind of energy where anything can happen, and you have good shows and you have bad shows, and there's the adrenaline from the response you get. It's a very bonding feeling. You feel like brothers. When you see that in the scene with Lanny and Vince in the nightclub, and all that energy just explodes. It's a very tight relationship.

CS: In that sense, do you think that the tragic end to their relationship was inevitable?

Bacon: Well, yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of times you might see rock bands or comedy duos bust up. You know, it's hard to keep those things together. Yeah, it's hard to keep that thing going.

CS: With Lanny and Vince, some might immediately be reminded of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. What acts of the time were you looking at when developing this duo?

Bacon: One thing that was kind of cool was that Atom said that we gotta create this act, because we can't go and do an imitation of somebody. It's just not going to work, whoever we do an imitation of. Once he sort of put that out there, I started to do a lot of research and I realized that the idea of a musical-comedy duo has not existed in the last thirty years. It exists sometimes now on radio, when you get the morning drive guys, there's pairings like that, but not so much in the entertainment business, but it was a very important going back to vaudeville, Laurel and Hardy, and you have Abbott and Costello and Martin and Lewis and Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, and the Smothers Brothers. I looked at countless versions of all these guys, and one thing that seems to be a through line is that one character is out of control and a mess and the other guy is keeping it together. And often times, you see that the opposite is true with their offstage relationship like the Smothers Brothers, where Tom seems like he's dumb, but he was really the one that was running the show. We wanted to do that and we also wanted to use what we had to offer. Colin has this British thing, and as far as I know, there's never been a British and American combination musical-comedy act that I've ever seen. Everybody said let's see if we can make a David Niven, Noel Coward character like that and then to be the opposite that, a character that is more the ugly-American, wise-ass, punk, birth of rock 'n' roll, little bit of Elvis and Louis Prima. We'll see if we can find some kind of contrast in that way, and the act just kinda came out of that. Originally, Colin was the singer.

CS: Obviously, you've performed live with the Bacon Brothers, but Colin doesn't really have that experience. Was he nervous about singing in front of an audience?

Bacon: He was. He went and took singing lessons and all kinds of stuff. It was definitely a world that I was just more comfortable with. At first, I was a little bit concerned because I wasn't used to someone saying "Don't worry. We'll figure it all out." I kept saying that we gotta get a comedy writer, a choreographer and a musical director, and we have to put this thing together and Atom was like "We'll figure it out." All of a sudden, I'm writing stuff and I'm E-Mailing it to him and he's incorporating some of it, sending other stuff back. I started to work on the songs and got together with the band. I was really nervous about whether it would come together as anything that would have any kind of validity at all. I'll give you a perfect example. We're doing that "Just a Gigolo" thing and he goes offstage and then he comes back, that whole thing that he does is totally improvised, the idea of what he was going to do was something that he just came in and exploded with. That just kind of poured out of him and both Atom and I stopped and thought "That's cool and that's going to work."

CS: Can you comment on the NC-17 rating and do you think that the controversy will help or hurt the film?

Bacon: I don't think the controversy helps the film. I'm kind of shocked and certainly disappointed. I don't really understand it. I can hypothesize about it. When the MPAA gave us the NC-17, they made some suggestions on things that we could try. We delivered a couple more cuts to them and both times they said "no" and that it would still be an NC-17. At which point, there was some press that ran about that, because I don't think it happens all that often that a mainstream American actor is in a NC-17 film. There were gossipy columns about it, which in a way made the board want to dig their heels in, because you don't want to overturn a rating based on the fact that someone's been on Page Six or whatever. He then went out to Los Angeles to appeal the rating. There's a separate appeals board that is a ten-member panel. He went and took one of the actresses from the movie, took a letter that I wrote and Colin, I think, had also wrote something. This is what I was trying to do here. I have not made a softcore porn film, and this is not a sex romp. There were ten members of the panel there and twelve people in the room, and they asked who the other two people were, and they said they were members of the clergy to discuss it with them, a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian minister. With a vote of 6 votes to overturn the rating, and 4 to keep it, but you need 7 votes, you need to 2/3rds majority to overturn. So the movie is going out unrated, and as we've said before, nobody's ever made this movie so that kids can go to it. It's not a kid's movie. I don't think it's offensive for a 16-year-old. I have a 16-year-old and he's watched plenty of stuff like this, but that's not the point. The point is that the movie's now branded in a way that is first off, there's newspapers that won't even carry an ad. There's theatres and theatre chains that won't run it, based on the fear that there will be this uprising in the community amongst people who have seen the movie. There's certain media outlets that I've been rejected from as a guest, based on the controversial nature of the film, and more importantly, it's just misleading in terms of the content. It's a murder mystery with the backdrop of '50s musical comedy team, about a dead girl showing up in a bathtub. I mean, it's not "Emmanuelle 5."

CS: Do you think if the movie came out ten years ago that it might have been looked at differently?

Bacon: When was "Wild Things" made"? Full frontal male nudity, plenty of lesbian action and a threesome, and that was an R. They didn't even think twice about it.

CS: So do you think it's due to these shifting times?

Bacon: Definitely. Whether it's conscious or subconscious, we live in a time when there's less separation of church and state then there has been since the '50s.

CS: This, "The Woodsman" and some of your other recent movies seem to have rather dark themes about what's going on under the surface. What's going on with you that you're drawn to this stuff?

Bacon: I think probably it's a question of those opportunities arising themselves. I don't feel like I'm in a darker period of my life than I ever have been. I've always been someone that's been kind of drawn to the darker side of the human condition. I also feel like it's interesting to take characters who are inherently dark and try to find some kind of humanity like "The Woodsman." I think between that and "Mystic River" and "Where the Truth Lies," the idea of someone who has a secret is kind of thematic in those films, but I don't think I'm quite self-analytical enough to tell what it is that's putting it [in my path]. One thing I do know is that I hope I can do something else. I'd really like to do something romantic or heroic, comedic, but not necessarily in a cheese-ball way. Something with value that I can tap into something else.

CS: What's going on with your own movie, "Loverboy"?

Bacon: It's coming out. THINKFilm is going to release it in the spring, probably April.

Where the Truth Lies opens in New York and L.A. on Friday.

Does 'Truth' lie with author or director? by Peter D. Kramer

The Journal News, 9 October 2005 

Interview with Rupert Holmes (author book "Where The Truth Lies").

Who done it? Well, writer Rupert Holmes did. But so did filmmaker Atom Egoyan. Holmes wrote his first novel — a mystery called "Where the Truth Lies" — in 2003 Before it was set in type, Egoyan ("The Sweet Hereafter") bought the rights to turn the novel into a film.

"He read it in a ring binder," Holmes says. "He said he thought the setting was fascinating, but he also liked the co-dependencies of the characters."

"Where the Truth Lies" is a Hollywood story — narrated by a female reporter named O'Connor — about a '50s comedy team, Lanny Morris and Vince Collins. (Think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.)

