Tatler, June 1998
By Lucy Yeomans
(Article about Joseph Fiennes, Rufus Sewell, Tom Hollander, Anna Friel, Rachel Weisz and Catherine McCormack)
Brits have always made films in this country, but now they can make their name here, too. Home-grown talent is now inspiring all Hollywood's movies and shakers with the promise of big bucks at the box office - at last. It's lights, camera, action time for Britain, says Lucy Yeomans, particularly for these six Brit young things. Styled by Gail Rolfe. Photographed by Andrew Eccles
Once, it was impossible to lure Hollywood's big names to Britain, but today we're in danger of being crushed by the star-studded stampede. If Tinseltown's finest aren't flying in for film premieres, shooting at Shepperton, performing in north London theatres or whooping it up in the Met Bar, then chances are that they'll be house-hunting. For while cries of surprise greeted Tom Cruise's announcement that he and Nicole were thinking of setting up home in London, insiders were amazed the couple hadn't done it before. Stanley Kubrick's shoot for Eyes Wide Shut may have been more Marathon Man than Brief Encounter, but Cruise was already well versed in the Pinewood experience: both Mission Impossible and Interview with the Vampire were filmed there.
Another star more likely to be spotted cruising Notting Hill estate agents than the boutiques of Sunset Plaza is Gwyneth Paltrow. Having donned crinolines for Emma, grappled with Dickens in Great Expec-tations, and starred opposite John Four Weddings Hannah in Sliding Doors, the actress has again forsaken the US for London to appear with Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love, a drama written by Tom Stoppard and now filming at Shepperton. It does seem a little perverse that while home-grown actresses Minnie Driver and Kate Winsle are busy getting their tongues around the transat-lantic drawl, the ultimate Hollywood babe is spouting an accent that's more Cheltenham Ladies than Beverly Hills 90210.
Strangely, this is great news for Britain's rising stars. Never before have US film giants been so in touch with things British. Hollywood has always bowed to Britain's creative talent, most famously to our theatre-trained actors (three of Spielberg's most recent films were headed by Brits), but also to our directors, scriptwriters and technicians. It is only now, however, that top executives from companies like Miramax, Twentieth Century Fox and Polygram are actively scouring the country for new films and fresh creative blood.
Film like Four Wedding and a Funeral, Trainspotting and The Full Monty are largely to thank for this buoyant state of affairs. It's also far cheaper to shoot over here. And just as Hollywood is realising that Brits have more to offer than a sideline in depressing social realism, so too are British filmmakers concluding that commercial doesn't have to mean superficial. Valuable lessons have been learnt from fiascos like the collapse of Goldcrest, the British studio which, spurred on by the success of Chariots of Fire, attempted to make film-makers today are striking gold with low-budget flicks that appeal to audiences more turned on by a well-developed story than by Arnie wielding an AK-47, or a batallion of costly special effects.
While Titanic was little more than an over-inflated video game in which the acting was swamped by a tidal wave of technical trickery, British films, as well as making an impression at the box office (The Full Monty, with its tiny budget, more than outpaced the star-laden Men in Black as the bestselling film of 1997 in Britain), are also proving great vehicles for upcoming British acting talent.
Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas were the first of the New Brits to be swept up by Hollywood in post-Four Weddings fever (Scott Thomas stars with Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer later this summer). Then the phenomenon that is Ewan McGregor burst on to our screens in the low-budget Trainspotting. And Mark Addy's clothes weren't the only things that took off in The Full Monty: he recently signed a million-dollar deal with Warner Brothers. Add the fact that four of the five Best Actress nominees at this year's Oscars were British (even the American winner is currently treading the boards with the RSC in Twelfth Night), and it isn't hard to understand why Hollywood is coming over all Anglophile.
Hot off the plane from the Oscars, where his film The Wings of the Dove enjoyed several nominations, British producer Stephen Evans is optimistic. "The days when young British actors had to traipse out to LA to wait tables is over," he explains. "Now they can sit in Soho House, get pissed and wait for the studio executives to come to them." Evans, who was behind the hits Much Ado About Nothing and The Madness of King George, believes Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of the American production company Miramax, must take much of the credit for British film's renaissance: "There wouldn't be a British film industry if it wasn't for him." A glance at the list of "British-made" films that Miramax has thrown money at confirms this. The Crying Game, Emma, Trainspotting, The English Patient - all came under its mantle, as will Shakespeare in Love.
