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 As the cocky TV host Benedict in the ShakespeaRe-Told series episode, Much Ado About Nothing. |
Damian Lewis (Actor) Many Americans, seeing this versatile Brit for the first time as the LA cop Charlie Crews (back on the job having done 12 years after being wrongfully convicted of murder) in the TV series Life, will assume he's following in the footsteps of fellow countryman Hugh Laurie - so popular in his own US series as the boorish, irascible, eponymous House MD. Not so fast. When I first saw Lewis in the mini series Band of Brothers (2001) - in my view superior to (producer) Steven Spielberg's other take on WW2, Saving Private Ryan - I assumed he was American, so convincing was he as the reluctant draftee who eventually rose to Major as he fought in Europe from D-Day through the Battle of the Bulge. Hard on the heels of this triumph, there he was as the bitter aristocrat Soames Forsyte, in the could-it-possibly-be-any-better remake of The Forsyte Saga. OK, pretty heavy stuff, but look at him in the only watchable episode in the ShakespeaRe-Told series, Much Ado About Nothing. As the egotistical TV host (is there any other kind?) he was ably matched by the underrated Sarah Parish and their verbal sparring was dazzling and poetic by turn. (This was an emphatic riposte to TV's Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) who at one point, with heavy irony, sneers at his servant: "Baldrick, you're as funny as a Shakespeare comedy!") From early, inauspicious parts in the inescapable UKTV series Poirot and A Touch of Frost, Lewis mercifully graduated to well-chosen roles in the films Peacekeepers (99), Keane (04), Chromophobia (05) and The Baker (07) and played quintessential Englishmen Jeffrey Archer and Tony Blair on TV, on the way. Look out for plenty of career articles titled "Crews Control". |
 On location for Come Early Morning |
Joey Lauren Adams (actress/writer/director) At last! She's out of the box again, after her breakthrough performance as the sexually ambiguous Alyssa in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy. This was 1997, Adams was nearly 30 and it was her 11th film, but she easily made the cut in my piece on outstanding actresses who had not been given due recognition - widely published in 1998/9. (The others were Renee Zellweger, Parker Posey, Alicia Witt, Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron and Sarah Polley, so she was in good company.) So did Adams, with her unusual looks and distinctive voice benefit from the good notices which followed Chasing Amy? Not really. Her career since has been spotty; it was years before I caught her follow-up film, A Cool Dry Place (with Vince Vaughn) on TV, and it was a shame to see her playing second fiddle in Big Daddy (99) and Beautiful (00) or reduced to third wheel in James Toback's Harvard Man (01) and The Break-Up (06). However, I've made a mental note to seek out The Big Empty (03) which has a great cast - Adams comes in second again. Which brings us to her debut feature (as writer/director) Come Early Morning, a movie she did not want "someone else to interpret". She cast fellow Arkansas native Ashley Judd in the lead role, and was heavily influenced by the films Tender Mercies and Urban Cowboy. Interviewed by Indiewire at Sundance, 2006. |
 On location, 2 Days in Paris, with Adam Goldberg (left) |
Julie Delpy (actress/writer/director) You can add editor and composer to this multi-lingual, multi-tasker's talents, since she took on all 5 roles in her just released 2 Days in Paris. Astonishingly, it's her second feature; she made her first, Looking for Jimmy in 2002. Has anybody seen it? As a youngster, acting in films like J-L Godard's Detective (85), Europa, Europa (90), Voyager (91) and Warszawa (92), Delpy always seemed to be playing the smartest kid on the block, albeit one with an angelic, quizzical face. I still haven't caught up with Bertrand Tavernier's La Passion Beatrice (87), but that's what DVDs are for. As she matured, she became better known for characters with real bite, the lead in Kieslowski's Three Colours: White (her role was peripheral in Red & Blue), Roger Avary's Killing Zoe, American Werewolf in Paris and most famously, for Richard Linklater's European-set Before Sunrise. In the US she was able to mix quirky roles in MacArthur Park and L.A. Without a Map and keep a straight face with stuff like But I'm a Cheerleader and a continuing character in ER. Then came the long- awaited sequel to Before Sunrise. In Before Sunset (04) she was reunited with Linklater and actor Ethan Hawke, and also co-scripted. |
 Stiles (left) with Zooey Deschanel on NY location for Raving. |
Julia Stiles (Actress/writer/director/producer) Buried under the PR blurb for The Bourne Ultimatum, in which Stiles has a much larger part than she started with in the first of the series, The Bourne Identity, I accidentally discovered Stiles recently wrote and directed a 20-minute, 35mm film, Raving, with fellow actors Zooey Deschanel and Tom Irwin in lead roles. I am not so much concerned with Stiles' status as a poster girl for clean living and the joys of a college education, more the innate talent so clearly on display in roles in 10 Things I Hate About You (99) Hamlet (00) and O (01), all contemporary variations on Shakespeare for the teen market, where her amorous male co-stars were subjected to sullen put-downs and withering stares before the climactic get-together. Later came even darker roles: the knowing jailbait in Mamet's State and Main and a sociopathic PA in The Business of Strangers. Maybe she knew something the others didn't when she signed on for Bourne Identity, since she was barely glimpsed - and not even mentioned - in the trailer. That's all behind her as she moves into the big time. Next up: producing a new version of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, which has become a touchstone for third-wave feminists. |