The action takes place in the '50s and in the '70s, when O'Connor gets a deal to be the ghost writer on Collins' book about the duo's high-flying times and the incident that led to their breakup. It seems a naked dead woman ended up in their hotel suite. Their alibis were solid, but their act was finished.

As O'Connor digs deeper, she immerses herself in a seedy sort of otherworld that Holmes likens to another work of fiction.

"At one point when I was writing, I looked up and said to myself, 'You're writing an adult version of 'Alice in Wonderland,' " he says.

There are funny scenes — a glimpse into what it used to be like to fly in first class — and there are sex scenes. It is, Holmes says, a "grown-up's book."

The movie — starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Alison Lohman — is so grown-up that the Motion Picture Association of America wanted to give it an NC-17 rating, meaning no one under 17 would be admitted. If Egoyan would re-cut some scenes — a menage a trois among them — it could earn an R rating.

Egoyan declined.

The film opens in New York and Los Angeles this week with no rating at all — an option that kept the film intact and avoided the official NC-17. Some theater chains won't screen NC-17 films.

THINKfilm, the studio behind "Where the Truth Lies," plans screenings at Greenburgh's Cinema 100 beginning on Oct. 21.

Egoyan's refusal to re-cut the film — and miss out on the wider release an R rating would allow — is "a different mindset than I work from," Holmes says. "As an artist, I want to reach as many people as I can."

Still, he defends the director's decision.

"Atom Egoyan is an artist. He has a vision of the movie the way he wants to make it. Yes, he could have cut it easily, with digital cropping or cutting that would have easily earned it an R rating, but I think it then would not have been the series of images that he had in mind that is his movie. ... That's his decision. I can't second-guess that."

Nor will Holmes quibble with Egoyan's screenplay. Rather, he quotes Ernest Hemingway with a laugh:

"When asked if the movie of his novel was different from his original creation, he said, 'Aw, no. There's not much difference at all. In my novel, the hero lives; in the movie, he dies. Other than that, they're pretty much the same.'"

When Holmes learned that Egoyan liked to write his own screenplays, he says, "I was secretly very relieved. I have my take on this story. The best version that I can give you of what I think these characters and their secrets are about is between the covers of a book."

"I thought 'We know stuff's going to have to go and I don't have the heart to cut it," he adds. "I also knew that Atom makes a specific kind of film and I didn't know if I would do the best job of transforming my particular style into his particular style."

Holmes, born in Nyack and now living in Scarsdale, will forever be known as the man who sang "The PiNa Colada Song." He won Tony Awards for writing the score and the book for "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" in 1986. "Drood" was also named the year's best musical. He has been awarded the Mystery Writers of America's "Edgar" award twice.

So it made sense that his first novel would be a mystery. But Holmes didn't make it easy on himself: The book, and its explicit sex scenes, are narrated from a woman's perspective.

Holmes doesn't think he wrote an NC-17 book, but adds that the reader has a lot to do with that.

"The difference between a novel and a motion picture is that you get to picture what the angle is," he says. "It's up to you when you read the book whether it's R, NC-17 or whether you go for XXX right there. The second you make a motion picture, you're committing to what the image is onscreen."

Those images — the ones Egoyan is standing behind — include sex scenes with multiple partners. Holmes says the context of those scenes may have given the rating agency pause. "I think it's more that a series of red flags were waved at censors," he says. Those red flags were not there when he was writing his book.

There are other differences between the novel and the film.

In the book, Collins and Morris are both Americans. Casting the British Colin Firth changed things.

"To my knowledge, there's never been a duo of a brash American and a polite Brit and it's kind of an interesting dynamic for a comedy team," Holmes says, adding with a laugh: "I think Colin and Kevin could always fall back on that if they have to."

He has nothing but praise for the film's stars.

"Kevin and Colin are brilliant in the film. Kevin has long been one of my favorite American actors. ... I knew that I would be thrilled with Colin. He's incredibly sensitive in a very difficult role to play."

The book twists a lot more than the film does, and its ending is breathtaking.

"I took great pride in bringing the novel to a satisfying ending in the last five words, which is kind of a nice trick to pull off," he says.

That was the story as written by Rupert Holmes. The rest, he says, is just a movie.

"What you've got is an Atom Egoyan film within the framework of my novel. I think the way he was telling the story, the ending as I wrote it didn't fit the kind of darkness of the Egoyan film. My ending's a little sunnier. ... That's why it's 'a film by Atom Egoyan.'"

But the characters are Holmes'

The author is thrilled with the whirlwind pace of the process. Some movies take years to go from book to the big screen. "It's amazing to think that something that I was still working on in 2003 is now, in 2005, on a screen here in Westchester."

Holmes, a showman at heart, is also enjoying the exposure. He took a bow at the Toronto Film Festival and took part in a Q&A session with Bacon at last weekend's Woodstock Film Festival.

"Kevin was very nice at the Q&A after the movie. He told the audience to go and get the book," Holmes says. "He wasn't denigrating the film, he was just saying that by virtue of the time length of the movie and the way a movie is told, you're going to miss a lot of the fun stuff, a lot of the humor in the narration.

"More people will see this movie than probably have seen every performance — and there have been hundreds of thousands — of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," he says.

Maybe some of them will pick up the book.

And they'll know who done it.

Secrets and Lies by Deidre Swain.

Now Magazine, 6 October 2005

Atom Egoyan sounds off on celebrity, sex and U.S.-style censorship

You'd think Atom Egoyan would be inured to the dazzle of celebrity. Successful directors deal with stars every day, without the glossifying benefits of makeup or coffee or publicists. But apparently, you can rub shoulders with the glitterati on a regular basis and still get buzzed by a shout-out from one of your heroes, especially if that hero is Bono and the shout-out comes from the stage of the sold-out Air Canada Centre.

Kevin Bacon puts the charm on reporter Alison Lohman in Where The Truth Lies.

"I have no idea how this came about," Egoyan says of attending one of U2's concerts two weeks ago. "I don't know him. I've never met him. He was talking about Canadian artists. I was kind of overwhelmed by that. I'm sure it was just something he was programmed to say by his handlers. But we have these fantasies about what these things mean."

American popular culture and the public's relationship with celebrities are central themes of Egoyan's new film, Where The Truth Lies, a thriller about a reporter trying to unravel a 20-year-old murder. Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) believes she has a "relationship" with her subjects, the comedy duo of Vince Collins (Colin Firth) and Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon), and desperately wants to exonerate them, but her heroes keep disappointing her.

"That happens all the time in our relationship with celebrities," Egoyan says. "I made my father take me on a pilgrimage to San Francisco from Victoria when I was 13 or 14 to go to Santana's vegetarian restaurant. And I fully expected that my hero would be there. It was crazy. Of course, I never met him, he never came by. We create these relationships, and it was interesting to me that Karen's living out a fantasy she has entertained about these two."

Egoyan also wanted to explore the ego/id dynamic of a comedy duo, a combination that no longer exists. He deliberately pursued actors who were willing to bring part of their public personas – Firth as the "Darcyfied" Englishman who civilizes Bacon's rock 'n' roller – to the roles.

