The League of Obscure British Actors

Monday, 7 October, 2002, 13:59 GMT 14:59 UK
Jude Law daughter in ecstasy scare

Frost and Law have three children together

Jude Law and Sadie Frost's two-year-old daughter, Iris, has been rushed to hospital after swallowing part of an ecstasy tablet. Frost - who recently gave birth to the couple's third child - was able to retrieve half of the tablet before Iris could swallow it all.

The incident took place at a children's party in London private members' club Soho House, where Iris is thought to have picked the tablet off the floor.

The pair have a film and theatre company

Police were then called and the two-year-old was kept in hospital for observation.

Road to Perdition star Law, 29, was said to have been told the news while filming in the US.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "We were called at 4.11pm Saturday afternoon by a London hospital regarding a two-year-old female child that was believed to have swallowed half a tablet of ecstasy.

"The child had been attending a children's party on Saturday where she was believed to have picked up a tablet that had been left on the floor of the premises on Old Compton Street.

This is being considered as an unforeseen accident outside the parents' control

Police spokesman "The premises had been used as a bar and nightclub on the Friday.

"It is believed that the child's mother discovered the two-year-old with an obstruction in her mouth. She managed to retrieve one half before it could be ingested.

"An ambulance took the child to the hospital where she was kept in for observation overnight. She was released Sunday morning.

"The tablet has been confirmed as ecstasy," he said.

'Private matter'

A spokesman for the Soho House Club, where the incident happened, said: "There was a private party. It was a private matter."

He later added: "We have requested a meeting with the Metropolitan Police and will be co-operating fully with them.

"It is made clear to all our members in the club's rules and regulations that drugs will not be tolerated on the premises."

A police source said there was no suggestion that the parents were guilty of neglect, adding: "There are no plans to take action against the parents of the victim.

"This is being considered as an unforeseen accident outside the parents' control."

The licensing branch of the Metropolitan Police has been informed and will decide whether to take further action.

Frost gave birth to son, Rudy, last month. They have another son, Rafferty, five, and Frost has an 11-year-old son, Finley, from a previous marriage.

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Law, Frost Child Swallows Ecstasy

Oct 7, 1:15 PM (ET)

(AP) British actors Jude Law and his wife Sadie Frost are seen in this March 18, 2002 file photo. Their...

LONDON (AP) - The 2-year-old daughter of actors Jude Law and Sadie Frost swallowed part of an Ecstasy tablet and was rushed to the hospital, police said Monday.

Scotland Yard spokesman Nick Jordan said a 2-year-old girl had swallowed the pill during a children's party Saturday at a club called Soho House, a popular spot in London's West End which had been used the previous night as a bar and nightclub.

A police source said the girl was Iris Law, who was with her mother, Frost.

Meena Khera, Law's spokeswoman, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

Jordan said the mother realized the girl had something in her mouth and managed to remove half of it before the child could swallow it, then called an ambulance.

The toddler was kept in the hospital overnight and released Sunday morning, he said. Tests showed the pill was Ecstasy, a drug popular at nightclubs.

Police were called to the hospital at 4:15 p.m. Saturday, but Jordan said there was no issue of neglect and added that police had no plans to take action against the parents.

He said the parents were free to consider suing Soho House, and that the police bureau that licenses clubs was investigating the presence of an illegal drug there.

Law, 29, was nominated for a supporting-actor Oscar for 1999's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and co-starred in "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" and "Road to Perdition."

Frost, 34, gave birth last month to a son, her fourth child and the couple's third together.

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The Scotsman 5 March 2001
Jude the obscured
Stephen Applebaum

‘This is a question for the gorgeous Jude Law," coos a shapely blonde reporter at the Berlin Film Festival news conference for Enemy at the Gates: "What are your plans for the future?" The press pack chuckle at her suggestive tone but Law ignores the innuendo, and unsmilingly informs her that he is about to start shooting a new film for American Beauty director Sam Mendes.

It is a telling moment. For Law the work has always been what is important and right now he wants to talk about Enemy at the Gates, a putative epic directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Name of the Rose, Seven Years in Tibet) and set during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Annaud clearly set out to make Europe’s answer to Saving Private Ryan, and for 20 or so harrowing minutes he pretty much succeeds. However, the French film-maker is no Spielberg and it does not take long for his $85m war effort to devolve into a turgid, half-baked mix of romance, violence, genre clichés and bad dialogue, set against a vivid backdrop of corpses and rubble.

Sadly, Jude Law is hopelessly miscast as a Russian sniper, while Rachel Weisz and Joseph Feinnes fair little better as a soldier and a Soviet political officer respectively. In fact, the best thing - or perhaps the worst thing, given the film’s subject matter - that can be said about this beautiful threesome, is that they even look good caked in mud and blood.

It is the day after the news conference, and I am sitting in a suite of a hotel, situated yards away from the Brandenburg Gate (a location chosen, I presume, for its symbolism), waiting to interview Jude Law. Suddenly, the door swings open and the actor swaggers into the room, singing chirpily and dressed in a look that is best described as Man at Oxfam; he lights a cigarette, cracks open a bottle of Coca-Cola and pulls up a chair. "It’s that time of day when I need a little nicotine and a little Coca-Cola to keep the energy levels up," he smiles.

What? No sachet of herbal tea? No plate of fruit? No bottle of Evian? Were I interviewing an actor from LA, these self-conscious signifiers of a life led healthily would be everywhere. Law, though, is a south Londoner, and a refreshingly unaffected one at that.

"It’s funny," he says when I ask him why he did Enemy at the Gates, a significantly different kind of movie for him, "because people often say to me, ‘Don’t you find all the parts you play are very similar?’ But I always think they’re completely different."

Certainly it is hard to see much similarity between the role of Oscar Wilde’s young lover, Bosie, in Wilde, the security guard plunged into a virtual world he played in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, his doomed playboy in The Talented Mr Ripley, or, indeed, his Second World War Russian sniper. Perhaps the problem is that no matter what character he is playing, Jude Law always looks like, well, Jude Law. In each case, it is as if his director had been afraid to alter that beautiful face in almost any way at all.

Remembering his reluctance to engage in flirtatious banter at the press conference, I ask him if he would prefer it if people focused less on his appearance and more on the work.

"Bingo!" he says, stabbing the air with his cigarette. "I would, yeah. It’s just one of those things, I guess. At least they’re not telling me I’m hideously, hideously ugly. That’s a good thing, maybe. I don’t know. But anything that as an actor boxes you is a hindrance because, you know, it limits the parts available."

Despite this assertion, you only need to trawl the web or thumb through old copies of, say, Harpers and Queen, to grasp the extent to which Law has colluded in promoting himself via his looks. So far he has got away with it; his CV suggests no signs of pigeonholing.

"I’ve been fortunate enough in the past to be cast in different types of roles," he says, "and I will continue to look for roles that challenge me and teach me something new about the craft and about myself. I want to work with directors who will push my boundaries, and push me a little further and a little harder."

The role of Vassili Zaitsev, the real-life sniper he plays in Enemy at the Gates, met these criteria. For one, it taught him about the Battle of Stalingrad; and because of the way Annaud shot a lot of the film he was forced to try a new way of acting.

"When Jean-Jacques and I met early on," recalls Law, "he made it clear that a lot of the film - from my point of view - would be shot in close-up. Also, the training I underwent as a sniper taught me very quickly that because minimal movement was allowed, most of the acting would have to go on in the eyes. That struck me as a real challenge, and also as a very important physical aspect of who Vassili was."

It is not surprising to hear Law talk this way. After all, this is the man who refused to walk during the filming of Gattaca, and who took sailing and saxophone lessons for The Talented Mr Ripley. Given his commitment to his craft, then, is it any wonder he gets dispirited when people focus so intently on his looks?

And it is not like he is a new kid on the block with a limited body of work, either. Now 28, Law has been acting since the age of 12 when he worked with various youth theatre groups. Having decided that acting was all he ever wanted to do, he dropped out of school at 17 and joined the cast of the daytime soap, Families.

The theatre beckoned once again, and Law became feted for performances in Pygmalion, Euripides’s Ions, and, most memorably, for his work as Michael in Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles. When the last of these moved to Broadway, in 1995, retitled Indescretions, Law was the only member of the original British cast to go with it. His work opposite Kathleen Turner and Eileen Atkins earned him a Tony nomination and, thanks to his appearing naked in a bathtub every night, a reputation as a rising sex symbol into the bargain.

Keen to control his own destiny, Law, together with his wife, the actress Sadie Frost, joined forces with Ewan McGregor, Sean Pertwee and Jonny Lee Miller in forming their own production company, Natural Nylon.

"What it comes down to is doing it on my own terms," Law has said. "I want to be able, now and always, to make my decisions for the right reasons. For my reasons."

To date, Natural Nylon has worked predominantly in the area of film production, originating projects such as the James Joyce biopic, Nora, and the bizarre sci-fi thriller, eXistenZ. However, this is now about to change, and the company is set to branch out into theatre as well.

"We were approached by the Ambassador Theatre Group who basically offered us a deal we couldn’t refuse," says Law. "And because a lot of us started in the theatre, we also saw it as an opportunity to encourage new young playwrights to send us stuff that hopefully we could funnel all this money into.

"I had also built a relationship up at the Young Vic and I saw it as an opportunity to channel more money that they were offering me into the theatre, which I knew needed it. So now I’m on the board there to see that money coming in."

Best of all, perhaps, at least for fans of the actors behind Natural Nylon, is the fact that they all plan to use this opportunity to return to the stage more often than they have done.

"I did a play in 1999 [Tis’ Pity She’s a Whore], but I hope now to do quite a bit more. Especially when my children go to school, because I’m not going to be able to travel abroad so much."

Recently, the Scottish producer Douglas Rae (Mrs Brown), on considering who will play the role of Bonnie Prince Charlie in his new film, made a telling, if sacrilegious, choice: "I’m going to ask the most beautiful and talented male actor in England to play Charlie," he said, " and that’s Jude Law."

Enemy at the Gates is released on 16 March.

Wednesday February 7 8:36 PM ET
Jude Law learns to be wholesome, how to shoot

BERLIN (Reuters) - Jude Law has made a name playing beautiful, witty but troubled young men. But the new Stalingrad epic ``Enemy at the Gates'' gave him a chance to show he can do silent, square-jawed wholesome too -- and he learned to shoot.

``To be offered to play a kind of character I hadn't played before was a challenge, to play someone who expresses himself better physically than verbally,'' Law said after Wednesday's premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, in which he plays Vasily Zaitsev, a Soviet sniper dueling with a German amid the battle.

``There was something I liked about Vasily, a simplicity, a kind of salt-of-the-earth, straightforward, no-nonsense approach to life,'' said the 28-year-old Londoner, known for slicker, darker parts in the likes of ``The Talented Mr Ripley'' or the 1997 sci-fi thriller ``Gattaca'' that made his name in Hollywood.

French director Jean-Jacques Annaud said he chose Law not just for his brains but for the sheer sex appeal that has made him one of cinema's hottest properties. In doing so, Annaud was exploiting the same basic rule as the Soviet propagandists who made Law's real-life character a hero in the first place.

``Beauty sells,'' Annaud told a news conference. ``That's why the Russians picked Vasily too.''

With Law and Joseph Fiennes, whose Red commissar turns Law's shepherd boy into a Soviet hero through propaganda and competes with him for the love of Rachel Weisz's woman soldier, Annaud said he picked ``the two sexiest young men available today.''

Sex In The Trenches

As to the sex-in-the-trenches theme in the big-budget, German-made film, Annaud insisted he was being faithful to historical fact, as recorded in personal Russian and German memories collated in the 1970s book ``Enemy at the Gates.''

He had even recently met a Russian who said he was born in Stalingrad in 1943 after being conceived in the heat of battle the previous winter in just the way depicted by Law and Weisz, grappling with thermal underwear amid the blood and mud.

The British cast, which also included veteran Bob Hoskins as Soviet politician Nikita Khrushchev, brought a better feel for continental European characters to the English-language film than Americans would have, Annaud felt, explaining why the only big-name American is Ed Harris, who plays Law's German enemy.

That may please some Britons upset at what some see as a trend in Hollywood to reserve English accents for the bad guys.

The Germans and Russians were extras from Berlin, where the film was made. The German capital has a big Russian community.

That mixture gave the proceedings an emotional edge as cast members swapped family histories of the war.

``It was very resonant to be in Germany,'' Weisz said.

``It was an experience I won't ever forget,'' Law said of filming the terrifying opening scenes of mayhem at the Babelsberg studios. ``It was incredibly harrowing and only underlined my belief that war doesn't really work, does it?''

But should he ever need to, he also learned to shoot.

``I'd never fired a rifle or a gun before I did this film,'' he said.

Long days with an ex-SAS special forces officer changed that. ``You learned to sleep with it, eat with it, everything else with it,'' Law said.

Reuters/Variety

Law casts himself as troubled Beatles manager
Guardian Unlimited - Friday November 17, 2000

Natural Nylon, the British production company that has been conspicuous in its failures to date, with James Joyce biopic Nora and lame gangster flick Love, Honour and Obey to its name, is to produce a film about the troubled Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

Gossip site therumour.com reports that the production company owned by Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee has turned its attention to the Beatles manager Brian Epstein who died aged 33. Jude Law will take the read role of the homosexual Epstein, who died of a suspected drugs overdose in 1967 when the band were at the height of their fame.

Law found fame playing Oscar Wilde's lover Bosie in 1997's Wilde. The actor told reporters he is more than happy to take on another homosexual role. "It's a great role," he said, "and as with every heterosexual man, every homosexual man is different, and they approach their sexuality very differently."

The story of Epstein's colourful life has been previously presented in Christopher Munch's 1991 feature, The Hours and Times. A fictionalised account of what may have happened when John Lennon and Epstein went on holiday to Spain in 1963, Munch's film focused on rumours that Epstein was in love with Lennon.

Law is in big demand since his Oscar-nominated role in The Talented Mr Ripley. Variety reports today that the British actor is considering an offer to star alongside Tom Hanks in Sam Mendes depression-era epic, The Road to Perdition. The film, due to start shooting in early 2001 concerns a hitman who wreaks revenge on the murderer of his wife and son.

Furthermore, as we reported last week, Law and Natural Nylon are also eyeing a biopic of Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe. Although Johnny Depp is rumoured to be interested in the lead role, Law is also expected to star.

Currently in Los Angeles working on the Stanley Kubrick-scripted A1 with Steven Spielberg, Law is one of Hollywood's hottest British exports. It seems that the actor will soon be facing a decision whether to base himself and his family in California, or remain at their Primrose Hill home in North London and continue a commitment to low-budget British productions.