Playing the Bard in the production is newcomer Joseph Fiennes, fresh from the RSC. Only last year, Fiennes declared that nothing would persuade him to move to LA. Had he said this five years ago and harboured hopes of a career in film, he would have been sentenced to celluloid death by Jane Austen and BBC dramas. Today, with films like Shakespeare in Love being made on his doorstep, Fiennes may well be able to achieve superstardom without setting foot in the Virgin upper-class longue at Heathrow.
Business is certainly booming at the UK office of international talent agency William Morris. Senior executive Ben Silverman states: "William Morris don't just view Britain as a gateway to America. We're also involved in coming up with bigger projects over here to keep employing home-grown talent. It's about raising the level of the game in Britain by making the projects more commercial."
Things couldn't be better for the six young actors Tatler features here, the stars of two exciting new British films, The Land Girls and Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. It remains to be seen whether The Land Girls, a romantic pastiche of farm life during the Forties, will meet the same vertiginous success as The Full Monty. But even if the film doesn't fly at the international box office, it will certainly leave the Hollywood bigwigs panting for more from its three stars, Catherine McCormack, Anna Friel and Rachel Weisz. McCormack and Weisz have already flirted with Hollywood, McCormack - albeit fleetingly - as Mel Gibson's doomed wife in Braveheart, and Weisz opposite Keanu Reeves in the uninspiring Chain Reaction. And while Friel is less experienced, she will certainly emerge as blue-chip stock when Rogue Trader, in which she co-stars with the "he can do no wrong" McGregor, hits our screens later this year. Even in a low-budget film like The Land Girls, in which Friel and the others are up to their knees in cow dung, the star potential of all three is obvious.
The same can be said of fellow Brits Rufus Sewell, Tom Hollander and Joseph Fiennes, who appear together in Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence, a sharply scripted British romantic comedy. The film sees the stage-trained Hollander and Fiennes in their first leading screen roles, although their brilliant performances give no sign of this. Sewell, who stars in two Hollywood block busters to be released later this year, is adamant, like his co-stars, that he will never set up shop permanently in LA. "I honestly don't know any male actor who has moved there and whose work hasn't suffered as a result," he explains. "You end up getting a swimming-pool and then doing howlers like Kick Boxers in Space to pay for it."
Life on this side of the Atlantic is looking rosy enough for our talented sextet. For even if Britain is a touch chilly for an outdoor pool, at least our young stars can amuse themselves by hanging out at the Met Bar with Paltrown, watching Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida Theatre, or assisting Tom and Nicole if they do decide to buy that London pad. As Stephen Evans says: "For the first time, we're experiencing serious two-way traffic. If you're talented enough, you can live wherever the hell you like."
Joseph Fiennes, 28, has an almost feline air of mystery about him. Lean and handsome, he is the most reserved of these three actors, which makes the transformation he undergoes in front of the camera all the more striking. He has an otherworldly quality, which could, admittedly, have been due to the sheer filming exhaustion caused by a rigorous filming schedule (Shakespeare, in tights, six days a week with Gwyneth Paltrow, or 'Gwynnie', as she was affectionately known on the set). Whatever the cause, the effect is incredibly sexy. "I always knew I was going to be an actor," says the star of Shakespeare in Love. After 18 months at the Young Vic Youth Theatre and a spell at the Guildhall School of Drama and Music, the theatre world knew it, too. With five RSC productions under his belt and a clutch of films in the offing, Joe is proving that he's more than just Ralph's baby brother. Of the three actors, he is probably most like his character in Martha, and it is amusing to see that the interaction between the three on- and off-screen is not dissimilar. "It was invaluable to the story that we developed a genuine friendship, as our characters were supposed to be lifelong friends and that's difficult to put across if it is not sincere." Indeed, watching them, it is hard to believe that they only met a year ago. A true thespian at heart, Joseph still finds film-making absolutely terrifying: "Movies were never top of the agenda - but they pay the rent. I will definitely not be moving to the States. The only thing that might compel me to go would be to see Tom on Broadway."