As he warms to the subject, there's a weird disconnect for me between the man enthusiastically parsing themes like a favourite film prof and the man whose face and name appear in newspaper clippings all over his sunny office. They serve as a reminder that we Canadians are quite fond of our own celebrities, especially if they don't decamp to the U.S.

Egoyan is feeling particularly happy to be Canadian at the moment, because Where The Truth Lies has garnered an NC-17 rating in the U.S. for its sexual content. It's essentially the same as an R in Ontario (only adults can see the film), but it means many American markets will be closed to him. His whole body kind of slumps as he talks about it.

"For the life of me I can't understand why they've taken this position," he says. "It's a drag for me, because I've had to shift tones in my conversation around this whole issue of freedom of expression, and this is one movie where I just wanted people to relax and have a good time."

The irony of his having made a more "accessible" film that many Americans now won't be able to see is not lost on him. The one good thing about the whole controversy is that it may raise some awareness about how the Motion Picture Association of America operates.

Egoyan got a shock when he found two extra people at the MPAA meeting: a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian minister. "They don't vote, but they actually are involved in those secret discussions" to which the director is not invited, he says. "What's interesting is that in talking to a lot of journalists in the States, I realized people aren't aware that there is that kind of clerical presence" on the ratings board."

But recently he's had reason to hope that the ratings flap is behind him.

"We had a great screening in Montreal last week and I felt back on track. People were just enjoying the movie."   

Jumping back and forth between the 50s and the 70s, this sumptuous feast of a thriller offers eye and ear candy in equal measure. Alison Lohman is Karen O'Connor, an ambitious young journalist hoping to profile musical comedy duo Vince Collins (Colin Firth) and Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and clear them of a 20-year-old murder in the process.

Egoyan is lucky to have snared three actors who don't mind goofing on their public personas. The result is a cool and gorgeous flick in the L.A. Confidential vein. My one beef is the overuse of voice-overs: once a staple of the noir genre, the device has been used so often it's become irritating.

"Luxury cruise" by Melora Koepke.

Hour.ca, 6 October 2005

Egoyan plays out his fantasies with Kevin Bacon in Where the Truth Lies

After Atom Egoyan made his giant-scale, difficult, historically torturous epic Ararat, he needed a break. Not a holiday from filmmaking per se (though who knows, he probably took one of those too) but a holiday within filmmaking. Luckily, that release of anxiety and anguish took the form of Where the Truth Lies, a deliriously fun, horny, woozy, extravagant trip through the fantasy world of cinema that is a lot of fun for us as well. Which is a little strange, since "fun" isn't quite the first adjective that springs to mind when looking at Egoyan's filmography.

"I still live with Ararat... I will forever have the legacy of that film, and I'm proud of that, but it's also a burden. I felt it was time to go back to sheer love of image-making for a while," he says. "I needed to do something pleasurable, where I could indulge somewhat... there's nothing like building a fantasy world and living in [sin] for a while."

Indeed. Where the Truth Lies is a film noir in exuberant colour, a glamorous, sexy, sleazy, smart detective story in which the truth is not the only thing that gets revealed.

It's the '70s, and Alison Lohman plays Karen O'Connor, a young journalist charged with her first plum assignment - she's writing a biography of Lanny Morris and Vince Collins (Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth), a nightclub act from the '50s who may or may not have murdered a young waitress (Rachel Blanchard) in their hotel room during a ménage à trois. O'Connor gets all Nancy Drew

on their asses, insisting on uncovering the truth about the men's pasts, and her own.

The sex and glamour are intoxicating, to say the least - there's an extremely memorable scene when Alice in Wonderland goes, um, down the rabbit hole that got the film slammed with an NC-17 in the States. Moreover, Where the Truth Lies is exuberantly period... the action, as it were, flips back and forth between the '50s and the '70s and is suffused with aesthetic pleasures.

If anything, Egoyan enjoys the worlds he creates more than anyone. If you had the means to set-dec your own sexual fantasies, wouldn't you?

"I've always liked that the challenge of filmmaking is to create that kind of zone. How do you light, how do you shoot, what kind of clothes will they wear, what kind of performances?" he says. "I got to fulfill a fantasy of shooting in a famous house in the Hollywood Hills [the Stall House, designed by Pierre Koenig]. No one ever shoots up there, because all the neighbours are big-time producers who don't want trucks in their own backyard, so you have to convoy things up from down on Sunset by the Chateau Marmont. It was my first time shooting in L.A., we hit all the spots - Hollywood and Vine, the Universal back lot... it was a chance to play. Of course, we only shot there for six days... the rest was done in a studio in Toronto."

Indeed, Egoyan's champagne wishes and caviar dreams play out in painstaking Technicolor detail. His wry wit is also apparent in every lobster and silk stocking, and there's a lot of joy in the sheer exaggeration of it all.

"Lanny creates this extraordinary world where he was Mr. Shagaholic..." says Egoyan, grinning. "He self-mythologizes. It's so over the top, the lesbian scene is so completely exploitative, you're sort of in the middle of a Penthouse fantasy all the time. That stuff was inspired by my own adolescent daydreams... there's a reason why the music is all Mahavishnu Orchestra and Santana. It was very pleasurable to put myself back in that place."

The prospect of playing a famous performer cinched the role for Kevin Bacon, who dons brown contacts to play lascivious funnyman Lanny Morris.

"[Atom] created a very accurate sense of what this life feels like," says Bacon, gesturing ruefully out the window of a Toronto hotel, where on the street below a crowd has accumulated, hoping for celebrity autographs. "After my wife [Kyra Sedgwick, star of the new TV series The Closer] saw this, she said, 'Wow, he really got the showbiz right.' That world of being famous, where everything is heightened and surreal, and it's impossible to be normal... rarely do I get a chance to play a performer, or an actor. It's a world I know so well and it's kind of fun to tap into that."

"Kevin was once told the only thing he couldn't play is Jewish, and here it is," says Egoyan. "It's fun to deconstruct a persona. Kevin is all about his blue eyes... Colin is Darcy, Bridget Jones, and Kevin is this bad boy, a little dangerous."

"I guess what draws me is looking at something and thinking, 'I haven't done this before, this looks like uncharted territory,'" says Bacon. "A long time ago, I was 'that dancing guy' - even more recently, my characters in The Woodsman and Mystic River were very internalized guys... and Lanny is this extroverted, razzmatazz kind of performer. I was drawn to that, and to the idea of jumping back between the '70s and the '50s... If you fill up a room with extras who are told to find you hysterically funny, everyone's smoking cigarettes and there's a girl in a tank swimming naked in the middle of the room, that's like time travel. It's like life travel."

"Ben Kingsley: You've got to pick a portrayal or two" by Gerard Gilbert

The Independent, 5 October 2005

Interview with Ben Kingsley (Actor "The Last Legion")

Whether as Gandhi or the terrifying cockney gangster in 'Sexy Beast', Sir Ben Kingsley will go to any lengths to get in character. What he won't do is repeat himself, he tells Gerard Gilbert

Fagin is a plum role for any actor and, for Ben Kingsley, the fact that the offer came with Roman Polanski's name attached proved decisive. "I knew we had to have a director who was an equal to Dickens," says Kingsley. "A director with that intellectual vigour, confidence and curiosity."