Spacey Stars
In a Racy Sketch

HOLLYWOOD
Kevin Spacey deserves an Oscar for being a good sport. The same week that the National Enquirer revived rumors that the "American Beauty" star has a gay past, he was willing to dress up in drag at a party Saturday night.

Spacey, who has gone on record as being straight, felt secure enough to don a blond wig and frilly pastel dress for a comic sketch at Miramax' annual Oscar-eve cocktail bash at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Kevin Spacey
As they do every year, Miramax honchos Harvey and Bob Weinstein dragooned stars from their movies to swap roles in order to claim the "Maxy Awards."

Spacey, who played along even though "American Beauty" is a DreamWorks release, mounted a makeshift stage with Anthony Minghella, director and sceenwriter of "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

They reenacted a scene from "Cider House Rules" in which Charlize Theron's character introduces virginal orphan Tobey Maguire to the joys of sex. Minghella, dressed in a plaid workshirt, aped Maguire.

Throwing himself into Theron's part, Spacey proposed: "Let's cuddle." He proceeded to put his arm around the bearlike Minghella and plant a lingering kiss on the side of his prickly head. Just when Spacey might have thought the worst was over, "Cider House" director Lasse Halstrom shouted, "Do it again!"

Spacey wasn't the only Oscar nominee subjected to indignity. Michael Caine agreed to play the beach scene from "Ripley," pulling on a white smock bearing the outline of Matt Damon's swimsuit-clad, pasty bod.

Hallstrom wore a wig and bikini top to double as Gwyneth Paltrow. And Judi Dench played Jude Law. The real Damon and Law later joined Naples singer Fiorello to lead the room in a spirited reprise of their "Ripley" saloon song, "Tu Vuo Fa L'Americano."

Miramax' Weinstein brothers came in for some payback when the real Paltrow and Ben Affleck (who held hands during the party and left together) joined "Cider House" writer John Irving and executive producer Bobby Cohen for a sketch titled "Weinstein House Rules." A takeoff on "Music of the Heart," it found Affleck and Cohen playing Harvey and Bob as violin teachers subbing for Meryl Streep.

Irving joined Gwyneth to play the role of a reluctant student and said, "I don't care about music. I want to be a writer." Affleck, wearing a prosthetic gut covered with half-eaten food, growled: "You do not! John, strap on your brain! [A writer] sits in a room all day. You have no power. You get paid nothing. You never get [bleeped]."

Playing a nasal Bob Weinstein, Cohen piped up: "What about Tina Brown?"

"She's an editor, Bob," said Affleck, guzzling Diet Coke and munching Snackwells. "She eats writers for breakfast everyday."

Affleck ordered Paltrow and Irving to "go ahead and play, [but not] a whole concerto. It's boring."

Harvey's reaction? The studio head, back on the scene after being hospitalized, wept with laughter. Particularly when Affleck closed the party by declaring, "Good night, you princes of Tribeca. You queens of West Hollywood."

03/27 ny daily news

LIZ SMITH, NY POST 3/20/00
LAW & DISORDER

"I WISH a few more of my pals had been included!" That's what Jude Law told us, over a crackly long-distance call from Berlin, where he's filming "Enemy at the Gates."

Jude, a Best Supporting Actor nominee for "The Talented Mr. Ripley," was referring to pals like co-stars Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow and director Anthony Minghella. The "Ripley" shutout is mystifying to Jude, but he's happy to have snared a nod for his mesmerizing, sensual and compellingly cruel performance as Matt Damon's obsession. "The difficulty was trying to keep him sympathetic," say Jude. "But what Anthony wanted was a projection and creation of an irresistible energy. You had to believe the character's charisma; that he could, without being aware of it, incite the most passionate and contrary emotions. Of course, the whole movie was about the essence of self-image and the projection of perfection on others."

Jude's current film, which has another month or so to go, co-stars Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz and is a 1940s tale of three young soldiers in the Red Army. It is said to be the most expensive film ever lensed in Europe. "After 'Ripley' I said I wanted something far away from that sort of luxury setting. So here I am, traumatized in battle scenes, cleaning up the mud and broken glass between takes, looking like hell. It's true about being careful what you wish for, as you might get it!"

Jude will attend the Oscars. "I'll clean up my nails, and crawl into the party."

As to word that he'll star in Steven Spielberg's "A.I.," Jude would only say, "It's likely."

Jude Law Wings From 'Four Feathers'

By Claude Brodesser

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - As the producers of the remake of 1939's ``Four Feathers,'' were scouting locations in Morocco, their star, Jude Law, was winging his way toward other projects.

Feathers flew at Miramax Films, which is financing the project with Paramount, after Law demãnded a $4 million payday and significant gross participation, according to people familiar with the talks. Miramax, known for getting white-hot talent at civil servant wages, would not brook such demands.

Law is likely, however, to cut a richer deal elsewhere, given that he's Oscar-nominated -- ironically, for his role in another Paramount/Miramax co-production, ``The Talented Mr. Ripley''

Meanwhile, Paramount and Miramax are understood to have had conversations with Billy Crudup as a possible replacement, according to insiders.

``Feathers'' is a remake of the Zoltan Korda tale that Hossein Amini (''The Wings of the Dove'' and, it might be noted with some interest, ``Jude'') will adapt from the pre-war screenplay. Shekhar Kapur (''Elizabeth,'') will still direct. Stanley and Bob Jaffe are producing.

``Feathers'' centers on a British officer who resigns his post just before battle and is given four white feathers by his friends and fiancee as symbols of what they believe to be his cowardice. Law's next project is unclear, for while he is still understood to be attached to the MGM picture ``The Good Shepherd,'' directed by Robert De Niro, the picture isn't scheduled to begin shooting until early 2001.

``Shepherd'' follows a career CIA agent who is recruited fresh out of the Ivy League at the agency's inception after WWII, and the toll his work takes on his life and family.

ROLE CALL: Law on Spielberg's Side
By Fiona Ng, Hollywood.com

SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 16, 2000 -- Steven Spielberg is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Did we stun you with our insight? Read on. Now we'll stun you with our evidence:

Just 24 little hours after Spielberg announced that he intended to helm "A.I.," a sci-fi project left orphaned after the death of Stanley Kubrick, two Oscar-nominated actors have already jumped onto the bandwagon.

Today's Hollywood Reporter says Best Supporting Actor hopefuls Jude Law ("The Talented Mr. Ripley" and underage-acting wonder Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense") are both in negotiations to join the project. (Note: The two actors -- almost 20 years apart in age -- are not vying for the same part. Obviously.)

Just to show how much clout Spielberg has, Law reportedly fled the chance to headline Miramax's planned remake of the 1939 British war flick, "The Four Feathers," in favor of "A.I." (Variety says Miramax let Law walk after the studio passed at the chance to pay him $4 million.)

Production on "A.I." (an abbreviation for "artificial intelligence") is set to begin in July. Spielberg is also writing the script.

Sunday Telegraph Magazine on February 20th
Dark, dashing and almost flawless

With an Oscar nomination for his role in The Talented Mr Ripley, Jude Law has the world at his feet-just as his director predicted.

Picture this. You are sitting in an anonymous hotel room. There is a knock at the door. You hesitate, then decide to answer it. And there, in the other side of the door, is Jude Law, the most dashing British actor of the moment and unarguably the most feted. He is wearing black tie. The night is young...

But Law swoops into the room like a man with a train to catch, or rather a premiere to attend. I have 35 minutes of his time and it is most definitely business, not pleasure. It is the night of the London premiere of The Talented Mr Ripley, Anthony Minghella's luxuriously dark adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel. It is also the night before the morning after, when Law will receive a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his role in the film as the spoilt but irresistible Ivy Leaguer Dickie Greenleaf, frittering away his father's fortune on the Italian Riviera.

Law asks for coffee, matches for his Marlboro Lights anf for Sadie, his wife. Where is she? Is she on her way? 10 minutes or 15? It is because of Sadie Frost, an actress-cum-underwear designer (yes, really) that Law has most recently been in the news. A couple of weeks ago there was that unfortunate incident when she got stuck in a lift in Berlin and ended up in police custody ("It was a farcical situation...I don't want to talk about it") She obviously needs keeping an eye on.

Law is looking tired-he is currently working six days a week on Enemy at the Gate, a film based on Antony Beevor's book Stalingrad-but he is also looking good. Even the bags under his storm-dark eyes are something special-neat dounle semicircles, exactly symmetrical. His hair is fastidiously unbrushed, his skin the colour of butter toffee ( as sun loving Dickie in Ripley he looked like he had been dipped head first in a tub of molasses, good enough to eat) In fact, scouting desperately for flaws, all I can stretch to is that his fingers are a little too short, and his feet a little too long. "Only size 10" he exclaims in mock horror!

The 27 year old Law grew up in Lewisham, the son of two teachers who named him after Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Law tells me. He learnt his craft at the National Youth Music Theatre and in a dodgy Manchester-based TV soap called Families, but first won acclaim in Cocteau's Les Parents Terribles at the National in 1994, where he spent much of his time on stage naked.

Since then we have seen both more and-with the exception of a couple of memorable moments in the buff-less of him, in several well-regarded but not particularly successful films. He has been "Up and Coming" for years, but now, with this latest role, he may finally have up and come of age. Minghella has predicted that "the world is going to be at Jude's feet after this film" and the Oscar nomination seem to confirm this.

It would have been easy for Law to make a career out of his matinee idol appearance. And in a way he has. The one constant in his work is that looks-his-can be deceptive. His two most notable roles prior to Dickie were essentially armcandy-he played Bosie to Stephen Fry's Oscar in Wilde, a hustler to Kevin Spacey's wealthy connoisseur in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil-but his was the kind of candy to stick in the teeth and make them rot. These characters caused despair, destruction, even death.

Doesn't he like playing "nice" roles? "I just like characters that have fullness", he says, in a kind of soft growl, very RADA, with just a kint of south Lodnon for credibility. "Like with Bosie, here was someone who everybody said was a complete shit. But I thought: he was that apple of Oscar's eye, there must have been something about him. I think sometimes you have to work hard to find the nice things in people...somethimes you hace to wrok hard to find the darker things. It's the same in life. Often that is the process of a relationship with someone."

Initially the character of Dickie in Ripley seemed just too sugar-sweet for Law, and he was on the point of turning it down. "I couldn't see beyond this rich, charismatic dude", he explains, leaning forward in his chair, waving his arms around like one of the Italian extras. "I didn't want to shortshrift myself with a role that didn't leave me anywhere to go. Then I met Anthony (Minghella) and he said I hadn't seen all the colours, that Dickie had to resonate through the film, that I had to make people LIKE him. That was the real challenge, because if you show a British audience someone who has everything, they are immediately going to dislike him."

So successful was Law's "resonating" as Dickie that many critics have felt that he, rather than Matt Damon, should have been given the lead role as Tom Ripley. In fact, there is a pleasing kind of logic to the critical carping. The film is about the blurring identites of the 2 characters, about Ripley becoming Greenleaf. How apt, then, if people feel Greenleaf (Law) should have been Ripley (Damon) all along.

Law won't be drawn into the debate. "I wasn't offered Dickie so I never really thought about it, " He says. What was it like acting alongside his American contemporaries, superstars such as Damon and Paltrow?

"Working with them made me realise how much easier it is just to stick to acting when you are British. They both had to deal with so much fluff because they were American actors and therefore American movie stars."

But surely Law's life cannot be "fluff"-free? He is a celebrity. So too, to a lesser extent, is his wife. So are his friends (Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee, with who he has set up the film production company Natural Nylon)

"The attention you get all depends on how much money a film makes and how many people go to see it. So far, although I am proud of the films I have made, none of them has made much money. That could change. But I have a family and I rarely go to any celebrity functions or opening nights because I don't enjoy them. People have started to create a fanfare around me and Sadie but it is not like we are going out wearing backless dresses every night. It seems we have been given that role but we know the truth."

The truth, says Law, is that he stays in six nights a week look after his 3 year old son Rafferty. Does he ever worry about what his growing fame will mean for his son? "NO. He has a great time. His dad's a soldier at the moment, that is all he cares about. And when we were in Italy he was just obsessed that I had a boat and every boat in the harbour was dad's boat."

And has Law's growing reputation as an actor caused tension with his wife, whose own career has been lacklustre in comparison. "No. Sadie has made a choice that she doesn't want to do studio pictures because it will take her away from her older son Finn. I am in a different situation. With her at home it is easier for me to go away and her to come and visit with the children. Besides, you really can't take seriously what people say about each of you. It affects you but you can't let it affect you. What are you going to do? Get a divorce because of what someone has written about you in a paper? We are very supportive of each other."

Just how supportive Law has had to be was evident recently when money to back a Natural Nylon project-a film about Christopher Marlowe, starring husband and then wife-was to be withdrawn if Frost wasn't replaced by a more bankable name (Gwyneth Paltrow was said to have been considered) Because of Frost's anger at this, Law has since pulled out, and he claims that thanks to film such as Ripley the "powerchips are starting to come back in to Natural Nylon."

Althought this is a boast that doesn't quite ring true-Law's pet project is still going ahead without either of them-Jude is certainly now what might be called a player. Indeed, Jude the Obscure is fast becoming Jude the Really-Rather-Famous. And next month he may well become Jude the Oscar-Winner, too.

THE TALENTED Mr. Law.

Who alive doesn't recognize Jude Law as the gorgeous bronzed rich boy, in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY? Talk about your breakout hotties. Anyone who can demolish Matt Damon's heart can surely melt mine. Bring on the media onslaught. But, do you remember Jude from GATTACA, eXistenZ or MINIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD & EVIL?

Mr. Law is one of those actors who truly disappears, then sizzles onscreen. The way he morphed from RIPLEY's silver-spooned snot, to GATTACA's pale conspirator, to MIDNIGHT's greasy houseboy Billy Hanson. This character actor turned center-stage-stud, is white hot now.

Jude's (named after The Beatles' "Hey Jude" by his mum) just inked a deal to star in, FOUR FEATHERS, for Paramount and Miramax, with ELIZABETH director Shekhar Kapur directing. The story involves a British officer who bails before battle and is anointed "four feathers" as a symbol of his Yankee Doodle yellow streak.

In the meantime, look for Jude in the upcoming, ENEMY AT THE GATES, opposite Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris and Rachel Weisz in a dramatic/romantic war story of foxhole slap 'n tickle.

No word on whether this London-based 27-year-old sensation will go Hollywood, but for now, he and TRAINSPOTTers, Johnny Lee Miller & Ewan McGregor, alongside Mrs. Lucky Law, Sadie, are busy with, NATURAL NYLON, their very busy production company.