 On location: Away From Her  With Ian Holm, The Sweet Hereafter |
Sarah Polley (Actress/writer/director) Back in 1998 I was writing about Polley's precocious talent in Australia's Cinema Papers and later in New Zealand's Sunday Star-Times. She was already a veteran, and her pivotal role in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) should have catapulted her to international recognition, but keeping a determinedly low-profile, it was no surprise when she knocked back a major role in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous a few years later. Unfazed, she admitted in an interview, on the promotional trail for Dawn of the Dead (2004), one of her rare excursions into multiplex movies: "I'd hate to be Kate Hudson," - who took the "Almost Famous" role. But this year, everyone's talking about Polley's debut as director, Away From Her (2007). Polley was on the Cannes jury this year, although her film had already been released to widespread acclaim and she's currently on-screen in Isobel Coixet's The Secret Life of Words (screening in the NZ Film Festival programme). Polley remains defiantly Canadian (spending time at the political barricades as a teenager) and at 28 has an impressive CV chock-full of dark characters played with a seemingly intuitive, light touch. As an actor her face is a blank canvas over which can be overlayed innocence or irony as required. She can deliver a killer line with practised ease, Eg. after she's skewered class-action lawyer Ian Holm's case in The Sweet Hereafter, she sweetly asks her parents: "Do you think he'll let us keep the computer?" Apparently absorbing filmmaking technique (although she disputes this) from directors as diverse as Egoyan, Coixet, Audrey Wells, David Cronenberg, Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Winterbottom & Wim Wenders, Polley's selection as one of Variety's "10 Directors to Watch" seems well-deserved. She's picked up a slew of Canadian and international awards for acting and now with "Away From Her", for writing and directing as well. |
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grotesque and burlesque." Makes me wish I'd pushed harder for its inclusion in the NZ Film Societies' "New York
Stories" programme in 2006. Shelly was an actress very much in the Rosanna Arquette mould during her Hal Hartley
collaboration, and she continued acting in her own films, later standing to one side to let Keri Russell take centre-stage in
"Waitress". She won filmmaking awards for "I'll Take You There" and "Waitress". Check out this Interview by Sean
Axmaker (GreenCine Daily).
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 With David Hemmings in Blow-Up. |
Jane Birkin (Actress/singer/writer/director) Was it really 40 years' ago that Birkin was a skinny teen romping around in the photo studio in Antonioni's Blow Up? Between then and the premiere of her own film, Boxes (Les boites), screened out of competition in Cannes this year, (but eligible for the Camera D'Or), Birkin (sister of UK-based writer-director Andrew Birkin) has appeared in dozens of films, even playing a New Zealander in the NZ film (shot in France) Leave All Fair (1985), recorded many albums, married English composer John Barry, then later French icon Serge Gainsbourg, raised their daughter Charlotte (also a veteran actor, and now singer, herself), made the 1992 TV movie Oh Pardon! Tu dormais… In short, she's been busy, but because most of her work (see her extensive filmography) has been in France, her international profile has been patchy. No surprises there. Her best roles came in films with veteran French directors Agnes Varda (including the documentary Jane B par Agnes V) and Bertrand Tavernier (Daddy Nostalgie) and she has had three (French) Cesar Award nominations. |  Boxes (Les boites) |
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Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Actress/writer/director/editor) "Where can I find her movies?" wails a fan on the IMDB bulletin board. One might point out, there are plenty more (virtually unknown actresses) where she comes from - as I did in this piece many years ago. Once audiences discover this 42-year-old, unconventional, luminous beauty, who seems unable to suppress a warm, winning persona regardless of the role, she's hard to forget. Start with the relatively accessible (on DVD) Hotel de France (Patrice Chereau) 87, Story of Boys and Girls (Pupi Avati) 89, Nenette et Boni (Claire Denis) 96, where her eye-catchingly sensuous performance as the baker's wife is a highlight, plus 5 X 2 (Francois Ozon) '04, where she is a standout among the ensemble cast. Recent bit parts in Munich and A Good Year are mere icing on the cake. You want awards? Bruni Tedeschi has them by the truckload. International awards for both acting & writing/directing, incl Best Actress, Best Emerging Filmmaker at Tribeca (New York) in 2003, for Il est plus facile pour un chamau / It's easier for a camel (2003) and the Special Jury Prize in Cannes - Un certain regard (2007) for Reve de la nuit d'avant / Actresses, in which she also appears. |
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