The actor and the director forged a mutual admiration 10 years ago, on Polanski's Death and the Maiden. "I've always been confident with Roman that whatever I bring to the camera, he will put it in the right place to capture what I'm trying to do," says Kingsley, whose Fagin is both archetypal and different from the norm - certainly more ambiguous than Alec Guinness's controversial black-and-white portrayal. Did Kingsley watch Guinness at work? "No is the short answer," he says. "This is my Fagin, it's my portrait."

His unexpectedly sympathetic "portrait" (Kingsley's much-used painterly expression for what he does as an actor) derives, he says, from his giving Fagin a back-story. "I loved speculating on Fagin's arrival in London, probably brought over by grandparents who didn't speak English. Fagin was himself an orphan."

For those who want to look for autobiographical elements, Kingsley's father was a Kenyan-born doctor of Indian descent, while his paternal grandfather was a spice trader in Zanzibar. Sir Ben Kingsley's real name is Krishna Bhanji. But the only autobiographical input that he will admit to are childhood memories of an old man in Manchester, who gave him a template for his Fagin. "He ran a junk shop with mountains of umbrellas and pots and pans," the actor recalls. "I remember looking at him when I was Oliver's age and being fascinated by this man who wore a coat tied together with string. And now, my Fagin wears a coat tied together with string."

Kingsley decided that he would stay in character throughout shooting, for, as he explains, "I was working with very young actors, so, instead of taking out my prosthetic teeth and returning to being 'SBK', I stayed in character so as not to disrupt the acting process with the kids".

Yes, that is correct - Sir Ben Kingsley refers to himself as "SBK", as though looking at himself from the outside. He launches into an anecdote about how he thought it amusing to arrive each morning on set dressed and in character as Fagin, and ask Polanski who he was. Polanski, who dutifully replied that he was a film director, apparently found this charade exasperating. "He once said - and this will always stay with me - 'I can't believe that you are inside there!'."

Exactly who is "in there" has been a question that has taxed many an interviewer. A constant is Kingsley's seriousness about his art, another his fear that directors such as Polanski are an endangered species. "But I'm sure there are wonderful young directors coming in. Jonathan Glazer, who directed me in Sexy Beast, for example..."

Ah, yes, Sexy Beast. Kingsley is an actor who, in a way, has been discovered twice. First in Gandhi, of course, then, after a vast range of respectable but hardly electrifying character roles, as Don, the terrifying cockney gangster in Sexy Beast. The offers to repeat such a mesmerising performance keep rolling in, but Kingsley says he's not interested: "I'm not into replication, life's too short."

And you couldn't get much more different than Britain in the 4th century. Kingsley is currently shooting The Last Legion in Slovakia, about centurions during the fall of the Roman Empire. His co-star is Colin Firth, with whom he plans to do a remake of Gambit, recreating the Michael Caine and Herbert Lom roles from the Sixties heist movie. Kingsley is also setting up his own production company.

In the meantime, despite Gandhi, Sexy Beast and, to a lesser extent, Oliver Twist, he isn't really what you would call a film star. Would he like to tread the boards again, as so many movie actors have been doing of late? "Not really, no. I find cinema utterly thrilling. The two are so different - it's like going from being a landscape artist to being a portrait painter. One day, perhaps, but not now."

I'm a jealous guy by Graham Keal

Glasgow Daily Record, 5 October 2005

Interview with Scot John Hannah (Actor "The Last Legion")

When Scot John Hannah was asked to play a murderer who kills for love he didn't find it too hard to step into the mind of his character. Here he reveals why his family means the world to him

John Hannah plays a man with a dark, dark past in gripping new thriller Cold Blood, but he didn't have to use too much imagination to put himself in his character's shoes.

For the Scots actor and his wife are now doting parents to twins Gabriel and Astrid and the devoted family man admitted hehadno trouble getting into the mindset of a manwho kills for love.

So nice-guy John Hannah is a bit of a jealous type then? "Oh aye," he said.

And as far as he is concerned, a potential killer lurks inside us all.

He said: "Who's not capable of doing that? Come on. I mean,what part of our civilised humanity is it that stops us doing that?

"Like you want to shoot everybody on the underground platform when you're trying to get off and nobody's letting you.

"If you had an AK47 you'd get off okay, wouldn't you?

"The real question is why doesn't it happen more often, for heaven's sake."

In ITV thriller Cold Blood East Kilbride-born John is reunited with Jemma Redgrave, whom he starred opposite in ITV's Amnesia last year.

While he played the cop last time, here he is a remorseful killer who helps an old girlfriend who's a detective gain insight into the mind of a serial killer.

But the rigours of filming were not the reason producer Ian White said the actor had arrived for the start of the shoot"looking as if he'd been dragged through a bush".

John's dishevelled look was entirely down to being a new, sleep-deprived dad as the twins, who are now lively toddlers aged 20 months, were still babies when John rolled up to start filming.

Ian said: "The twins are lovely but they used to wake each other up.

"So hewas a knackered young dad who joked about coming up for a rest and would head for the hotel and sleep for 12 hours.

"He never slept for more than an hour at a time in their first three months."

Armed with this information, it was too tempting not to remind John what he had said when his actress wife Joanna Roth was pregnant with the twins.

Before he learned what it was all about, the expectant dad had confidently declared: "I don't think having children has to change your life or limit you in what you do."

Nowhe throws his had back and laughs at his naivety.

"You can't explain what it's like to people who don't have children," he said.

"You can't explain how hard it is and you can't explain how fantastic it is either. You can't explain that contradiction."

It's a sign of his good nature that he seems comfortable with being upstaged in Cold Blood by the serial killer himself, played with chilling precision by - of all people - Matthew Kelly.

When it is suggested the former Stars In Their Eyes host may steal the show as psychopath Brian Wicklow, incarcerated without hope of release for his sadistic crimes, John just laughed: "He has probably stolen it hasn't he? "He's terrific."

But John was fascinated by the hidden depths of his own character too, a decent manwhose restraint just snapped one day, leading him to commit the ultimate crime ofpassion in killing his wife and her lover. Andhewas taken with the idea of the villain and the good guy in Cold Blood both being killers.

He said: "I love the idea of it being problematic for the audience.

"It's not black and white, not straightforward, pure and simple, and the more complexity there is in a script the more I'm attracted to it."

Since making the telly thriller, John, who shot to fame in smash hit movie Four Weddings And A Funeral, has been in Tunisia filming Roman epic The Last Legion with Colin Firth and Sir Ben Kingsley.

It was a welcome rest - but only at first he said: "The first two weeks you miss the kids but filming was brilliant. I loved it. You think 'Oh, fantastic.' You can lie about, read a book.

"But for the second two weeks the feeling I had was just an indescribable loss, you know, a longing that was beyond words. It was certainly beyond my ability to express it."