Guardian
Oscars special: Jude Law

Jude awakening His Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley is an arrogant playboy, but in real life Jude Law is just a highly confident movie star - with an Oscar nomination. He talks to Emma Brockes

Friday February 18, 2000

There is a widely held view that if Jude Law had been born in America, he would be where Matt Damon is now - a box office name you don't have to fish about in your memory to recognize. He is cut, after all, in the Hitler Youth mould of the American male lead: firm tits, stone jaw and the sort of petulant screen charm that flushes away disapproval with sheer gut fascination.

It is easy to watch him in his role as Dickie Greenleaf, the arrogant playboy in The Talented Mr Ripley for which he has just won an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, and imagine that it is an exaggerated version of himself - charming, beautiful, imperially conceited. But at six o'clock on a Wednesday evening, standing in a puddle two miles from Berlin, it is a vision that is hard to sustain.

"Raff, Raff, don't get in a tizz." He is consoling his two year old son Rafferty, who is screaming at the thought of travelling into town in a different car from daddy. Law has been out here, in Berlin's abandoned Russian army barracks, filming scenes for Enemy at the Gates. "Don't cry, bubba," he says, picking the boy up and offering him a fistful of comics. "Daddy's following right behind you."

The boy, angel-haired like a fresco cherub, is momentarily distracted by a platoon of extras marching past in the direction of Red Square, a to-scale reconstruction built on waste ground. It's here that Law and Joseph Fiennes are daily playing Russian soldiers in Jean-Jacques Annaud's new film which is set during the battle of Stalingrad in the second world war. The film, which also stars Ed Harris and Rachel Weisz, is the true story of a duel between a Russian sniper and German officer.

It is dark now, wet from the snow machine and about minus five degrees. The SS men have retired to their trailers and two German drivers, waiting to take us back to the city centre, are shooting air guns at each other and shivering at the weirdness of the scene before them. "There are black shirts - SS men - marching about," says one. "It is very strange, very strange to see."

It couldn't be further from the scenes that Law, from next Friday, can be seen enjoying in The Talented Mr Ripley, the Anthony Minghella film that so meticulously recreates 1950s Italy that with every shot you expect Audrey Hepburn to come scooting round the corner, Tony Curtis in pursuit. "I was hugely seduced by the era," says Law, when Rafferty, whose mother is the actress Sadie Frost, has agreed to go in the car with his grandparents.

Law's voice is hoarse from shouting at SS men and he has a little moan about doing interviews after a long day's shooting. It is only a lapse in his charm, however. He takes talking seriously. "Before the film, my image of the 50s came out of the Levi's ad. But it was an era of naive rebellion, when young people started expressing new found philosophies about having a good time, without using the shock tactics that came with the 60s."

Law's character in the film, the son of an American shipping magnate living in louche style on the Italian coast, shocks in the same way that Gatsby did: by showing how bad behaviour is excused, and by extension enabled, by beauty. Dickie Greenleaf is loved, hated and indulged in equal measure because he is the person who everyone wants to be. "I don't judge the characters I play," says Law. He is interesting on Greenleaf, since his public profile shares some of his characteristics. "When I first read the part I did what I think it is natural in Britain to do: I recoiled from him as this spoilt, golden boy. But Anthony won me over. I am fascinated by the challenge of trying to make nasty characters likeable and vice versa, because everyone is made up of all those facets."

Law's initial dismay at the part may also have come from the fact that he dies half way through the film. "Before I went through it with Anthony, I hadn't seen how the part of Dickie resonates throughout the whole film. But he is always there, in a sense." This sounds a bit like the school teacher trying to persuade little Johnny that the donkey really is a pivotal part in the nativity play and every bit as important as Joseph - except that Law's performance is dazzling enough to do just as Minghella promised, and keep the audience thinking about him throughout the film. It brings home that while his roles in the science fiction films Gattaca and eXistenZ were played with conviction, this is the first time Law has really looked like a star.

The irony is that in terms of his background, the 27 year old really has more in common with the Matt Damon role, Tom Ripley, the ordinary Joe with the talent for mimicry. Law's parents are both retired teachers from South London and he was educated at a comprehensive school before the bullying got too bad and he was transfered to a private one in Dulwich. "We have all been in positions where we've been Tom Ripley - where we've hated ourselves and wanted to be someone else. But it was more interesting for me to play Greenleaf and to assume all these airs and graces, rather than to draw on my own demons."

Admittedly, his demons aren't that ferocious. The tenor of his upbringing was such, says Law, that his confidence is mistaken for arrogance. He doesn't think he is better than anyone else, he just knows who he is and what he does best.

"I remember the first school play I did when I was six. It wasn't a case of me looking at the other kids and thinking that I was better. It was just that I immediately understood it, the concept of creating an imaginative scenario. I took it very seriously. I probably drove people mad."

He was emboldened by the relationship he had with his parents - a very adult one that included going regularly to the theatre and talking about the plays they had seen. "Perhaps that's what made me seem cocky at school. But I always assumed that I would get what I wanted in terms of my acting. Not that I was going to be a star or anything, but I didn't see why I should do that British thing of playing down my ambitions. 'You can't be an actor,' they said to me at school. 'Why not?' I said. It's a cliché, but that's how it was."

Confidence is in his make-up, he says, and so is thoughtfulness. "I have always been someone who can't do something that I know will hurt others. Whether success will breed arrogance I don't know, but I'll never deny what I can do and I'll never knowingly upset someone."

The success of his school plays encouraged him to join the National Youth Theatre where, at 13 years old, he met Jonny Lee Miller, now one of his best friends and a partner in Natural Nylon, the production company they own with Sean Pertwee and Ewan McGregor. At 16, he left school with his parents' blessing and won a small part in the Granada soap, Families, before getting a breakthrough role in Les Parents Terribles. When it transferred from the National Theatre to New York, Law won a Tony nomination for best supporting actor and the film roles followed.

"The plan was always to go to university and train to be an actor after that," he says. "But I didn't enjoy the institution of school. I like the accumulated knowledge and the minds of good teachers, but I hated rules and regulations. It's the same on set. If you're not having a good time, why are you standing there doing it? It's your life."

He loves to tackle a thick reading list before starting a new project. On eXistenZ, a film about a virtual reality game, the director David Cronenberg had Law reading Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard as well as putting in some essential hours playing Tomb Raider. For Enemy at the Gates he is ploughing through Russian history books.

His parents have flown out with Rafferty to congratulate him on the Oscar nomination, something he is "thrilled" about naturally, and has been keeping his mind off as a grace too many to wish for. Harvey Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax, is thrilled also and we have to stop on the way to the set to buy Law a bottle of Dom Perignon in Weinstein's name.

He won't be seduced into moving to the States with the movie movers and shakers, however, and has Rafferty enrolled in a state school in north London, where he and Sadie intend to stay. He is not the kind of movie dad who disappears for nine months at a time. As on set, he knows his own value at home. "There's no need to go to Hollywood. I have all my friends around and I know how it feels to be a kid growing up here. Besides, meetings can be held in London." Modest, see?

o The Talented Mr Ripley opens on February 25.

Thursday February 17 2:37 AM ET
Law tickled by ``Feathers''
By Claude Brodesser and Dana Harris

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Jude Law, Oscar nominated for his role in ``The Talented Mr. Ripley'' has committed to star in ``Four Feathers,'' which begins shooting in July.

The Paramount/Miramax co-production is a remake of the Zoltan Korda tale that Hossein Amini (``The Wings of the Dove'' ``Jude'') will adapt from the 1939 screenplay. Shekhar Kapur (``Elizabeth,'' ``Bandit Queen'') will direct.

``Feathers'' centers on a British officer who resigns his post just before battle and is given four white feathers by his friends and fiancee as symbols of what they believe to be his cowardice.

Law is also eyeing the lead in ``The Good Shepherd,'' set up at MGM, which will be directed by Robert De Niro. Law recently participated in the table read of Eric Roth's ``Shepherd'' script in Manhattan. The story follows a CIA agent who is recruited fresh out of the Ivy League at the agency's inception after WWII, and the toll his work takes on his life and family.

Sources familiar with the talks indicated that the two projects would not present a scheduling conflict for Law, given that ``Feathers'' would begin lensing this July, and that De Niro's acting jobs will have him tied up until early 2001.

Reuters/Variety
Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Daily Mail, February 16, 2000
Talented Holly

With her sister Sadie Frost basking in the limelight of husband Jude Law - whose role in The Talented Mr Ripley has landed him an Oscar nomination - there is stardom just around the corner for Holly Davidson.

At just 19, the hitherto unknown actress has won a part opposite former Bond star Sean Bean in his latest flick Essex Boys and will be inviting her family along to the May premiere - but strictly as guests.

'Sadie and Jude always ask me along to showbizzy; parties, so it will be a pleasant change to return the gesture,' says Holly. 'I'm naturally brown-haired, but in the film I wear a long blonde wig, short skirt and white stilettos - typical Essex girl gear. I play Sean's bit on the side, so quite what they will make of it is anyone's guess.'

So far Holly has been in small-budget movies, but with Ralph Fiennes' former wife Alex Kingston also in the film, Essex Boys has all the ingredients of a hit. 'It's my big break,' says Holly 'Sadie and Jude have always been very encouraging and watched everything I've done.'

From Dejanews:

 The Talented Mr. Ripley: Doing the Lord's Work -- Killing

 Mrs. Bowers was rather surprised by this film.  Upon hearing that it was set in the halcyon days of the late 1950's, I had
 naturally assumed that all of the youths would exhibit exemplary Christian behavior.  As we all know, each and every
 problem we are currently having with 21st century youths -- drugs, ill-fitting jeans, harlotry and the fact that piercing is no
 longer limited to insight -- can be traced directly to the lack of prayer in public schools.  The characters in this drama all
 grew up in a time when prayer was still allowed and there were, hence, no societal problems.  Naturally, Hollywood
 wishes to distort this truth, so most of the characters in this film are presented as
 anachronistically amoral.

 The film starts innocently enough at a lovely Upper-East Side rooftop party, providing a charming view of Manhattan.  Mrs.
 Bowers was
 somewhat surprised to find that the World Trade Towers dated back to the Eisenhower administration, but not nearly as
 surprised to note that piano players back then were tipped with free trips to Italy.  While the catering at the party was
 decidedly uninspired and the musical selection somewhat too obvious for Mrs. Bowers' keen hostessing
 instincts, the soiree showed all signs of being a truly Christian gathering.  Given that this was New York, I was delighted to
 note that I did not spot one unsightly yarmulke amongst the guests or a colored person who wasn't holding a tray.

 Tom Ripley (Matt Damon, with a beguiling smile formed by deliciously ripe lips) meets a Christian father after the party
 whose son is living in Italy and disobeying him.  He asks Matt to go to Italy to "get" his son.  Knowing that in the Old
 Testament God commands that all "stubborn and rebellious sons" be killed (Deuteronomy 21:18-22), Matt is aware that the
 father is asking him to do the Lord's work by going to Italy to kill his wayward son.  Once an agreement is reached about
 his expenses and class of travel, Matt agrees with alacrity to act as God's avenging angel.

 At this point, the film was showing much promise.  Now that the main protagonist knows that he is on a mission from God,
 we segue to Italy. While the Italians embrace a wholly false faith, for which they will all be damned, they are nonetheless a
 lovely people who are capable of concocting the most delicious dinners prior to their inevitable descent into the very pit of
 Hell.

 Coming off the perfectly presentable Cunard-style boat, the main character Matt meets an American heiress played by the
 foreign
 (British) actress Cate Blanchett.  Ms. Blanchett appears to have studied for her part by locking herself in a room with an old
 video of Auntie Mame.  Throughout the movie, she mimics the young girl in that movie who had the terrible ordeal with her
 ping-pong ball ("It was ghastly!  Just ghastly!") with a precision worthy of Meryl Streep.

 The film now starts becoming deliciously even more Old Testament. Praise!  Instead of Matt and Cate taking a charming,
 chaperoned trip to the Villa d'Este on Lake Como, where they might ferry on Edwardian teak decks, parsing scripture, Matt
 leaves Cate to go kill a few people.  He arrives is a town that manages to make its slovenly poverty so utterly picturesque
 in a way that so utterly eludes the American working class.

 It is here that he meets the affable Jude Law and the brittle Gwyneth Paltrow.  We immediately discover that all types of
 things against God's immutable laws are occurring in this seedy little fishing
 village.  Fortunately, God's chosen, Tom Ripely, is there to exact Old Testament vengeance.  Gwyneth is an unchaste
 harlot who is fornicating outside of a Christian marriage.  This, in addition to her monotonous line readings, qualifies her to
 be the first person Matt should stone to death.  Regrettably, showing no mercy on the audience, he
 inexplicably does not follow God's command to kill women like her (Deuteronomy 22:13-21) and allows her to continue
 appearing in scenes for the next two hours!  Next, we find that Jude has impregnated a local woman not his wife.  Upon
 discovering this shocking fact, in a fit of righteous pique, God immediately asked Matt to drown her.  The whole village
 watches as the waterlogged harlot washes up on shore. Several pro-life townspeople (including her entire family) at this
 point cry for the loss of the unborn child.

 Now that Matt has killed the town jezebel, the Old Testament makes quite clear that he must also kill Jude Law's character
 (Mark 7:10). Matt answers the call of God and bludgeons Jude to death in a small rowboat.  As the blood and bits of skull
 were flying, I was very troubled by how unchristian the whole scene was played.  Why was a very important lesson in
 brutal Old Testament style death and retribution sullied by decidedly homosexual overtones?  It appeared to me that Matt
 had momentarily chosen the wicked homosexual lifestyle.  While it is so utterly implausible that someone as deliciously
 attractive as Mr. Damon could be a homo, this plot twist almost put Mrs. Bowers off of the whole bloody killing scene.

 Fortunately, Matt denounces the homosexual lifestyle, finds a lovely hotel suite on the Via Veneto and enters into chaste
 Christian
 courtship with Cate Blanchett.  Meanwhile, the Lord calls on him to stone to death another fornicating drunk.  Praise!  Then,
 the harpy Gwyneth Paltrow hounds him about the whereabouts of Jude Law.
 Fortunately, Mrs. Bowers was in her private screening room and was able to yell at the screen "He is in Hell where you
 belong, you pallid shrew!" much to the delight of her guests.

 By the end of the movie, Matt is living a glamorous lifestyle, which Mrs. Bowers completely approves of over his squalid
 digs in New York. In his surprisingly small stateroom, he discovers that his friend is an unsaved homosexual.  Why this
 came as a surprise, I am not certain, as the man was decidedly English.  Nevertheless, the Lord, finding homos to be an
 abomination who should be killed (Leviticus 20:13), calls upon Matt to kill his fey friend.  Once again, Matt obeys the
 Almighty God. He then cries, knowing that his now-dead friend is being tortured by Lucifer in Hell.  Mrs. Bowers was
 touched by Matt's Christian
 compassion and resorted to a lovely monogrammed linen tissue.

 The film ends with the obvious suggestion that Matt's character, now having done the Lord's work, thoroughly denounced
 his own homosexual choices by accepting Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and killing all the homos he knows, is ready
 to enter into a Christian marriage with Cate Blanchett (once she converts to Baptist and loses her
 annoying accent).  While Mrs. Bowers had some qualms about certain events in the film, by the end she knew that it was
 all ultimately to the glory of God.  Praise!
 

 Betty Bowers

 http://www.bettybowers.com

From Press Association Online:
PALTROW BACK TO BLONDE FOR UK PREMIERE
20:51 Monday 14 February 2000
By James Morrison, Showbusiness Correspondent, PA News

Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Hollywood heartthrob Matt Damon tonight topped the bill at a star-studded UK premiere of their new film The Talented Mr Ripley.

Paltrow looked elegant as she arrived at the Empire Cinema in London's Leicester Square wearing a shimmering metallic green Versace sleeveless top and pale blue trousers.

And in place of the dark hair colouring she recently adopted were her trademark blonde locks, combed into a swept-back style.

Reflecting on her role in the new movie, Paltrow, who made headlines with her tearful acceptance speech at last year's Oscar ceremony, said: "I felt proud when I watched the film."

Paltrow, who has played English women in several of her recent cinema roles, said it was a novelty to be cast as an American in The Talented Mr Ripley.

She said: "It's great. I almost forgot I was an American. It's nice to play an American."

"She's a lot like me, especially the emotional part."

She added that she was flattered that comparisons have been made recently between her screen persona and that of Grace Kelly, saying: "I've watched a lot of her films and tried to absorb her essence."

When asked how many Valentine's cards she had received, Paltrow replied: "Zero".

Damon, smartly dressed in a dinner suit, said he was struck by all the attention.

He said: "It's amazing. I feel like I'm living somebody else's life, because my life is pretty normal most of the time."

He plays Tom Ripley, a man who is sent from America to southern Italy to bring home a carefree playboy, but who eventually becomes willing to go to dangerous lengths to adopt his lifestyle.

He said: "I don't think I had to try and make him sympathetic. I think the screenplay was constructed in a certain way."

Arriving with his actress wife Sadie Frost, the British actor Jude Law - who takes the role of the errant playboy - said he relished the opportunity of playing a less pent-up character.

He said: "It was a chance to play somebody for the first time who is an extrovert rather than an introvert, someone who is enjoying his life."

Accompanying Paltrow, Damon and Law to tonight's screening, which also marked the launch of London Fashion Week, were fellow star Jack Davenport and director Anthony Minghella, who won an Oscar for the English Patient.

Among the other celebrities attending were actors John Hurt and Helena Bonham Carter, the comedian David Baddiel, and the Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman.

© Press Association

Sydney Morning Herald
17 February 2000

And the nominees are ... the long and short of the Oscar odds SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Michael Caine (The Cider House Rules)

Pros: Popular among his peers. Miramax will have him out stumping for the film.

Cons: Plays an ether-inhaling abortionist. Not in the movie that much and his scenes don't really stick in one's mind.

Prospects: Dark horse.

Tom Cruise (Magnolia)

Pros: Worked against superstar persona boldly to portray year's biggest jerk. Cruise Oscar long overdue. And it's the best acting he's ever done.

Cons: Character so obnoxious, voters may actually hate him.

Prospects: Regardless of caveats, it's a spectacular stretch. Cruise's chances finally bloom.

Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile)

Pros: Who doesn't love a tearful, childlike, giant Jesus?

Cons: Well, maybe people who resent an African-American character defined by condescending stereotypes.

Prospects: Maybe. Some will want to see if the big guy cries during acceptance speech.

Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley)

Pros: Talented actor; probably should have played Ripley.

Cons: His movie was ignored in most major categories.

Prospects: Chances are about as good as his character's.

Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense)

Pros: Movie wouldn't have worked without this talented tyke's performance.

Cons: Too much, too soon?

Prospects: "I see gold people." But then it is a competitive category.

Entertainment Headlines
Wednesday February 16 2:49 AM ET
Oscar buys American for best picture noms
By Timothy M. Gray

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Oscar voters were in an all-American mood Tuesday.

With ``American Beauty'' leading the nominations for the 72nd annual Academy Awards, voters tapped five U.S.-shot films for best picture -- a big turnaround from last year, when all the best-picture contenders were filmed overseas.

The actor's branch was also feeling patriotic: Of the 20 acting nominees, 14 are U.S.-born, while the other six are Aussies or Brits playing American characters.

While the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences may have been waving the flag, it wasn't exactly Veterans Day: The majority of producing, directing, writing and acting nominees are first-timers in the Oscar race.

Following the eight noms for DreamWorks' ``Beauty'' were seven each for Miramax's ``The Cider House Rules'' and Buena Vista's ``The Insider'' while BV's ``The Sixth Sense'' tallied, appropriately, six. (Miramax and BV are both Disney-owned).

Those four films are competing for the top prize with Warner Bros.' ``The Green Mile'' which chalked up four bids.

Four of the five films also saw their directors nominated: Sam Mendes (``Beauty''), Lasse Hallstrom (``Cider House''), Michael Mann (``Insider'') and M. Night Shyamalan (``Sixth Sense''). The fifth helming contender is Spike Jonze, for USA Films' ``Being John Malkovich.''

With 17 nominations, Walt Disney Studios scored a company-best tally, including bids for ``Insider'' and ``Sixth Sense,'' two films that were championed by recently departed studio chief Joe Roth. Disney's Miramax has 14 bids -- including five it's sharing with Paramount on ``The Talented Mr. Ripley''

Four of the five helming contenders are first-time Academy nominees, including two who are cited for directing their first films (Jonze and Mendes).

In addition, producers of four of the five films are Oscar newcomers; only Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy (``Sixth Sense'') are vets, and they're cited with Oscar first-timer Barry Mendel. And of the 12 men in the script contest, seven are new kids.

Of the 20 thesps competing, 11 are Oscar virgins, including all five supporting actresses. The acting branch was also in a bio rhythm, since half of the 10 leading-performance candidates are playing real people.

Though DGA nominee Frank Darabont (``Green Mile'') was not cited by the Academy's director's branch, he can take consolation in the fact that his picture was named. And although there will be the inevitable ``did the film direct itself?'' questions, there have been only three years in Oscar history when there was an exact correlation of the five best-pic and directing contenders.

Darabont may be feeling deja vu, however. In 1994, he won a scripting nomination for ``The Shawshank Redemption'' which was also up for best picture, even though he missed out on a helming nomination.

All the best-picture possibilities also saw their screenplays nominated: three adaptations (``Cider,'' ``Mile'' and ``Insider'') and two originals (``Beauty'' and ``Sense''). Of the 12 men nominated for screenplay, seven also directed their film.

Like Darabont, Shyamalan is a double nominee. Mann (who scripted with Eric Roth) is a triple honoree, for directing, writing and producing.

While the five best-pic offerings cover various genres, there are some similarities. All are on the dark side, with two supernatural dramas (``Sixth'' and ``Mile''), and two about individuals who fight the system for personal redemption (``Beauty'' and ``Insider''). The fifth, ``Cider House,'' is about a man searching to define his destiny and his obligations to self and family -- a theme that is also touched upon in the other four films.

The pics with multiple nominations represent a mix of box office blockbusters, such as ``The Sixth Sense'' and ``The Green Mile,'' with more modest-performing studio pics and prestige items from indies.

The goodies are widespread, with no film dominating the list. The results end a long streak of high nomination totals for a few films: In the past three years, for example, ``The English Patient'' ``Titanic'' and ``Shakespeare in Love'' racked up 12, 14 and 13 noms, respectively.

The last time a film led the pack with a total as low as eight noms was with 1989's winner ``Rain Man.'' Still, ``Beauty'' has reason for glee: In 14 of the past 15 years, the picture with the most nominations went on to grab the best-picture Oscar.

However, the other best-film contenders are still in the game: The exception in the past 15 years was ``The Silence of the Lambs'' which wasn't even runner-up in the nomination totals.

And if ever there was a year to defy the odds, this is it. Last year was full of question marks, but this year, it's even more confusing.

The term ``wide-open race'' is an understatement, but even in a year when there were few certainties, Academy voters managed to come up with some big surprises.

The films that were not nominated are almost as interesting as the ones that were. And there were some surprises in the lists. Though ``Sixth Sense'' and ``Green Mile'' did well at the box office, they had low profiles on most critics' and guild award lists, leading some to doubt their Oscar chances.

With more than $450 million globally, ``Sixth Sense'' was the highest-grossing best-picture nominee. Though there were some other big box office hits in the list, there's usually little correlation between grosses and Oscar.

The calendar year's top 10 global grossers that were eligible are, in order: ``Star Wars: Episode I -- the Phantom Menace'' (three nominations), ``The Matrix'' (four), ``The Sixth Sense'' (six), ``The Mummy'' (one), ``Tarzan'' (one), ``Notting Hill'' (none), ``Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me'' (one), ``Runaway Bride'' (none), ``The World Is Not Enough'' (none) and ``Toy Story 2'' (one). ``Sixth'' aside, the other nine cumulatively nabbed only 11 nominations.

Though the acerbic ``Beauty'' could be termed a comedy, Oscar voters this year neglected to nominate lighter crowd-pleasers for best picture, as they have in the past with such titles as ``Babe,'' ``Four Weddings and a Funeral'' and ``Shakespeare in Love.''

In terms of domestic distributors, the numbers point up the fact that the pure studio tallies of the old days are now impossible, thanks to shared production credits.

For example, Miramax had 14 (five shared); Paramount had 11, including the shared quintet with Miramax on ``Ripley,'' and single ones shared with Universal on ``Angela's Ashes'' and with Warners on ``South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.''

Fox had nine, including Fox Searchlight; Sony had nine including Sony Pictures Classics. WB also had nine, including the ``South Park'' share. DreamWorks had eight, all for ``Beauty.''

New Line had five, all its own. Universal had five, including the ``Angela's'' share.

In addition, Universal shares its ``Hurricane'' nomination with financier Beacon; Disney shares ``Sixth'' with Spyglass; and Paramount and Mandalay share ``Sleepy Hollow.''

Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group chairman Dick Cook was ecstatic about the studio's two best-picture nominations.

``'The Insider' hopefully will be the big beneficiary of all the nominations,'' he said.

Starting Friday, it will reopen in New York, L.A. and other key cities, with the nominations ``validation that this is an important movie.''

Acknowledging that the very American story reps a challenge overseas, Cook added, ``This is a giant help, the nominations and its having won other awards -- it does nothing but help you.''

As for ``The Sixth Sense,'' it will bow on homevideo shortly after the awards, but he's confident box office will get a goose, with the nominations ``reviving interest in the good feelings the audience has had since the film opened.''

With the ``Cider House'' nomination, Miramax earns its ninth best-picture nod in eight years; its streak since 1992 is unmatched by any major studio.

Mark Gill, president of Miramax L.A., said, ``If you look at the pattern,'' the nominations for ``Cider House'' could boost box office for the picture 100% in the next six weeks.

``It's a gentle movie that doesn't shout at you. Now, however, we have something we can shout,'' Gill said.

He added that ``Mr. Ripley'' is ``a quintessential European film. Even of its own steam, it's going to do well overseas, but the nominations will absolutely help.''

WB president-chief operating officer Alan Horn, who was a Castle Rock principal when ``Green Mile'' was made, said: ``'The Green Mile' is a film of which we are all tremendously proud. We couldn't be happier that the Academy members have recognized the work of Frank Darabont, a brilliant cast led by Tom Hanks, and everyone else who contributed to this exceptional picture, which the American public has so warmly embraced.''

USA Films nabbed multiple bids for ``Topsy-Turvy'' and ``Being John Malkovich,'' including noms for respective scripters Mike Leigh and Charlie Kaufman. Company chairman Scott Greenstein enthused, ``Seven nominations for a company that's eight months old -- we're ecstatic. It bears out our philosophy: We're very much a script-driven company.''

Proudly declaring the company ``a spirited independent,'' he said the nominations prove that ``the lines are blurring'' between indies and majors. And though Academy voters are often criticized for being conservative, he applauded their recognition of edgier fare: ``I think everybody's a little more flexible in their taste than they used to be. Academy voters know that a good movie is a good movie.''

John Williams has his 38th nomination, for scoring ``Angela's Ashes''; though he still trails Alfred Newman's record 45 bids, Williams is the most-nominated living person.

Cited for Miramax's ``Music of the Heart,'' Meryl Streep enters the Oscar record books with her 12th nomination. She thus ties Katharine Hepburn for the most acting noms ever. While Hepburn's are all in the lead category, Streep's first two were for supporting actress; however, she accomplished this in only 22 years, compared with Hepburn's span of 49 years.

In other acting records, 79-year-old Richard Farnsworth (``The Straight Story'') becomes the oldest nominee ever in the lead actor race, while 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment (``Sixth Sense'') is the third youngest supporting actor nominee. (He trails 8-year-old Justin Henry and 11-year-old Brandon De Wilde, who were up for awards in 1979 and 1953, respectively.)

After two years of no black acting nominees, there are two this year: Denzel Washington for ``The Hurricane'' and Michael Clarke Duncan for ``Green Mile.'' Sociologists can draw their own conclusions about the fact that both portray men in prison.

In 72 years, this is only the ninth time that two or more black actors have been nominated in the same year. But for those who want to see the glass as half-full, there is definite progress: Eight of those nine years have occurred since 1985.

Six actors were nominated for playing real people: Russell Crowe, ``The Insider''; Farnsworth, ``The Straight Story''; Chloe Sevigny and Hilary Swank, ``Boys Don't Cry''; Streep; and Washington.

Portraying American characters are two Aussies -- Crowe (who was actually born in New Zealand) and Toni Collette (``Sixth Sense'') -- and four Brits: Michael Caine (``Cider''), Jude Law (``Ripley''), Samantha Morton (``Sweet and Lowdown'') and Janet McTeer (''Tumbleweeds'').

Nominations were announced Tuesday morning by Acad president Robert Rehme and two-time best actor winner Dustin Hoffman at 5:30 a.m. PST, at Academy headquarters in BevHills.