Being a freelance actor, like his wife, spells of unemployment have suddenly become more attractive now they have the twins to nurture, and John could only marvel at the changes in them when he came home from Tunisia.

He said: "Every day there is something new. Just before I went they had their little baby walkers and would walk past looking at meon the sofa and I'd give them a wee tap and get a giggle.

"When I came back from Tunisia they were running past - running! It was like 'Whoah!' It was just amazing."

John is clearly so gaga about Gabriel and Astrid that it comes as a big surprise to hear him say, very emphatically, that he and Joanna won't be having any more children. But Joanna was 38 when the twins arrived and John is now 43.

"You completely understand why you're meant to have children when you're 19 or 20, you know. I mean, it's brilliant being older because you bring experience, but you've not actually got the energy to bring that experience to bear; you're just staggering through hoping you're doing OK.

"I'm not going through it again, that's for sure. My reaction to the idea of having another child is like 'Forget it!' How could you possibly deal with three? How could you love three?"

John's vehemence is partly due to having children later in life but also to the medical complications Joanna endured before and after the birth. About half-way through the pregnancy she had to have an operation for vascular problems - on the night he opened at the Almeida Theatre, playing an adulterous husband opposite Sinead Cusack in The Mercy Seat.

"That was one way of taking your mind off the first-night nerves," he said. "I don't have any recollection of that first night at all."

Towards the end of the pregnancy she had pre-eclampsia and had to stay in hospital for several weeks until the babies were born.The delivery itself was fine but Joanna haemorrhaged.

John said: "Anybody going through any birth is tough, and she lost a lot of blood. But the staff were brilliant."

In the end all was well and John and Joanna feel their family is complete.

John took most of last year off to be with Joanna and the twins at their Victorian terrace home in Richmond, south-west London, but hewas back on his home turf when he and Joanna made guest appearances in the same episode of Sea of Souls, with Bill Paterson.

"It was brilliant to be back in Glasgow. I really love Glasgow, in spite of anything anybody else might have said, andwe were up there with the kids in a nice big flat, working with some great actors. "It worked out really well because we filmed on different days."

Sex scenes earn an NC-17 by Ian Cadell.

Straight.com, 29 September 2005

Interview with Rachel Blanchard.

The Toronto International Film Festival and filmmaker Atom Egoyan have been linked since the 1980s, when the festival first started showing the Victoria native’s movies. Although most of his scripts could have been set anywhere, they starred Canadian actors and set a tone for young Canadian filmmakers for two decades. His latest film, Where the Truth Lies, breaks from tradition with a quintessentially American story. Three of the four crucial roles are played by non-Canadian actors.

The exception is Toronto-born Rachel Blanchard, who has appeared in several American movies and starred as Cher in the television version of the film Clueless. Blanchard’s costars include Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, and Alison Lohman, with Bacon and Firth playing a famous 1950s American showbiz act that breaks up after a dead girl is found in their hotel room. Lohman plays the journalist who sets out, 15 years later, to find out what happened on the night of the breakup. (The movie opens on Friday [October 7].)

Blanchard’s sex scenes with Bacon and Firth were so hot that Where the Truth Lies has received an NC-17 rating in the U.S., which means, among other things, that the movie can only receive limited promotion. In a Toronto hotel, Blanchard says she had some concerns when she read the script but that Egoyan and the actors made things comfortable for her. ”I walked away from there thinking ‘Oh, my God. If it hadn’t been for Atom and Kevin and Colin it would have been a terrible experience.’ I have learned over the years that my instincts are pretty good in terms of whether or not I am going to feel comfortable with people I’m working with. There have been times where I have just been sitting in a meeting to discuss a film and felt uncomfortable and objectified.

”I had met Atom before, but I hadn’t met Kevin and Colin. They are gentlemen, which was important to me because a lot of actors are not. That made all the difference in the world, because when you are the only girl on set you could be swallowed alive. I just felt completely respected and I enjoyed doing the [sex] scenes.“

Blanchard’s character is a college journalist who gets a chance to interview the hottest act in show business at the height of their fame. She says that although the role is pivotal to the plot, there is not a lot of screen time. She had to find the character quickly and make her interesting enough that the audience cares about her fate and questions her decisions.

”She is not necessarily the way she appears,“ Blanchard says. ”I think that is the way most people are. Not that she necessarily has anything to hide, but there is more to people than we give them credit for. I felt that even though she isn’t on-screen for a very long time, she had a real arc. I was really intrigued by the notion of what people would do in certain circumstances. I know a lot of people would say, ‘I would never do that if this were to happen.’ I don’t think that you can really say that because I think we would be shocked at what we might do in certain circumstances. I never know what I would do in a given situation, so I am intrigued by how far people will go to get what they want.“

Blanchard, who was a regular in the Canadian children’s series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, got in a rut after first coming to public attention with Clueless. She followed it up with teen-oriented films, including Rage: Carrie 2, Road Trip, and Sugar and Spice. She returned to Canadian productions in 2002 with Thom Fitzgerald’s The Wild Dogs, which was shot in Romania, and then went to England to take on a role in a controversial comedy series called The Peep Show. She says she doesn’t know if her latest character will help distance her from the pigeonholing that happened after Clueless.

”Clueless defined me for some people,“ she explains. ”I think that the most high-profile or mainstream thing is what defines you. From there you get stereotyped. I don’t know if I have been working towards moving away from that. I don’t want to set goals that I want to achieve in my life, because if I do I will probably be disappointed. I usually go on a project-to-project basis and take the things that intrigue me. I don’t really care if it brings in recognition.…As a supporting actor, you have such little control over things, so when you get a great part like this it’s very nice.“

"Never Mind Bacon's Buttocks" by Pam Grady

Filmstew, 19 September 2005

None of this is particularly unique to Toronto, merely a reflection of a world increasingly saturated by celebrity obsession. Ironically, at a time when fewer people are going to the movies, there are more tabloids than ever devoted to covering the stars' lives in excruciating detail. It is a subject that one of the festival's films, Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, confronts directly in its tale of a pair of '50s nightclub performers who are desperate to keep their past buried when a reporter starts sniffing around 15 years after the dissolution of their act.

The movie arrived at TIFF cloaked in controversy, thanks to the MPAA's decision to award it the kiss of death, the NC-17 rating, in the United States. It is a head-scratching decision, since while there are several sex scenes in the movie, none are all that explicit. One, however, does involve an intimate moment between a woman and two men and star Kevin Bacon remains convinced it is that gay content that upset the censors.

But those erotic moments are only part of a larger canvas that includes an up-close look at that weird symbiosis between the fan and the famous, as well as an examination of the sometimes-corrosive effects of celebrity. Bacon plays Lanny, a comic only too well aware that his best years are behind him.

"I like those things that he talks about in terms of fading celebrity, that fear of losing it, and that conversation he has in the Chinese restaurant where he's, you know, he's been famous for a long time,“ Bacon relates during a chat with FilmStew. ”But at his core he's just this kid who used to get the shit kicked out of him, living in a fishbowl. A lot of that stuff I really kind of related to. It was what drew me to [the movie]."