The Academy consists of more than 5,000 voting members. Of those, the largest group is actors, with 1,300 voting thesps.

Members in nine branches nominate achievements in 16 categories. Special voting groups within the Academy this year picked the nominees in six other categories, with everyone balloting on best pic.

The Oscars will be presented March 26 from Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium, hosted by Billy Crystal and produced by Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck. They'll be telecast live on ABC starting at 5 p.m. PST, preceded by a half-hour arrival preshow.

Reuters/Variety

BBC News Online: UK
Tuesday, 15 February, 2000, 16:15 GMT

Oscar nods for British stars

British stars are in with a strong chance of collecting a coveted Oscar this year, with two actors and two actresses nominated for Academy Awards.

Unlike last year, when Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love dominated the Academy's glitzy ceremony, there are few British-made films vying for the glittering prizes. But American Beauty, the universally acclaimed film debut for British director Sam Mendes, figures highly with eight nominations - including Best Director for the 34-year-old Mendes.

The theatre director said he was "absolutely thrilled and completely delighted".

But he joked: "It's all downhill from here, it's probably the end of my career."

British writer Alan Ball also can also toast the film's success with a nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Veteran Michael Caine is nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for his performance in the Cider House Rules - one of his few appearances without an English accent.

British nominees
Best Director: Sam Mendes
Best Actress: Janet McTeer
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine; Jude Law
Best Supporting Actress: Samantha Morton
Best Original Screenplay: Mike Leigh; Alan Ball
Best Adapted Screenplay: Anthony Minghella
Best Foreign Language Film: Solomon and Gaenor

British thespian Jude Law, one of the stars of fellow Briton Anthony Minghella's new film The Talented Mr Ripley, also collected a nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Anthony Minghella also features with a nomination for Best Screenplay adapted from material previously published, for his development of the Patricia Highsmith novel.

Minghella is no stranger to the limelight, as his film The English Patient took nine titles at the 1996 Oscars including Best Director.

British actress Janet McTeer, who won high praise for her role as a single mother in Tumbleweeds, wins a nomination in the Best Actress category.

This follows hot on the heels of her Golden Globe win for the same role. Ms McTeer said she was amazed the low-budget movie had been so well received.

"It was our little film and we were lucky if anyone saw it and now here we are," she told the BBC.

Samantha Morton, best known for appearing in ITV drama Band of Gold, is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Sweet and Lowdown.

Welsh picture Solomon and Gaenor, starring Ioan Gruffud, was nominated for best foreign language film.

New First Secretary Rhodri Morgan said the nomination would "have a dramatic effect in helping us build up the media industry in Wales".

Many of the UK's brightest hopes are dotted around US-made productions - either behind or in front of the cameras.

The Big Five: Best Picture Nominees
American Beauty
The Insider
The Cider House Rules
Sixth Sense
The Green Mile

However, Mike Leigh was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for his movie Topsy Turvy.

Leigh's take on the life and works of light opera writers Gilbert and Sullivan has been showered with critical acclaim in the US.

The director, famous for his improvisational writing and directing style, praised his cast.

"It's great particularly for me to get a nomination like this, because of the way that everyone contributes so actively," he said.

The ceremony takes place on 26 March, giving the nominees plenty of time to practise their acceptance speeches and pack their handkerchiefs for the big night.

BBC News Online: Entertainment
Tuesday, 15 February, 2000, 14:49 GMT

American Beauty leads Oscars field

British director Sam Mendes' film American Beauty leads the pack for the 2000 Academy Awards - with eight nominations, including Best Picture.

Star Kevin Spacey received a Best Actor nomination, while Annette Bening received a nod for Best Actress and Mendes is shortlisted for Best Director. Other nominations were for screenwriter Alan Ball for Best Original Screenplay, as well as for Best Cinematography, film editing and original score.

The film is a dark satire on life in US suburbia, concentrating on the decaying relationship between a couple played by Spacey and Bening.

It marks Mendes' cinematic debut - he made his name in the theatre, directing The Blue Room and the original version of The Rise And Fall of Little Voice.

It's all downhill from here - probably the end of my career now. Even if it's all downhill from here, it'll still be a good journey

Sam Mendes

Mendes said he was "thrilled and completely delighted".

He added: "It's all downhill from here - probably the end of my career now. Even if it's all downhill from here, it'll still be a good journey.

"It's all a huge bonus and I'm treating it as that. It's delightful."

American Beauty was followed by The Insider and The Cider House Rules, which received seven nominations each. Both films were also nominated for Best Picture, along with The Green Mile and box office hit The Sixth Sense, which received six nominations overall.

Best actor and actress

In Best Actor, Kevin Spacey is up against Russell Crowe's portrayal of a tobacco industry whistle-blower in The Insider.

Sean Penn is nominated for his role in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, while Denzel Washington is shortlisted for his part as wrongly-imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter in The Hurricane. Richard Farnsworth also gets a nod for his part in The Straight Story.

British star Janet McTeer is nominated for Best Actress for her role in Tumbleweeds, which won her a Golden Globe earlier this year. As well as Bening, she also faces fellow Globe winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry), Julianne Moore (The End of The Affair), and Meryl Streep for her part in Music of the Heart.

Supporting nod for Caine

British film veteran Michael Caine picked up his fourth Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role as an unorthodox abortion doctor in The Cider House Rules. Unusually, Caine speaks with an American accent in the film.

He faces rising UK star Jude Law, who stars in The Talented Mr Ripley, in the same category - as well as 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment, who starred in The Sixth Sense. The other nominees are Tom Cruise for Magnolia and Michael Clarke Duncan for The Green Mile.

Best supporting actress sees Toni Collette nominated for The Sixth Sense, as well as Angelina Jolie for Girl, Interrupted, Catherine Keener for Being John Malkovich, and Chloe Sevigny for Boys Don't Cry.

The UK has another nominee here - Samantha Morton, who stars in Sweet and Lowdown. The 22-year-old is best known in the UK for her part in ITV drama Band of Gold, and gave birth to a daughter, Esme, nine days ago.

Hollywood pundits will be wondering why Jim Carrey has been passed over for an Oscar again - he had been widely tipped for his role as the late comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, which won him a Golden Globe.

The shortlist was announced by Dustin Hoffman and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Robert Rehme in a dawn ceremony in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.

Rehme called the list "eclectic and strong" and added "there was no favourite among them".

The ceremony takes place on 26 March.

Guardian

Oscar nominations 2000

Tuesday February 15, 2000

The principal nominations for the 72nd Academy Awards were announced at 1.38pm GMT in a brief ceremony co-hosted by two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman. The nominations are as follows:

Best supporting actor

Michael Caine (Cider House Rules), Tom Cruise (Magnolia), Jude Law (Talented Mr. Ripley), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile), Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense)

Best original screenplay

American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Sixth Sense, Topsy-Turvy, Magnolia

Best adapted screenplay

Cider House Rules, Election, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Talented Mr. Ripley,

Best foreign language film

All About My Mother, East West, Caravan, Solomon and Gaenor, Under the Sun

Art direction

Anna and the King, The Cider House Rules, Sleepy Hollow, The Talented Mr Ripley, Topsy-Turvy

Costume

Anna and the King, Sleepy Hollow, The Talented Mr Ripley, Titus, Topsy-Turvy

Original score

American Beauty, Angela's Ashes, The Cider House Rules, The Red Violin, The Talented Mr Ripley

The most notable surprise is the poor showing of The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Minghella's film missing out in the nominations for Best film and Best director. Matt Damon was also tipped to be nominated for Best actor. In the event, Ripley has only a cursory nod in the category of Best adapted screenplay, and Best supporting actor for Jude Law. Other big losers include Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace (with two minor nominations), Angela's Ashes (one nomination), Man on the Moon, and Stanley Kubrick's posthumous Eyes Wide Shut. As predicted, American Beauty leads the field with eight nominations in all, closely followed by Michael Mann's The Insider and the unheralded The Cider House Rules, both with seven nominations apiece. For trivia buffs, Meryl Streep enters the record books with her twelth nomination for acting - an achievement that ties her with Katherine Hepburn. Meantime, 79 year old Richard Farnsworth becomes the oldest man ever to be nominated for the Best actor oscar for his turn as a lawnmower-driving traveller in David Lynch's The Straight Story

From Sundays' Daily News
There Oughtta Be a Law

Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow sent their sympathies this week to their "Talented Mr. Ripley" co-star Jude Law after his wife, Sadie Frost, had a nasty brush with German justice.

Frost has accused Berlin cops of police brutality after getting thrown into a jail cell without food or water. Last week, the asthmatic actress got stuck on an elevator on her way to the apartment where she and Law are staying while he's on location filming "Enemy of the Gate." When police arrived to rescue her, they demanded to see her passport.

Frost says police, not believing it was in her apartment, threw her into the back of a van and took her to jail, where she spent eight hours in a cell.

"When I asked to go to the toilet, the guard told me I had to go in my cell," Frost told Britain's Telegraph. "It was humiliating."

A police spokesman has alleged that Frost "was under the influence of alcohol."

"They said I looked a little intoxicated, and I suppose I was but nothing more," she told the Telegraph. "Then they put me in an armlock, handcuffed and manhandled me."

After her release, Frost was examined by a private doctor who photographed her bruises. Some British reports contend that she may have sustained the bruises while stage-diving at a Bush concert the night of the police incident.

Meanwhile, husband Jude co-stars with a sexy, bedsheet-wrapped Julianne Moore, who's on the cover, in Premiere's "Lust Horizon" issue. Inside, Law, admits what anybody who has seen "Ripley" knows: "I've got a tiny ass."

Empire Magazine www.empireonline.co.uk 02.02.2000

Actress Sadie Frost is recovering after being accidentally banged up by German police. The star was locked in a cell, denied food and water, and even forced to urinate on the floor after her arrest in Berlin after she got stuck in a lift in the apartment block where actor husband Jude Law was staying.

But the police accompanying the fire-fighters who freed her demanded to see some ID, and arrested her when she was unable to produce any - despite her passport being in Law's fifth floor apartment in the building. She says, "I tried to explain but they refused to accompany me to the fifth floor so I could show them. They said I looked slightly intoxicated and I suppose I was, but nothing more. Then they put me in an arm lock, handcuffed me and manhandled me into the back of a police van."

Then Frost, who is asthmatic, was then taken to a police station and locked alone in a cell. When she attempted to make a telephone call she was cut off by policemen just as the call was connected. She adds, "There were no facilities at all, not even a bucket. When I was asked to go to the toilet, the guard said I had to go in my cell. It was a humiliating experience. I was then left in the cells until 8.30am , when I was released without charge, or a word of apology. "

Somewhat bruised by the experience, Sadie is now planning legal action against the police. Meanwhile hubbie Jude Law, about to hit our screens as the spoiled Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley, is in Germany filming Enemy at the Gates, about a German battle defeat in World War II. The film is proving a controversial project even before completion, stirring up vicious controversy in the country.

ACTRESS COMPLAINS POLICE "LOCKED HER UP FOR EIGHT HOURS

German authorities pledged yesterday to investigate claims by the British actress Sadie Frost that she was left in a Berlin police cell for eight hours without food or water.

Frost, 33, currently starring in the thriller "Rancid Aluminium" with Joseph Fiennes, has lodged an official complaint after she was arrested, manhandled and locked up by officers.

However, the German embassy in London contested the allegations, claiming that Frost was in cutody for four hours because the actress, who had apparently been drinking, was unable to identify herself.

Frost raised the alarm after becoming stuck in a lift in the block of flats where her husband, the actor Jude Law, was staying while filming.

Police and fire crews arrived to free her after half an hour, then demanded to see her passport and ID papers. But when she told them she had left the documents two floors up in her husband's flat, she claims they refused to believe her and arrested her instead.

Frost says she was locked in a bare cell without food, water or access to a toilet, before being released without charge.

A spokesman for the actress said: "Sadie is very shaken by the whole affair, and she feels this was a violation of her. It's nothing personal against Germans or Germany and she will be going back there again, but next time she will make sure she has her passport and mobile phone on her the whole time."

A spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Berlin said: "I can confirm that she has been in touch with our consulur section here in Berlin and I can confirm that we are following up the case.

Frost was on her way back fro a concert when the incident happened last Wednesday. Rather than continue her stay with Law, who has been shooting the £53 million Second World War film "Enemy At The Gates", she decided to fly home immediately.

A spokeswoman for the Geran embassy in Lodnon confirmed that Frost had brought an action against the Berlin police over alleged "bodily harm" caused to her during her ordeal. The matter had also been referred to the mayor of Berlin by the British Consulate. She said: "The police said Miss Frost was in a cell for four hours, not eight. They put her in custody because, after getting her out of the lift, she could not tell them who she was or where she was staying. She didn't have an ID on her, so they couldn't see who she was."

Frost was checked over by a docter and was found to have nothing wrong with her, although she had had "a bit to drink", he added.

The spokesman for the actress refused to comment on the drinks claims, but said: "Sadie was locked up for eight hours, not four."

He said that, on releasing Frost from the lift, the police had refused to escort her to the flat, to retrieve her papers.

"Instead they handcuffed her, bundled her into a car and held her for eight hours before releasing her without charge."

The police said they were alerted to Frost's plight by an 88 year old female resident of the block. During the rescue, it became clear that Forst was "under the influence of alcohol."

"Owing to her condition, the woman was unable to make any comprehensible statements as to where she was staying in Berlin or where she wanted to go. She was not know to the residents of the flats. No written indications of a place of residence in Berlin could be found on her person. The officers decided that for her own safety, the woman should be taken to the nearest drying out cell at 74 Charlottenburger Chaussee.

"The doctor on duty there concluded at 4.20am that the woman's physical condition did not necessitate immediate medical treatment.. The doctor diagnosed substantial influnece of alchol. At 8.10am it was possible to release the woman from custody"

NY DAILY NEWS
KGB Gets Film Credit

Tony Pemberton is the director who came in from the cold.

The 30-year-old Brooklyn native had a close call with Soviet mobsters, who he says insisted he pay them a fee to make part of his film, "Beyond the Ocean," in the former Soviet Union about three years ago.

When a cameraman made off with a $10,000 camera and rolls of his film, Pemberton says he had no choice but to ask the KGB for help. Well, the KGB came through. But no sooner had Pemberton recovered his film than the KGB man said, "Now you have to pay me."

All's well that ends well. Pemberton's finished movie premiered Wednesday at Sundance, where it was seen by Stephen Baldwin, Jude Law and Parker Posey, who dated Pemberton when they attended SUNY-Purchase. As for Pemberton, he's headed back to Moscow, where he's lived with his Russian wife the last four years.

Montreal Gazette, Saturday January 29, 2000
THE TALENTED MR. LAW TRAINED FOR HEAVY ROLE

Jude Law put on 20 pounds to portray American playboy

by Jamie Portman - Southam News

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif - It was only a 20-pound weight gain but it caused unhappiness in Jude Law's household.

The rising British actor put on the extra poundage to be more physically right for the role of a spoiled American playboy in The Talented Mr. Ripley. "I ate a lot of protein and a lot of rich foods, which I normally hate. I was in the gym all the time trying to squeeze muscles out of my skinny British arms. I was eating a lot of yoghurt. I was spending a lot of time in the sun to get a tan."

Law's wife, actress Sadie Frost, was not amused. "She hated it, actually," he grins. "She likes me skinny and white."

There's genuine affection in Law's voice when he talks about Frost's unhappiness. But that's not surprising: one of his two tattoos immortalizes both her and the classic Beatles song, Sexy Sadie.

Son Rafferty, now 2, is a further part of the equation. "Does having a child change me? Definitely. Now a role has to be pretty good to take me away from home.

"Ultimately, I'm massively grateful for the responsibility and reality my son gives me." The family was able to be together in Italy during the filming of The Talented Mr. Ripley, so that was one solid reason for taking on the role of the rich, young American who falls afoul of a sociopathic killed played by Matt Damon.

Syndicated entertainment columnist Liz Smith recently suggested that Law, 27, is fascinating because of the "beauty and decadence" he projects on the big screen. His Golden Globe-nominated performance in The Talented Mr. Ripley shows exactly what Smith meant. Law says he can't be objective about such things, but he does say he was attracted by the setting - a sun-drenched Italy in the 1950s - and by the challenge of penterating the psyche of rich boy, Dickie Greenleaf.

"He's somebody who's doing what he wants to be doing and who expects everyone else to be doing the same thing. I also liked the idea of playing someone who's not introverted and in a turmoil of agony."

Beyond that, there was the the fact of Dickie Greenleaf's nationality. Law has played an American once before as a teenage hustler in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. But that was a cameo role, where as The Talented Mr. Ripley required Law to portray one of the film's full-fledged characters. And to get that character right, Law felt he had to go far beyond mastering an American accent.

Law's colleagues have called him a genuinely fearless actor, and cite his much-talked about nude scenes opposite Kathleen Turner in the Broadway production of Indiscretions. But Law, who won a Tony nomination and Theatre World acting award for this play, shrugs that it's simply a matter of honouring the material.

That's why when he accepted the role of Oscar Wilde's selfish lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, in Wilde, he not only researched the lives of both men but also the period in which they flourished.

"I think if you play someone from another country, it's so important to get it right. For me that is a major obligation if I'm offered a role that's rooted somewhere else in another part of the world."

His voice coach helped with more than just accent. "He also helped me with the pitch of my voice. I usually talk high and fast, and he really got me to slow down and that gave me a wholly different pace for Dickie."

Law also immersed himself in the affluent '50s culture from which Dickie Greenleaf springs.

"Dan Wakefield's book, New York in the Fifties, is a great book. It gave me a real sense of what was happening at the time in that particular part of America." He also watched all of the Hitchcock films from the '50s because they were so true to the period.

Lately, Law's movie career has been heating up. He recently starred in Canadian director David Cronenberg's eXistenZ which "did very well in Europe," and he starts work this month opposite Ed Nelson in the war movie, Enemy at the Gates.

But he's determined to keep his priorities straight: the stage remains a vital part of his life, and the real high point for him last year came with his appearance at London's Young Vic Theatre in a revival of John Ford's 400-year-old tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. For him there was nothing more rewarding last year than the chance to help introduce young people to the wonders of live theatre.

"The Young Vic offers really cheap tickets to young kids who have never been to the theatre before, and they were the most incredible audience. They were at this 400-year-old play and they were consumed by it.

"They were also so vocal. You should have heard them at the end when I killed off everyone on stage, including myself. They couldn't believe it. They were the most electric audience I'd ever experienced."

Daily News
Film Buff

Matt Damon didn't need much coaxing to admire Jude Law's bare body in "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

"They were completely fearless and enjoying themselves," director Anthony Minghella tells us. "Both men knew that what they involved with was erotic."

The Oscar-winning director says he won't be making a franchise out of author Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series. "I couldn't go back to that," he told us at the William Morris Agency's party after the National Board of Review Awards Tuesday. "I lived with [Ripley] for so long, and I lived inside that head … and it's such a dark and morbid place that it's time get my head somewhere else."

Minghella predicts it'll be another year before he starts shooting his adaptation of best-selling novel "Cold Mountain" in North Carolina. "I want exactly the same cast from 'Ripley' and the same crew," he said.

Partying at William Morris' bash at Gabriel's were Kevin Spacey (bear-hugging "American Beauty" co-star Wes Bentley), Pedro Almodovar, Joan Chen, Willem Dafoe, Lasse Halstrom, Lena Olin, Hilary Swank, Chad Lowe, Chazz Palminteri, Sydney Pollack, Mira Sorvino, John Cameron Mitchell and Kimberly Peirce.

People Magazine
"The Talented Mr. Law"
"His turn as a dashing playboy in Ripley has given audiences a Jude awakening"

Growing up, pretty boys can have it pretty tough. Jude Law endured schoolmates' taunts for years, but things began to change at age 13, when he left his family home in a working-class London suburb for a weekend audition held by Britain's National Youth Music Theatre. "The person in charge of administration thought he was a girl because of his name and his pretty looks," says Jeremy James Taylor, the NYMT's founder. "So he was placed in a dormitory with six girls. He didn't complain too loudly. We found him up there in the dorm just before bedtime having a great time. I felt a bit of a killjoy putting him in with the guys."

So began a career as giddy as a slumber party. For The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which Law, 27, playing American playboy Dickie Greenleaf, looks as stunning as the film's Italian seaside locales, he dove into his role-literally-as if he were auditioning for Sea World. At the start of filming in July of 1998, says director Anthony Minghella, "we were taking a boat toward this island we were going to be shooting on. One minute we were in the boat and the next he and [costar] Matt [Damon] had just jumped into the ocean. He's got all the volume controls of his spirit turned up. " Or as another colleague, Ripley costume designer Ann Roth, analyzed his gifts: "He's got a cut heinie."

Cause for celebration indeed, and Law didn't miss the chance on New Year's Eve, when he stood on a London rooftop "letting off rockets like there was no tomorrow," says host and pal Cominic Anciano. At a Christmas party, Law was seen demonstrating other kinds of pyrotechnics with Sadie Frost, 31, his wife since 1997. "I saw them in a cornor snogging," says Anciano, using a British term for a manner of kissing more often associated with the French. "They were really going for it."

Law has been going for it since he first decided to become an actor-at age 4. Named for the conflicted hero of Thomas Hardy's Victorian novel Jude the Obscure, the son of Maggie and Peter (now retired school teachers living in France) adored the slapstick silent films of Harold Lloyd while growing up with older sister Natasha, 29, a graphic designer. Law trained for six years at the National Youth Music Theatre, where he "had a bit of an attitude at first," says Taylor. "[But] he was dominant in the group without being domineering. When he played the lead in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the girls went bananas."

When the British soap Families offered him a part, Law quit school at 18 ("it was very difficult for the son of two teachers to pull out of his exams," says Taylor) to play a rebellious teen. ("It was easy," he told one interviewer. "I was playing myself.") Law had more than his share of girlfriends, but on the set of the film Shopping in 1993, Law met Frost, the mother of now 8-year-old Finlay, her son by singer Gary Kemp of the 1980's band Spandou Ballet. "Right from the start I knew I was falling in love," Frost, who left Kemp after the shoot, told Scotland on Sunday. Today, Law and Frost make their home in London's arty Primrose Hill neighborhood with their son Rafferty, 3, and Finlay. Sometimes on the weekends they stroll through nearby Regents Park with Law's close friend Ewan McGregor (the pair met at an audition in 1990 when a director gave them $30 and ordered them to get drunk so he coulds see how they got along), his wife, Eva Mavrakis, and their daughter. "They seem to be a very relaxed, matey bunch," says Phil Speed, a regular at the actors' local pub, the Albert. "The young kids seem to get on together as well as their parents." In fact, playing Daddy is Law's favorite role: His and Frost's film contracts include days off for their children's school events, and friends know not to telephone after 6:30 p.m. because that's dinnertime for the kids. Sounds a long way from Dickie Greenleaf's Italian idyll. "We're really boring," Law told The Independent on Sunday. "If someone wants to know my recipe for veggie loaf, I'll give it to them."

Article by: Kyle Smith; Matthew Beard in London and Michelle Caruso in Los Angeles.

The Chicago Sun Times
"5 minutes with... Jude Law"

Hey, Jude.  Actor Jude Law achieves hunk-of-the-month status with a star turn in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and the spoils of playing the spoiled Dickie Greenleaf might be a Golden Glove Award next weekend for best supporting actor.

Q. So they painted Matt Damon with pasty gray makeup for the beach scenes in “Ripley,” but you were bronzed.  Does this seem fair?

A. [Laughing]  Yeah, Matt wasn’t allowed in the sun at all.  I was also eating pasta and pizza.  Matt was on this big diet.  Life is never fair.

Q. Did you feel a little bit bad?

A.  I remember one morning in Italy when Matt was up at 5 a.m.  I found him sweating it out on the treadmill.  I waltzed into the gym and grabbed a few handweights to bulk myself up a bit.  Feel bad for me, too.  I have these scrawny European arms.

Q. You must be excited.  “Ripley” is your breakout role.

A.  I suppose I’m waiting to see the response.  I loved the movie, but then again, I always love my movies.  But breakout role?  We’ll see.  When I did “Gattaca,” I thought, “God, this is going to be huge.”  I’m still waiting for that one to happen.

Q.  Are you mentally prepared to become one of those “It” guys?

A.  I’ve never wanted fame.  I’m an actor because I enjoy acting.  And it has been that way since I started at age 7.  My parents were acting teachers who ran a theater company on and off in Italy.  So they taught me to take it very seriously.

Q.  How did you start?

A.  I started acting through this youth theater company.  We used to improvise stuff and take it on holiday to festivals.  It helped that I was a dramatic little kid.  I was always putting shows on.  Drama city.

Q.  Speaking of drama city, tell us about your scene in “Ripley” in a rowboat with Damon.

A.  It was fun.  The tough part is that Matt and I would crawl to one side of the raft and start to struggle.  Then all of a sudden we would realize that we were tipping the boat over, which was not in the script, or safe.

Q. Did you get hurt?

A. I ended up with a broken rib.  I fell backward and broke it.  And Matt lost his voice because I strangled him so hard.  We were all covered in gooey blood.  We really got into it.  The other bad thing is that there was this infestation of wasps on the island near where we were filming.  So we were under attack on top of everything else.

Q.  Tell us about your nude scene in “Ripley.”  Say whatever you want to say about it in 50 words or less, and thanks in advance.

A.  I didn’t have any trepidation about it.  I’ve been naked in plays.  Seriously, I’m not a great fan of doing love scenes.  I don’t like seeing naked bodies rolling around.  But I do think nudity to a degree can add dramatic tension.  In “Ripley,” I must get out of a tub.  I can’t be wearing swimming trunks.  I mean, please!

Q.  And finally, the mere mention of your name these days makes women drool.

A.  It’s basically something I can’t think about or I’ll be doomed to spending two hours in the mirror before I get out of the house.  And my wife and sons will kill me.

(Kindly transcribed by Rebecca)

---

'WILDE' FAR TOO MILD

By THELMA ADAMS New York Post, May 1st 1998

I'M not wild about "Wilde."Oscar's fine, but I'm sure "The Picture of Dorian Gray" author would have had something awfully witty to say about his martyrdom in Brian Gilbert's ever-so-serious bio-pic.

Fruity, he'd say about Stephen Fry's lumbering performance as "The Importance of Being Earnest" playwright, elephantine, obvious, terribly tortured, asexual.

Fry's fine as Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse's saintly butler, and he's hilarious in supporting roles, but it's hard labor playing a martyr. Ask Willem Dafoe after "The Last Temptation of Christ."

The big cheat about dramas with Wilde as their subject is that they often steal his best lines and rarely add much. It may be convenient for contemporary dramatists to portray the author as a proud victim of society's narrow-mindedness, but what a bloody bore.

Director Gilbert, who got literary with T.S. Eliot in "Tom and Viv," and screenwriter Julian Mitchell ("Another Country"), open their movie with a bogus prologue set in, of all places, a Colorado mine.

Then, amid the luscious interiors of late Victorian London, Gilbert and Mitchell proceed to sap Wilde's life of all apparent drama.

While the story tortures Wilde's pursuit of "the love that dare not speak it's name," it begins with the author's marriage to Constance (the dewy-eyed Jennifer Ehle) and comes to a halt at her graveside years later.

In between, Wilde discovers a taste for boys (sacrificing his own two sons in the process). Like any fool in a French farce, Wilde falls for a pretty face. Therein lies his downfall.

The lust of his life, Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law), leads Wilde away from his family and into a damaging libel suit. If anyone could lead someone astray, it's Law ("Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"), the prettiest young actor since Leonardo DiCaprio.

Wilde's lawsuit backfires. Two years of hard labor for gross indecency follow. Prison sobers up Wilde - but not enough to forget his preening aristocratic popinjay, Lord Alfred.

The fact is, having seen actor Law's bottom from every conceivable angle, it's the most unforgettable aspect of "Wilde."

---

Liz Smith "Page Six" 02.02.2000 (NYPOST)

JUDE LAW and Julianne Moore, two of Hollywood's most beautiful and talented actors, share two different covers on the same magazine, Premiere, for its "Lust Horizon" issue. Julianne's cover shows her apparently naked in bed, except for a pair of black high heels. Jude is dressed. Not fair! Jude's fans demand equality. And I was most amused by Libby Gelman-Waxner's review of "The Talented Mr. Ripley," in which she opines, "Jude Law had to die because he is too hot to live!"

---

23rd April 1999 Movie Review

VIRTUALGENIUS CRONENBERG'S 'EXISTENZ' A NICKY MUST-SEE

BRILLIANT, subversive and flesh-crawlingly gruesome, David Cronenberg's virtual-reality stunner "eXistenZ" is one terrific movie. It's a "Matrix" for those who find the artsy execution of provocative ideas more thr noshadeilling than flashy special effects and virtuosoaction sequences.

The question "eXistenZ" asks is: What happens when we give ourselves over to a technology that creates an illusion of life so absorbing we prefer it to the real thing? The consequences prove eerie, macabre and deliciously horrifying.