Last year, Bacon was the talk of the festival with his bravura performance as a paroled child molester trying to go straight in The Woodsman. He is someone whose choices are only getting more interesting as he grows older and his role in Where the Truth Lies has given him a chance to consider what those options mean. He is frank when he assesses the advantages of stardom and he has little patience with actors who insist that they are only interested in their craft.

"The thing is when you become famous, you start to see that there are a lot of good sides to it,“ he reveals. ”People are nice to you; you get free sh*t; you get to the front of the line; you just get more kinds of attention. If you're a performer, attention is what you relish. I've always said there are two kinds of actors, actors who want to be famous and liars.“

His own life with a solid marriage to actress Kyra Sedgwick and a moonlighting gig with his band The Bacon Brothers has been relatively controversy free, even if the 47-year-old's one-time ubiquity inspired that great parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. He is not tabloid fodder and while he has empathy for other performers that do find themselves in gossip's glare, he also thinks that there are those that deliberately put themselves in that position.

"I think there are certain people who do things, whether consciously or unconsciously, that can be very negative just because they feel this need to get back into the public eye in some kind of way," he observes. "And they'll do anything, anything. There's an addiction to that."

What grips Lanny in Egoyan's movie is a kind of free-floating anxiety as his star gradually falls to earth, one of the toxic byproducts of fame. That is what happens, Bacon insists, when actors confuse celebrity with life. "Once that fades or goes away and you're left without that, which is inevitably going to happen to everybody, it can make you really kind of insane, because that's how you've been defining your entire persona.“

”The only way to survive that, I think, when you see the people that do survive and the people that self-destruct, is to try to find something outside of the industry that gives you peace or comfort or enjoyment and some other ways to define yourself."

That is one way of looking at the intersection of acting and stardom, anyway, and it does rest at the heart of Where the Truth Lies. 

"Bobby's Beat"

Sunday Herarld, 21 August 2005

Carlyle can do hard (see Begbie in Trainspotting) but is just as likely to be found trading in vulnerability. He was the gay lover of a priest in Jimmy McGovern and Antonia Bird’s Priest, an unlikely stripper in The Full Monty and a dope-smoking polis in Hamish Macbeth, the Scottish Northern Exposure.

In his new film, The Mighty Celt, he blurs the lines again, playing an IRA man returning home after the ceasefire, trying to adapt to peace. (Stott is the man from the Real IRA).

Naturally, the two Hitlers met on the set. ”It was so weird,“ Carlyle recalls. ”Ken said: ‘I, eh, didn’t see your Hitler.’ I said: ‘I didn’t f**kin’ see yours either’.“ Carlyle pulls himself up as if reacquainting himself with a bad memory. ”I can’t watch it. There’s no way. I can’t look at anything to do with the guy. I can’t even think about Hitler. Don’t want to think about it. It cost me a lot of grief, in my mind, trying to get to some kind of reality in my portrayal of this f**king monster.“

Often, when people talk to Robert Carlyle about acting, they mention Robert De Niro and the madness of his Method. It’s a tempting comparison and it works, up to a point. When De Niro was researching Travis Bickle for Taxi Driver, he drove a cab around New York. When Carlyle was playing the Bickle-like Albie in Cracker, he spoke in a Scouse accent for three months. De Niro ate his way into the role of a flabby boxer in Raging Bull. Carlyle slept rough to understand a homeless person in Safe.

These days, De Niro operates at reduced intensity, spoofing himself in films such as the cartoon Shark Tale, which redefined the notion of ”sleeping with the fishes“. Carlyle, while reluctant to class himself as an actor on a par with either, prefers the trajectory of De Niro’s Mean Streets co-star Harvey Keitel.

”Anybody who has any urge to slag De Niro off, you have to look at what he’s done, and he’s given everything. He’s in a different world now. But I think it’s hard for him. Like Keitel, you’ve always got to look for the interesting stuff, and try and find a world that you haven’t visited before. That’s the only chance.“

Carlyle took a chance on The Mighty Celt, working with a first-time director, Pearse Elliott. ”That, for me, is a gamble. I don’t know if this guy can do it or not. I believe through talking to him that he can but that’s not always the case. But Keitel does that. He still goes and seeks out the dark, interesting stuff.“

To understand how he got here, you have to appreciate where Robert Carlyle came from. Sometimes, when he talks about the challenges of acting – something he is loath to do because it can sound, in his word, ”wank“ – he will edge towards acknowledging his own surprise at his circumstances. The challenge of playing Hitler, for example, was to convince the audience that they were not watching ”a wee ex-painter from Maryhill“.

Carlyle believes he is the same person he was when he started out (”I haven’t gone funny“) but he is conscious that standing still is not an option. ”I’m becoming aware that the generational thing comes about and suddenly you’re like the remnant of another decade.“ He offers a small sigh. ”So what do you do? Do you change who you are? Do you change your perception of the business, and how you approach it, or do you just keep going the same way? There’s no decision to make there, really.“

But some things have changed. It’s odd to observe the transformation in Carlyle’s features when he talks about his family. He has two children with his wife, Anastasia; Harvey (17 months) and Ava, who was three on the fourth of July. For all that he tries to keep his home life private, he can’t suppress the delight he finds in his children. ”Mid-40s, this is just a wonderful thing to happen, and you realise that there’s other things. It’s a great leveller. It calms you down. It gives you more focus in your life. You’ve got to prepare this wee person for the world. What a phenomenal challenge that is. There’s no bigger task. It’s an awful world we live in. But the children have given me hope. I love them so much. It’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me, for sure. I’m less selfish now.“

O, Carlyle’s character in The Mighty Celt, is a man abandoning the hard certainties of youth for the compromises and rewards of family life. ”That type of subject’s speaking to me, louder than it ever has before. It’s about reconciliation and forgiveness.“

He recognised the film’s theme of sectarianism from his childhood – albeit from the non-aligned position of the Partick Thistle supporter. Glasgow, he says, operated as a kind of shadow of Belfast. ”It’s a subject that was close to my heart, and anything you can do to say ‘this is wrong, forget this’ is a good thing. Mighty Celt is one of these rare projects that is worthy – really worthy – to be seen now and into the future.“

Since he turned 40 four years ago, Carlyle has been thinking about his legacy. He made some odd moves in the middle of his career. The big-budget pictures – Angela’s Ashes, The World Is Not Enough, 51st State – were his least compelling. Subsequently, he has been careful with his choices.

All of which made it surprising to read he had agreed to play the lead in a biopic about Paul Ferris, the real-life Glasgow gangster. But is it true? According to those reports, filming of The Ferris Conspiracy was due to start this month.

Not so. What is true is that Carlyle met Ferris at a Glasgow hotel in January, and found himself in the middle of ”a media scrum of madness“.

”I turned up at the hotel; a scrum of journalists outside, even television – Scotland Today and Reporting Scotland. You can imagine how I felt – what the f**k? I met with Paul Ferris. A very personable guy and he certainly had a lot to say. The only thing I would say is that, should a script come, I will certainly read it and take it on its merits. But it’s not something I’ve been desperate to play.