The film begins sometime in the near future, in a rural church setting. A group of virtual-reality fans are gathered to test the newest creation from the sorceress-like Allegra Gellar (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It's called "eXistenZ" because it envelops its players in a synthetic dream world so thoroughly absorbing it feels like existence itself. Players plug a cable that stretches like an umbilical cord from Allegra's fleshy, womblike game pod into their bodies and download the game directly into their nervous systems.

Just as the download begins, a teen-ager leaps up, brandishing a strange pistol that looks like it was constructed from stringy flesh and leftover bones. "Death to the demoness Allegra Gellar!" he shouts, firing teeth at her. Allegra flees with her p.r. flack, Ted Pikul (Jude Law), and they seek a place to hide after learning a shadowy terrorist group called the Realists has placed a bounty on Allegra's head.

With her game pod damaged by the shooting, sexy Allegra tells her companion the only way to test it is for the two of them to play "eXistenZ." But Pikul, a repressed control freak, doesn't have a bioport. In a bizarre, faintly hilarious psychosexual stunt, Pikul has one shot into the base of his spine by a grungy gas-station attendant (Willem Dafoe).

Cronenberg's not just being gross here. The film's idea is that people have become so addicted to the cyberthr noshadeills these games provide them that they've come to prefer the simulation of life to life itself. That's why he has come up with the indelible image of a fake uterus feeding artificial existence into a sphincterlike port. It's a grotesque simulacrum of fertile sexuality.

Allegra and Pikul hole up in a cheap motel and port into the trippy game world. The movie tracks the duo as they quest further and further into the game's universe, so spellbound by the imaginative stimulation it provides that they become increasingly abstracted from reality.

You can see how corruption sets in, and it's particularly dangerous because the game molds itself to the personality of its players. It adjusts to allow for their own fantasies and prejudices. How can you tell when the game stops?

The only problem with "eXistenZ" - aside from its entertainingly icky special effects that will disturb many viewers - is that it is so idea-dense and intellectualized that it's difficult to make an emotional connection with its characters. The film makes marvelous watching, but it is even more fun to talk about and puzzle over for hours afterwards.

---

Sydney Morning Herald 18 January 2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/18/features/features6.html
A bumper feast of film at the cinema buff's grande bouffe

Too many movies, too little time: Johnny Depp in the gory Sleepy Hollow. One of the latest onslaught of film releases.

By LEE TULLOCH in New York

I AM suffering from a movie-driven anxiety attack. No, I'm not having nightmares about the headless horseman in Tim Burton's picturesquely gory Sleepy Hollow or the campy cannibalism in Julie Taymor's Titus.

What I've got is movie overload. Too many movies, too little time. At this time of year, studios and independent producers alike dump dozens of films in the cinema in the hope of capturing huge audiences over the holiday period and making the deadline for the Academy Awards.

Serious contenders for both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes (and a slew of critics' awards, such as those bestowed by the National Society of Film Critics) are held off until now so that the picture is fresh in award voters' minds.

Similarly, films that were released last year in the US and won critical acclaim, such as the Gulf War comedy-drama Three Kings, are given new, limited releases because film industry people have the attention spans of, well, valley girls. Accompanying these releases is an onslaught of publicity that might make George Lucas blush. TV commercials, billboards, product tie-ins - you can't cast your eyes anywhere in Manhattan at the moment without spotting some cinema-related artifact. And it's not all Pokemon. Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley, a sophisticated film not designed to be seen by the 16-year-old boys who make up the biggest movie audience, is about as ubiquitous as The Phantom Menace was last summer, thanks to Miramax's aggressive promotion.

The consequence of all this is that conversations around dinner tables and in the subway revolve around movies. Hot topics this month include the following: Is Tom Cruise wonderful or appalling as the misogynistic evangelist in Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to Boogie Nights, Magnolia? Is Being John Malkovich too clever? Will Russell Crowe win the Academy Award for Insider? Doesn't Cate Blanchett act Gwyneth Paltrow off the screen in The Talented Mr Ripley? Is Jude Law going to be the next big star? Is American Beauty as brilliant as critics are saying or is it just a feel-good movie for middle-class Americans? Is Angelina Jolie really acting or is it just her lips in Girl, Interrupted?

My answers to the above are: 1: Both, Cruise is great but the film is a disaster. 2: Yes, but it can't be missed. 3: I hope so. 4: Absolutely, she glows, Gwyneth whines. 5: God, yes. 6: It's brilliant, I saw it twice.7: I don't know because I haven't seen the film.

This last answer is socially unacceptable.

You have to have seen the film, unless you have a note from your doctor testifying you are exempt from films starring Angelina Jolie because she's bad for your health. (My husband has a doctor's note for Tom Hanks, which disqualifies him from conversations about The Green Mile.)

Not having seen a film in wide release brings into question your seriousness as a consumer of popular culture. While some of us might consider not seeing Bicentennial Man evidence of superior critical judgment, there will be a moment at a dinner party when someone launches into a deconstruction of all Robin Williams's films and you will be lost. If you haven't seen Magnolia, the dinner conversation is sure to revolve around the frogs. If you've been meaning to see The End of the Affair but haven't quite made it, as sure as night follows day, someone will give away the plot and ruin it for you.

I made it through dinner last night on the strength of my extensive Ripley knowledge, having seen not only the The Talented Mr Ripley but also the earlier French version, Purple Noon, starring a breathtaking young Alain Delon, and the rarely mentioned The American Friend with Dennis Hopper as the sociopath Ripley. I have also read all of author Patricia Highsmith's books, Ripley and non-Ripley alike.

This week everyone's talking about Ripley and I was firing on all cylinders. But next week, the conversation is bound to lurch towards Andy Kaufman. I don't know anything about Kaufman. I haven't seen Man on the Moon, Milos Forman's new biopic about him. Because I've never seen Kaufman I don't know if Jim Carrey is as uncanny in portraying him as everyone says he is.

When the conversation turns to Kaufman, I will discretely exit to the bathroom. And hope they're talking about Dogma when I get back.

There are currently 25 movies on new release that I have calculated I must see in the next few weeks to be up to speed on my cultural literacy.

The Academy Awards are just around the corner and it's no fun sitting in front of the television on the big night with a group of film buffs and not being able to contribute your opinion on the quality of sound recording in Stuart Little.

Which will it be today? Cradle Will Rock? Boys Don't Cry? Sweet and Lowdown?Too many movies, too little time ...

Guardian 9 April 1999

Will the real Mr Ripley please step forward?

From Hitchcock to Minghella, Patricia Highsmith's most complex anti-hero has had mixed fortunes at the movies. Tom Cox follows the trail

Friday April 9, 1999

Falling in love with a murderer can be tough on the conscience. Recognising aspects of yourself in him can be tougher still. With the five Tom Ripley novels that she wrote between 1955 and 1991, Patricia Highsmith invited us to do both.

Ripley is unique. Far from being the stereotypical stony-hearted killer disguised as greasy charmpot, he's actually a thoroughly considerate, top-notch bloke, who just happens to kill people in his spare time. His murders always seem essential, even though most of them are a by-product of Ripley's enviable surfeit of leisure time, or a means of protecting his unethical fortune, beautiful wife and luxurious French mansion. A rampant capitalist who reads The Observer, a serial killer who turns squeamish at the sight of boiling lobsters, a "happily" married heterosexual who is excessively interested in young boys, his whole lifestyle is a tangle of inconsistencies, yet we wouldn't want him to lose it for the world.

Highsmith refused to judge Ripley's actions, and this - combined with her tendency to value characterisation and atmosphere over plot - has meant that there's been a reluctance to transfer her work to the big screen in the past, or a tendency to trivialise or moralise it. Even a master of darkness like Hitchcock, adapting Highsmith's debut novel Strangers On A Train, felt the need to halve the body count. Meanwhile, the most succesful celluloid Ripleys remain Alain Delon in Plein Soleil and Dennis Hopper in Wim Wenders's The American Friend - the first of which has little in common with the real Ripley and the second of which Highsmith would only say she "accepted".

Highsmith died in 1995 without seeing her characters transform to the big screen in pure form, and there's still some doubt as to whether this transition can be achieved without advocating cold-blooded murder as a good way out of a tight spot. Highsmith, however, always believed it possible, and this year a whole army of film luminaries, headed by Anthony Minghella, are out to prove her right.

Minghella's forthcoming The Talented Mr Ripley, starring Matt Damon (as Ripley), Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, will be followed by Ripley's Game (starring Rupert Everett), plus adaptations of Carol (from Beautiful Thing director Hettie MacDonald), The Blunderer, Suspension Of Mercy and The Cry Of The Owl.

In Highsmith's first Ripley novel, The Talented Mr Ripley, the protagonist is a smalltime New York tax thief sent to Italy to persuade an old school friend, Dickie Greenleaf, to return home to America. Greenleaf is everything Ripley is not - rich, popular and confidently heterosexual - so Ripley, consumed by self-loathing, drowns him and assumes his identity, leading Greenleaf's loathsome girlfriend, Marge, and the Italian police on a wild goose chase, before escaping to the good life in France.

In his unfaithful-but-stunning 1960 version, Plein Soleil, director René Clément chose to portray Greenleaf as plain and ordinary while Alain Delon's Ripley was a bronzed French idol motivated by greed and passion (for Marge: no longer loathsome, but hugely desirable). But just when Ripley has inherited his friend's money and girl, the body is washed up and Ripley's chickens come home to roost.

There are three crucial elements in The Talented Mr Ripley not featured in Plein Soleil, explains Minghella. "It's so much about the American experience in Europe, so much about not getting caught, and so much about a man at odds with his own sexuality. He's also supposed to be the plain friend at the party. But in Plein Soleil, who would want to be Dickie Greenleaf when you could be Alain Delon?"

Minghella wanted to restore the novel's issues of displacement and sexual wavering. "Ripley is a real nobody who'd rather be a fake somebody - most of us know how that feels. He's a master of denial."

Ripley's enigmatic qualities are outstripped only by those of Highsmith herself. She wrote her unofficial debut novel, a gay love story called Carol, in 1952 under a pseudonym and, fearful of being persecuted for her lesbianism, fled America for Europe. Old friends describe her as anti-male, yet she thrived from day-to-day with a young, virile one inside her head, creating peripheral female characters around him. She lived as a virtual recluse with a cat called Omen, wrote in a concrete bunker and said in 1977: "If I had to be incarcerated in a family from which I could not escape, to spend time with them and not have a room of my own, I would reach the point of killing them."

Yet, at the time, she was renowned for her warm, sensitive descriptions of domestic Utopia. She disparagingly referred to children as "drunken dwarves", yet wrote frequently about adolescents and made an effort to keep up with pop culture, covering the drug scene in Switzerland when she was in her seventies. Reading her work was once compared to "having tea with an extremely dangerous witch". But actually having tea with her was, by many accounts, nowhere near as cordial. "I used to be in awe of making a phone call to her," explains Tanja Howarth, Highsmith's agent and close friend. "She was a very lonely person who abhorred small talk and cocktail parties and wouldn't forget if someone made a mistake. I remember a launch party where I introduced her to an editor who'd put the wrong dedication in her book. I said, 'I'm sure you've met.' And Pat said, 'We corresponded. . .' Then she looked into the editor's eyes very deeply and added, 'Acrimoniously'. With one word, the whole room was silent."

How does Howarth account for the resurgence of interest in Highsmith? "She was a genius, and the Germans were the only ones who ever saw it. Unfortunately, she was also a very naive young woman and she signed a lot of very bad film contracts, which are only just beginning to be unravelled now. I also think Ripley is a timeless creation."

"Compartmentalisation is a disease of the late 20th century," comments Anthony Minghella, "and I think Ripley is an extensive illustration of that. People can relate to the way that his life fragments and the only way to make sense of it is to draw a perimeter fence around the different parts of his life and see if he can survive without shedding too much light on the various territories."

But even Minghella confesses it was difficult to put Ripley on screen in undiluted form. "I want the audience to inhabit every decision that Ripley makes and feel the terrible accumulation of accidents. I've tried to draw a much more compassionate character, tried to gear everything towards the fact that it's a tragedy: it's not about the exhilaration of escape, it's about the punishment of escape. His punishment is that he can't escape from himself. Whether that's passable for an American audience, I don't know, but that can't be my preoccupation. I remember people saying The English Patient wouldn't work because it's about a man who betrays his friend, gives secrets to the Nazis and becomes responsible for the death of people all around him."

Can the chunky, slimy Matt Damon capture both Ripley's unique, Gauloise-tipped charm and nefarious flipside - the inexorable darkness that Highsmith yearned for in film adaptations of her work? It seems unlikely; but, the odds are that sometime soon an approximation of the real Tom Ripley is going to be coming to a cinema near you. When you meet him and fall under his spell, be prepared to ask yourself some serious questions.

• The Talented Mr Ripley will be released in the autumn.

Guardian
30 April 1999

In pod we trust

Peter Bradshaw on a flawed but funny, freaky hi-tech thriller from the master of body horror

Friday April 30, 1999

David Cronenberg's eXistenZ is a creepily downbeat near-future techie thriller, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allegra Geller, the super-cool games designer, who has just unveiled "eXistenZ", a game you plug directly into your neuro-system and play in the infinite cyberspace of your mind.

This is achieved with a "pod" - a kind of sweaty organic Playstation adapted from real animal bodies. It is linked via an "umby cord" to a "bio-port" in the small of your back, which you can get installed in places like shopping malls as easily as ear-piercing or tattoos - a routine business, but one which, if carried out incorrectly, can leave you paralysed from the waist down.

A fatwa is served on Arabella by "reality extremists" who object to her insidious devaluing of real experience, and she goes on the run with her exquisite PR assistant - and games virgin - Jude Law. Despite having narrowly escaped violent death, her priority is to protect and refine eXistenZ, and to this end she orders the terrified Jude to play, and so procures for him an illegal, unregistered bio-port, to be fired into the base of his virgin spine late at night by a gas station attendant and grinning games freak, Willem Dafoe.

Law plays this superbly, gibbering plaintively at the sight of the bio-port gun as big as a bazooka: "I have this phobia about having my body penetrated." But the resulting hole turns out to be an outrageous unofficial sex orifice, an alternative belly-button: exploratory insertion of the finger turns out to be foreplay for the post-modern techno-erotic experience of plugging in. And the bio-port often has to be lubricated with licking.

So far, so groovy. But then we come to the game itself, and this is where I was sitting up. Everything about eXistenZ had been so deliciously funny and freaky that surely the game itself would make the graphics for Robocop and the Terminators look like Galaxian Invaders: now we were in for a real ride with mind-screwingly spiffy FX. Weren't we?

No. It really was a strangely dull affair, set completely realistically first in a dull games store, then a dull trout farm, then a dull Chinese restaurant, the proceedings partly enlivened by the reality fundamentalists infiltrating the game so that - guess what? - no one knows what's real and what's the game any more. When he gets magicked seamlessly into eXistenZ, Jude asks wonderingly if it is always this smooth, and Jennifer says no, not always, you can get games with "brutal cuts" and "slow fades". Heavens, I thought, they sound interesting; can we see them? Ultimately, I think I'd rather see Jennifer and Jude insinuate themselves into one of those little "blip... blip..." tennis games you used to get in service stations, and cruise back and forth on the four-inch baseline, blip-blipping for all eternity.

Jude Law is a very bright young actor who is always watchable, and I loved his "We're not in Kansas any more, Toto" expression, as he gets deeper into the game. But there is something so ungenerous about Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance: like Parker Posey and Bridget Fonda, she has one of those indie faces, closed, blank, unresponsive, often speaking as if through lockjaw.

I give two big thumbs up to the first half-hour of eXistenZ, and in fact there is so much that is distinctive and arresting about the whole thing. Cronenberg is truly an original film-maker; nothing about his baroque and revolting fantasies speaks of the focus group and the test screening.

Only in a Cronenberg could we see a man and a woman playing a game together which involved them curled up foetally on a motel bed caressing something that looks like a quivering prolapsed uterus. Only in a Cronenberg could one character flaunt a gun made out of gristle and bone that fires human teeth, a weapon somehow futuristic and at the same time regressive. Ultimately, it is alienating and disorienting, but in a way that Cronenberg fans and perhaps others too will find exciting.

What I eventually tired of was the nerd-cool infatuation with "games". For goodness sakes, everyone, "games" is what you get in school on rainy Tuesday afternoons, "games" is what intelligent and attractive people strain every sinew to avoid.

Guardian
Final Cut

Philip French
Sunday October 3, 1999

A nasty collection of chums are brought together in Final Cut to see a home movie secretly assembled by Jude (Jude Law), whose funeral they have just attended, and be recorded watching it.

Using concealed cameras, the malevolent Jude and his wife Sadie (Sadie Frost) have filmed their sorry collection of thuggish friends on the lavatory, sniffing cocaine, dealing drugs, stealing handbags and knickers, seducing each other's wives, beating people up, attending VD clinics, slagging each other off, and finally committing murder.

This is presumably the ultimate parody of reunion movies such as The Big Chill, but it makes no kind of sense.

When Jude remarks from the screen that 'You've got to admit it's compulsive viewing', the audience feels like roaring back: 'Oh no, it isn't.'

Guardian
1 October 1999

Final Cut

Peter Bradshaw
Friday October 1, 1999

Self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, and freighted with supercilious luvviness, Final Cut resembles a film-school project which by a clerical error has been produced as a feature. Jude Law stars as a fashionable young actor called Jude who is now deceased and calls all his mates together at his wake for some laughter-in-paradise mischief; they have to watch a film he's made revealing horrible secrets about all of them, including his widow Sadie (Sadie Frost) and actor mate Ray (Ray Winstone) - and they're being filmed while watching it. Part of the object is evidently to show how fuzzy is the line between fiction and reality. The effect, however, is unintentionally to demonstrate the existence of a crystal-clear, pin-sharp line between postmodernism and jerking off. And by plonking itself down so uncompromisingly on the wrong side of that line, this film is a terrible trial. It's got some funny moments, but really, no. No.

---

The Daily Telegraph 9th October 1999:
Saturday Premiere: Britpack have the perfect pitch

THE talented British Bratpack (Ray Winstone, Jude Law, Sean Pertwee, Johnny Lee Miller, Sadie Frost etc) are sweeping all before them. And dammit, it seems they have skills to spare. Their next film, Love, Honour & Obey, a monster London comic gangland romp, will show them all singing for the first time. I have seen some clips (this picture above reveals their new talent for the first time), and they're stunning. I rather suspect the film, released next year, will become a cult must, if for nothing more than the way they belt out a medley of Sixties and Seventies standards around a pub karaoke machine.

---

Evening Standard Online (UK)

The many desires driving Miss Sadie

Sadie Frost - mother, star, judge and underwear mogul. But can she make it as a film producer, asks Mark Monahan?

SADIE FROST is a busy woman. So far this year, the 32-year-old mother of two has co-judged the British Independent Film Awards (held last week), appeared in several movies of her own, marketed her own line of scented knickers (vanilla, baby-powder and "Christmas spice"), and, as Mrs Jude Law, continued to bear the burden of being arguably the most envied woman in Britain.

Then again, it is hard not to envy Law his choice of spouse. When I meet Frost, near their house in Primrose Hill, north London, she is un-made-up and casually dressed, but scarcely less photogenic for that. She can currently be seen, with Law, Ray Winstone and others, in Final Cut, an infuriating but gripping piece of ensemble cinéma vérité that has had some critics glued to their seats, and others heading swiftly for the door. "The response has been mixed," she says quickly, her voice at once girlish, charming, and slightly steely. "I know that it's a love-or-hate film - there's no middle ground, because it is so shocking. The language is quite crude and vulgar."

The same, surely, could be said of the action, which involves copious amounts of drugs, violence and infidelity. "Yeah," she agrees. "We were trying to show a bit of pub culture that you don't often get to see on film." (Exactly where, you wonder, does she drink?)

"And the thing is," she continues, "the film was made in 10 days for £30,000. There are flaws in it, because we never thought it would get distribution. But a lot of people have liked it, and it's made its money back quite a few times over already."

What is striking about this appraisal is that it sounds more like that of a producer than an actress. Yet one should not, perhaps, be surprised. Frost may be starring in the forthcoming Rancid Aluminium (another ensemble piece with Joseph Fiennes, Tara Fitzgerald and Rhys Ifans, which is directed by Adrian Rifkin and released on Friday, December 3), and in Love, Honour and Obey (a gangster flick that, apparently, features a crooning Winstone), but it is her behind-the- camera duties that, in recent weeks, have been highest on the agenda.

For, as if being a mother, star, film-judge and knicker-mogul were not enough, Frost is also - along with fellow "Primrose Hill Bratpackers" Law, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor and Sean Pertwee - a director of the Natural Nylon production company. "We formed it six or seven years ago," she explains. "We were all friends, and I think we were all slightly frustrated about where our careers were going at that time. We wanted to do a project together . . . But they just take longer than you ever imagine to set up."

This might explain why, so far, Natural Nylon has only one completed film to its name: the biopic Nora, starring McGregor as James Joyce, and described by one anonymous insider as "definitely the most explicit period movie ever".

But there are other movies in the works - Psychoville and Dysturbia, English treatments of the suburbia-is-hell theme - and Nora has already generated a hefty amount of hype. Natural Nylon has, it seems, finally got into its stride.

Or maybe not. Law and Frost had long intended to make a film called Marlowe, which is about the supposed love triangle between Marlowe, Shakespeare, and a mystery woman. He would star as Marlowe, she as the paramour, and Natural Nylon would produce. Recently, however, news broke that the project had grown too big for Natural Nylon to finance, and that they had been obliged to seek backing elsewhere. Enter the Canadian company Alliance, who happily accepted the project but demanded that Frost be replaced - apparently by one Gwyneth Paltrow.

"It's been a bit of a task," says Frost, her tone notably less upbeat than before. "It was our company's project, and the casting wasn't really confirmed, but it was always something that Jude wanted to do with me. He always said that he wouldn't do it without me." So is Paltrow, in fact, to be the substitute Sadie? "No," she replies. "But I think they wanted a name of that calibre."

This rejection must have been annoying, to say the least. "Well, I'm not annoyed," counters Frost. "I'm frustrated that in our company there's, um, certain things, uh, that we've, you know, we still, kind of, are having to fight these, um, um . . ." Battles? "Yeah, battles. But basically, I decided that I wanted to be in independent film, and that was a conscious decision of mine.

What's happening now is that they want to put people who have been in studio films into the independent films, to make sure they get their money back. I just think that the person who's right for the part should get the job. It shouldn't be down to a name."

If this last maxim sounds perilously close to self-pity, Frost clearly realises that the "bigger fish" syndrome can work both ways. She adds, almost as an afterthought, "But, I mean, I'm sure there are loads of actresses who haven't had as much experience as me, who are up against me."

In the wake of Frost's having been spurned, her cherished Marlowe has ground to a halt, leading to reports in the press of a severe crisis of confidence at Natural Nylon. How, I ask, are things at the office? "Well," says Frost, "it's been difficult because we've all been working on our own projects. But we had a board meeting yesterday and, if anything, the newspaper stories could be a positive thing; it's kind of shaken everyone up and made them think, 'Come on, guys, we've got to pull together.' "

At the very least, the Marlowe farrago has provided Jude Law with a golden opportunity for chivalry. Natural Nylon will still produce the film, but he has decided not to appear in it.

Still, one doubts that he and Frost need to prove their affection for each other. Returning to Final Cut, I put it to her than Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman found Eyes Wide Shut something of an emotional trial, in that the subject of the film - infidelity - led them to re-examine their own relationship. Endearingly, any potential feelings of this sort on the set of Final Cut seem to have been engulfed by the sheer delight of professional union.

"Jude was only in it for a couple of days," says Frost. "We didn't do that much stuff together. But it was nice going to work in the mornings, sharing a cab together, being together. When one of you is filming and the other is not, you're in a nice, warm bed and the other leaves at six in the morning, and you don't see them again until midnight.

"So, yes," she continues, "working together is something we've always said we want to do . . . not all the time, but maybe one film every two years."

And, despite recent events, one suspects they will manage rather more than that.

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The long reach of the Law

'Tis Pity She's A Whore
Dir: David Lan.Jude Law, Eve Best, Annette Badland
by Nick Curtis

I admit, I expected Jude Law to be arrogant. At the ridiculously young age of 26, he seems to have it all. Movie-star looks, a movie-star career, and a movie-star wife, Sadie Frost. His own production company, Natural Nylon, formed with Sadie and a few friends who happen to be Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee. A forthcoming starring role at the Young Vic as Giovanni, the Jacobean hero hopelessly in love with his sister in John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. And a film, The Final Cut - which he, Sadie and a few mates improvised on their own terms for only £30,000 - opening across London.

Given too that his screen roles - from the sybaritic Lord Alfred Douglas in Wilde to the crippled athlete forced to lend his identity to a genetic inferior in Gattaca - share an over-weening self-belief, I expected a lot of attitude.

Instead, Law is friendly, talkative, modest. Probably not all that different to the Lewisham schoolboy who suggested to his teacher parents that he'd like to be an actor. Mr and Mrs Law must smile now when they recall naming their son after Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

Giovanni is Jude the Unobscure's first stage role since 1994, when he starred as Euripides's Ion for the RSC and the (often-naked) juvenile lead in Cocteau's Les Parents Terrible for the NT in London and New York. "I took a break then because I felt I hadn't investigated what it was to be an actor in film," he says. "Also, I was only 22 and a lot of the stage parts available were very similar - boys becoming men." The film parts certainly came in, culminating when Law finished shooting Anthony Minghella's screen version of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley (in which he stars alongside Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett) last year.

He's taken most of this year off to spend time with Sadie, stepson Finlay, aged nine, and son Rafferty, three, and to take stock. "Often you can take jobs for the sake of working. I realised I wanted to do a play, to sweat a bit - and to be part of a company, not do a star-led, West-End thing." He knew the director David Lan, and the part and play appealed. "There is a reaching in Giovanni's mind on an epic level, and an ability to question, tempered with a youthful idealism that I suppose I have to accept because I'm still only 26." A snort of laughter. "Also, Ford managed to make this incestuous love the purest thing in the world of the play."

Law admits to a fascination with the profane, prolific, tumultuous world of the Jacobean writers. "It was a time of extraordinary battles between faith old and new, between classical and contemporary views." Having finished Ewan McGregor's personal project Nora, a film about James Joyce, Natural Nylon is developing a script about the life of playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe, who was stabbed through the eye in a tavern brawl at the age of 29. John (Love is the Devil) Maybury will direct, Peter Brownlow is to write it, and Jude will play Marlowe.

Natural Nylon, I suggest, looks like a bid by actors to control their own destiny. "You never have control," Law smiles, "you constantly question how long it's gonna be before someone finds you out." He, Ewan, Jonny and Sean set the company up because they weren't getting much work, and they thought it would be easier to get backing for projects as a group.

Now that Hollywood has enticed them all, the focus has changed. "It's become a kind of home we can go to, away from big films, to do actor-driven work. We always knew we didn't just want to be people for hire in a market dominated by American money. Now, whether the films work or not, I think Natural Nylon is symbolic of a time in England when there's a lot of focus on our talents: our crews, our writers, our directors, our actors."

That said, Law's next film is a big American movie by Jean-Jacques Annaud, in which he plays a Russian sniper during the siege of Stalingrad alongside Joseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz and opposite Ed Harris. He also recently made his directorial debut, helming one of the 10 short Tube Tales films set on the Underground. Not that he harbours any strong ambitions in that direction. He's interested in the production side of film-making, but his priorities are acting and his family. He, Ewan and Jonny don't hang out together so much since children came on the scene, and he and Sadie try to organise their work schedules so someone is at home with the boys.

Rehearsals for 'Tis Pity have been wonderful because he's home in the evenings: "I definitely want to do another play next year." And with that Jude Law, movie star and family man, heads back into the rehearsal room to sweat a bit more.

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 01 October 1999

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Annaud to shoot ``Enemy''

By Charles Lyons and Claude Brodesser

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - ``Seven Years in Tibet'' director Jean-Jacques Annaud is getting ready to shoot another fact-based wartime film.

Annaud will direct and produce ``Enemy at the Gates,'' which is slated to shoot in Germany in December or early January.

``Enemy'' tells the true story of a World War II duel between a young Russian sniper (Jude Law) and a German officer (Ed Harris). Joseph Fiennes will play the Russian's best friend, and Rachel Weisz is in talks to play the woman they both love. The action is set against the epic battle of Stalingrad.

Annaud collaborated on the script with Alain Godard, who wrote Annaud's ``The Name of the Rose.'' Annaud's other credits include ``Wings of Courage,'' ``The Lover'' and ``The Bear.'' He was last in theaters with 1997's ``Seven Years in Tibet,'' which starred Brad Pitt as Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer.

Law last starred in ``eXistenZ,'' Harris in ``Stepmom,'' Fiennes in ``Shakespeare in Love'' and Weisz in ``The Mummy.''

Reuters/Variety