”I think it’s ideal for the press in Scotland, that kind of thing, with my previous incarnations – Begbie, characters like that – they think, ‘That’s my headline made: ‘Psycho Carlyle plays the Psycho’. Well, wait a minute. Let’s see what it’s about first. This isn’t about the glorification of violence or gangsters. If it is, I’m out the door. I’m trying to think of it as a social piece – how it’s affected him, how his life has affected other people. If it’s like that – if it’s Mighty Celt-esque – then it’s interesting. If it’s just a biopic about carving up this or that person, then it’s not really very interesting.“

I tell Carlyle that, by an unfortunate piece of timing, I saw the bodies of Ferris’s associates, Joe ‘Bananas’ Hanlon and Bobby Glover, on the slab in the Glasgow mortuary, and there was nothing glamorous about it.

He sighs. ”I’ve known a lot of people in that world and, to be fair to them, it’s about their own. You and me aren’t part of it. We’re not involved. We’re innocents to them. They’ve got no interest in harming you or me.

”They will kill each other, for territory or for whatever it is that they want, but it’s a private matter. I think they would be appalled if people thought they were monsters. ‘What do you mean,’ you know, ‘I only killed that c**t who killed my brother-in-law’.“

The Ferris story does seem a risky move for Carlyle, though it could be argued it is consistent with his interest in reconciliation.

”If I thought it was going to hurt any innocent person that had been affected by anything contained in that script, then I wouldn’t touch it. It’s not worth it at all. I’m good at spotting lies; I’ll be able to spot that. No way is it a done deal. There’s a salacious quality to these kinds of stories but I’m beginning to get less attracted to the cut and thrust of it. I’ve done a lot of it. I’ve explored these characters. I’ve been down that road. I know I’ll f**king probably do them again but it isn’t what I’m about.“

To get a sense of what Carlyle is about, you have to go right back to the start. Famously, he took up acting after buying a copy of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with the change from a book token he got for his 21st birthday. He started acting at Glasgow Arts Centre and endured an unhappy time at the city’s RSAMD.

Carlyle’s beef with the drama school was that their methods were irrelevant and – paraphrasing slightly – pompously middle class. The insistence on pupils learning Standard English was a fundamental point of disagreement. Carlyle (professional motto: ”Be who you are“) insists that Talking Proper introduces artifice into an actor’s performance.

”If you’re speaking Standard English, you can’t help but raise yourself up a little bit. Especially if you are an actor, because“ – he slips into Donald Sinden-ese – ”you are talking like that. You become very, very posh. And some of these boys are from Castlemilk. My argument is that this is irrelevant to them. If you’ve got any chance of achieving anything, you have to achieve it as you are, because you’re going to get found out.“

By the time he left drama school, Carlyle had discovered others who shared his world view. He was a founder of Raindog, the theatre group which developed a good reputation for its re-interpretations of modern work. ”It’s only afterwards you realise that was an interesting period. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, for example: I directed this piece and transposed everything into Glasgow.

”The big Native American Indian became a Western Highlander. The fishing industry – dead – seemed to fit. We did this piece and it was very successful, people seemed to enjoy it. Then other theatre companies started to take David Mamet plays and do them.

”I’m not saying we started that but we were certainly a catalyst. We started to break down these barriers of voice and stuff like that, and think: these people are talking about things we understand. Just because they’re speaking in an American accent doesn’t mean to say it hasn’t got any relevance to us. We did Conquest Of The South Pole, written in German and set in Hamburg. It was an interesting time in theatre.“

Carlyle’s film career was launched in 1990 by his association with Ken Loach, who cast him in Riff-Raff: ”I’d done some small parts in films prior to Riff-Raff – cough and a spit type stuff – but I had no sense of the industry. When I worked with Ken, I thought, ‘This must be how it is, this is great’. F**k me: only one time since then, which was Carla’s Song, did I experience that again.

”But it enabled me to work with people like Antonia Bird and Danny Boyle, Peter Cattaneo and Michael Winterbottom. People who were disciples of the Loach school. They’re the people who would go and watch Loach films, and say, ‘Oh, this actor’s interesting, I’ll work with him’. Without Ken Loach I don’t think I would be anywhere at all.“

Carlyle suggests that his favourite of his own films may be Winterbottom’s Go Now, in which he played a man afflicted by multiple sclerosis. Winterbottom was the first director with the guts to tell him to turn down his performance: ”I can shout and scream but there’s a silence, a stillness, which I first learned with Michael.“

His future plans include The Meat Trade, in which he will star alongside Colin Firth. It is a modern reworking of Jekyll And Hyde, written by Irvine Welsh, and will be produced by 4 Way Pictures, the production company in which Carlyle and Welsh are partnered by Antonia Bird and critic/filmmaker Mark Cousins. 4 Way’s most ambitious project, the ‘Scottish Western’ Jamie MacGillivray, may yet be revived by the director John Sayles. Cousins describes Sayles’s script as ”the best screenplay about Scotland I’ve ever read“.

Carlyle also hopes to work alongside his hero, Harvey Keitel, on Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales, which takes place inside a strip joint. ”It’s a very dark thing – big holes in it for the improvisation. But, man, I’d cut my arm off to work with these people.“ Being offered the chance to work with Keitel was, he says, ”a marker“.

If the clock was stopped, and Carlyle was forced to come to a conclusion about his legacy, he would concede the film he is most identified with is Trainspotting (1996). ”It almost defines a time in people’s lives. That’s what they say to me – they remember what they were wearing when it came out, and what music they were listening to.“

He thinks it is exactly the kind of film at which British filmmakers excel. ”It was full of attack and bite and dynamism.“ He is aware, too, that fans of the film would love to see him reprise his role as Begbie. ”I wish, and a few of us wish. A couple of us don’t wish, and that’s the problem. Work that one out.“

This sounds like a reference to Ewan McGregor, who fell out with director Danny Boyle when he cast Leonardo DiCaprio, and not McGregor, in The Beach.

”I didn’t say that.“

But if I did?

”If you did, you would be perfectly entitled to your opinion. I think it’s there to be done. The piece is there. It’s ready to be devoured. I would play the part again, because I think Begbie’s an interesting character in terms of the Scottish psyche. He’s a caricature. It’s like trying to turn that thing in on itself. That was what I was trying to do with that part – trying to make him so big it was ridiculous: that hard man thing.

”There’s a journey to go on with Begbie. I think we should visit the guy and see where he is now.“

"To be and to pretend"

Guardian Unlimited, 13 August 2005

Interview with Robert Carlyle.

There's a sense of art imitating life when it comes to Robert Carlyle's career path, says Alastair McKay. But if the disaffections of his early years have helped inspire his best known characters, what can be read into his latest venture, which sees him tackling the notion of reconciliation following trauma and turmoil?

'You've always got to look for the interesting stuff' ... Robert Carlyle in The Mighty Celt

Since he turned 40 four years ago, Robert Carlyle has been thinking about his legacy. He imagined his children looking at his films on the video shelf and decided he had to concentrate on decent work. Since then, there have been no more Bond villains with bullets in their brains. "I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing," he says. "It's fucking tacky. It's not me. It's not my world."

I first met Carlyle in 1995. He was on the brink of mainstream success. The role that would define the early part of his career - the psychotic Begbie in Trainspotting - was not far away, but first Carlyle was taking a surprising sidestep. He was about to star alongside a dog called Wee Jock in the BBC1 Sunday night drama Hamish Macbeth. It seemed an odd choice, perhaps even to Carlyle. He defended the role on the basis that the character had no ambition. "It's commercial television," he said, "but it is not - it is fucking not - Heartbeat." This ambivalence towards commercial success, and all it entails, has been a feature of his subsequent career.

Carlyle's early breakthrough came in 1990 with his turn as a builder in Ken Loach's building site drama, Riff Raff. He explored his darker side as a raging crusty in Antonia Bird's Safe. In Jimmy McGovern's television series Cracker, he played Albie Kinsella, a charismatic psychopath seeking revenge for the Hillsborough disaster: the echoes of De Niro as Travis Bickle would have been evident even if the costume department hadn't put Albie in combat gear. None of it suggested any professional similarity to Nick Berry.

If you take Carlyle at his word - he says you should never imitate other actors but be yourself - and you assume that his acting style offers a true reflection of the person, he is a conflicted animal. There is a tough guy and there is a humane streak. There is Begbie, the Scottish hardman in all his repressed, glass-chewing glory, and there is Gaz in The Full Monty, exposing himself to preserve his dignity. People tend to focus on the psycho roles, but there are just as many thoughtful, socially conscious parts in which a tough guy is forced to accept his humanity. Looking back now, though, Carlyle accepts that if he is remembered for anything, it is for Trainspotting. It is, he thinks, a seminal film, defining a time in people's lives. For Carlyle, it seemed to be the bright moment when anything was possible. The middle of the video shelf, padded with odd choices such as The 51st State and Plunkett & Macleane, offers evidence of a more messy outcome.

In 1995, Carlyle was aware that the story of his journey towards acting had a corny tinge. He left school at 16 with no qualifications, and went to work with his father as a painter and decorator for five years. From the age of 18, he did night classes at Cardonald college, Glasgow. At 21, he spent a birthday gift of a book token on Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and was entranced. He pursued drama at Glasgow Arts Centre, got into the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (which he hated), and dragged himself towards a career in which he could be himself by pretending to be other people. Success was not, of course, without its downside. Fame - especially the attention he got when The Full Monty became an unlikely blockbuster - meant his background became public property. A tabloid tracked down Carlyle's mother, who had walked out when he was young. A former girlfriend was uncovered. His wedding plans, to make-up artist Anastasia Shirley, were revealed. (The couple now have two children: three-year-old Ava and 18-month-old Harvey.) He didn't like any of it.

Occasionally, Carlyle will refer to a period in his teens when he went off the rails. I ask him to explain what happened, and he says he prefers to answer in general terms. "Nonspecifics, you know? It's best to leave that blank. But in terms of what was going on in my head, I was 17 and full of testosterone and angst. I saw my life stretching ahead of me as a painter and decorator, which my family - my father and uncles - had been. There was a nihilistic quality about me then, which said, 'Fuck it, I'm no' caring if I'm destined to do that.'"

By the time he finished his apprenticeship as a painter, he was totally disaffected. When he was introduced to acting at 20 or 21, it was therapeutic. "For the first time I was able to go into a room and shout and scream. I was finding these wee plays with people shouting and screaming about things that were important to them, and I thought: 'This is interesting. I can shout and scream my stuff inside them.'"

That, he says, was the condensed answer. The bigger answer was more personal. "I was an only child. My mother had gone - and it's fucking boring and I don't want to talk about it - but all of that came to me at that time in my life. The injustice of that, suddenly, when you're a teenager."

Accounts of Carlyle's life with his father tend to have an unreal quality. He is said to have been raised in hippy communes, travelling around the country. "I hate the word 'hippy'. It was a bunch of people who had been hurt by the world. My father was one of them. There was a woman there who'd had two children, whose husband had left. Her sister also had had two children; her husband had left. There was another couple whose child had died. And we all lived in a house in Belmont Street [in Glasgow]. Everybody got very close through that sense of loss. I never wanted for a mother because I had these surrogate mothers. When you start to talk about that, flowery journalism starts to build it up into this commune idea. If that's what it was, that's what it was, but it's not what people think it was."

So it wasn't, "let's drop out of society and have an alternative lifestyle"?

"No, I don't think they knew what they were doing. Certainly, my father didn't drop out of society. This place in Belmont Street was a squat. I was maybe seven or eight. But then that house was gone, so what are they going to do now? They're all clinging to each other. Nobody wanted to go their separate ways. Somebody knew somebody in London, so they all ended up in London. My father was painting and decorating to make money. They didn't stop participating in society - far from it. People were out doing wee jobs but money was, to a certain extent, communal. People didn't starve. One of the women would make a big pot of communal soup and everybody would have it.

"From London, somebody knew somebody in Brighton, so we all moved there. The whole bunch of us stayed in Brighton for the best part of two years. There was a period in that when we did literally sleep beneath the pier on the beach for a couple of months." He remembers picnics in the park. "Everyone would go along and play guitars and the kids would run about. That was my upbringing."

Even as he talks about it, you can see the appeal of some of his roles. Hamish Macbeth was a dope-smoking policeman who did everything he could to avoid making an arrest. Begbie, we may assume, is informed by his late teenage years. The Begbie-lite Jimmy, in Shane Meadows' comic western, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, was fuelled by a rage about his fragmenting family. There is something to be said for the notion that Carlyle's work reflects his background. It is clearly informed by the politics of the 1970s. And the politics of the 70s were seasoned by the realisation that reality was tougher than the idealism of the 60s had suggested.

"There was most definitely a downside to all that for a lot of people," Carlyle says. "By about 1972-73, there were more than four - possibly five, even six - suicides all round about my father and I. Two of the people I've mentioned killed themselves, and there were others on the periphery of the group. I've thought about it for years: why did these people kill themselves? I think it was a very simple answer: there was nothing for them to go back to. Society had no place left for them. Any hiccups that happened in their lives - and in a couple of cases a couple of affairs had happened - that was enough to tip the balance. They were all deaths by overdoses or pills. All round about me. Terrible. This one woman died with her wee boy in the bed. Killed herself. I was getting to be 15, 16, and thinking, 'What the fuck was all that about?' So my teenage years were a kind of backlash against my 60s childhood."

It was, he says, a strange time. His attitude was: why should I fit in? "I was dogging school every day of the week, and I had no fucking idea what I was going to do with my life. My dad set me up with a wee bedsit of my own when I was 16. He was next door in another flat, but I was autonomous."

Salvation came at the Glasgow Arts Centre. Carlyle was starting to act at a time of mass unemployment. "The Thatcher years. I was in the situation where I had a job, and you didn't want to lose it. So it's a big decision to let all this go and join this arts centre