Elizabeth McGovern: Why I turned down marriage to Sean Penn and begged on my knees to play Downton's mistress

MAIL ON LINE
By LOUISE GANNON
PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 14 September 2013 | UPDATED: 21:20 EST, 14 September 2013

Are you ready for the return of Downton-mania? The frenzied craze for the costume drama to end all costume dramas is set to shoot right off the scale when series four launches next weekend.

And even the normally unflappable Royals are getting in a lather over the imminent return of Lady Mary, Carson, the Earl of Grantham and his porcelain-skinned wife, Lady Cora, the Countess, played by the stunning American actress Elizabeth McGovern.

Except, unlike normal Downton fans, when the Royals crave a hit of their favourite show, they can simply turn up at Highclere Castle – the stately home where it is filmed – to meet the stars.

‘Pippa Middleton came with her mum and her brother,’ McGovern reveals, as she whisks Event on a whirlwind tour.

‘They were lovely. They asked lots of questions, stayed to watch some of the filming.

‘Pippa was very pretty and polite and I’d definitely say the cast were probably more excited than the guests. I had a big chat with her mum, too.’

The massive success of the show is not something McGovern, 52, imagined.

It’s ITV’s most successful period drama ever, winning Emmys in America, spawning a Hollywood career for Dan Stevens who – as Matthew Crawley – was killed in a car crash in the last series.

‘We miss him,’ she says. The Downton cast are extremely close.

‘It is incredibly hard work, long days, late shoots, but we are a real team. It’s an amazing thing to work on a show that is so successful; that has an unbelievable effect on the cast.

‘There’s definitely a split between the young ones and the older ones. But on set we have ways of keeping ourselves amused.

'Michelle (Dockery, Lady Mary) and Allen (Leech, the chauffeur-turned-gentleman) are brilliant mimics. He does a flamboyant fashion designer act, Michelle does a great LA actress on the red carpet. Then Maggie (Smith) has all her anecdotes, which are amazing.’

I meet McGovern in the restaurant of a West London studio, and over cappuccino she casually gives me a great Downton scoop: as the Grantham family move into the Roaring Twenties, the women are finally granted their freedom .  .  . from their clothes.

‘That’s right, no corsets this time, a big bonus. We can breathe again! The dresses are a lot more comfortable.’

I push McGovern for more revelations, but she remains cagey about what we can expect – Downton stars are kept on a famously tight leash when it comes to revealing forthcoming script details.



Like Cora – whom she loves (‘She’s a really good, decent woman. She doesn’t make dramas, she just tries to make everything right for everyone else’) – McGovern is an American in England married to film director and producer Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn, The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice).

Her eldest daughter, Matilda, is reading English at Oxford and her youngest, Grace, is 15. Her life has been about gently breaking rules. Her parents are American academics. Her mother was a teacher, her father a professor, her great-grandfather a famous diplomat.

As revealed in the Mail on Sunday last month, McGovern plays and sings ‘mum music’ in her band Sadie And The Hot Heads, but she never went to a rock concert as a teenager.

‘In my family it was classical or maybe jazz,’ she says.

She grew up in LA and became an actress contrary to family expectations. Success was instant, overwhelming and huge.

Her first film, at 19, was Ordinary People, with Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. It won four Oscars. Her second, Ragtime, earned her an Oscar nomination. Her third, Once Upon A Time In America, pitched her against Robert De Niro as the object of his sexual obsession.

The same year – 1984 – she starred in Racing With The Moon with Sean Penn. Penn fell madly in love with her, they got engaged – everything was pointing to a Hollywood superstar future. So she split from Penn and left LA to study theatre in New York.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-2418897/Downton-Abbeys-Elizabeth-McGovern-Why-I-turned-marriage-Sean-Penn-begged-knees-play-Downtons-mistress.html#ixzz2evTi53oz 
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Critics Choice Awards - 'The Artist' wins best picture (CBS News)

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From left, director Michel Hazanavicius, actress Berenice Bejo, actor Jean Dujardin and producer Thomas Langmann, winners of the Best Picture Award for "The Artist," pose in the press room during the 17th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Jan. 12, 2012, in Los Angeles.

(Credit: Getty)

(CBS/AP) Updated 10:38 p.m. ET

"The Artist" waltzed off with the most awards at Thursday's 17th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards, including the night's top honor.

The black-and-white silent film directed by Michel Hazanavicius led winners with four honors, earning trophies for best picture, score, costume design and director.

"I don't like to speak so much," Hazanavicius admitted during his best picture acceptance speech, before inviting the actors on stage to celebrate the win.

Southern drama "The Help" also came out a big winner, with best and supporting actress honors for Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer and a best acting ensemble win for the cast.

Other winners in the acting categories included George Clooney as best actor for "The Descendants," Christopher Plummer as best supporting actor for "Beginners," and Thomas Horn as best young actor for "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

"The Artist" beat out "Hugo," "The Descendants," "Drive," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "The Help," "Midnight in Paris," "Moneyball," "The Tree of Life" and "War Horse" to win the best picture category. Hazanavicius also earned directing honors for the homage to silent film.

Other winners included "Bridesmaids" as best comedy movie (producer Judd Apatow put the censors to work by dropping a series of F-bombs while accepting the award), "Drive" as best action movie, "Rango" as best animated feature, "A Separation" as best foreign film and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" for best makeup and best sound.

The evening started off as a face-off between "The Artist" and "Hugo," Martin Scorsese's sweeping 3-D family film, with 11 nominations each. The awards were handed out at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, in a ceremony hosted by comedians Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Olivia Harrison presented Scorsese with the Critics' Choice Music + Film Award, with a special musical tribute from Bob Dylan. Dylan was the subject of Scorsese's PBS documentary "No Direction Home," and in 1976 the director captured his performance at the Band's "Last Waltz" concert.

Clooney presented Sean Penn with the fifth annual Joel Siegel Award, which the actor and humanitarian accepted via satellite from Haiti. The award, which honors those who understand that celebrity is a platform to do good works for others, pays homage to the late "Good Morning America" film critic Joel Siegel. 

BFCA members voted on films that were released in 2011 for Thursday's awards show. Last year, the ceremony served as a predictor of the Academy Award nominations as well as winners, with all four of the acting category winners - Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo - accepting awards at the Critics' Choice as well as at the Oscars.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-57358289-10391698/critics-choice-movie-awards-the-help-takes-an-early-lead/

Oscar rewards real-life roles (Omaha.com)

By Bob Fischbach
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

 

Meryl Streep stars as Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady."

 

 

Actress Meryl Streep was not a fan of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Playing Thatcher in "The Iron Lady," she told the BBC, meant challenging her own prejudices, since she is always defensive of the characters she inhabits.

It soon could prove worth the effort. The odds that Streep will get a 17th Academy Award nomination on Jan. 24 may be better because she's playing a woman who, like herself, is world-famous.

It's no fluke. Streep did the same thing two years ago, nailing the voice, accent and ebullient personality of chef Julia Child in "Julie and Julia" to earn her 16th nomination. In fact, six of Streep's nominations have been for playing real people.

The past decade has seen a sharp uptick in Oscar nominations for actors playing real people. Since 2000, 65 of the 220 acting nominations honored depictions of actual people. That's 30 percent, up from 17.5 percent in the 1990s.

The odds of winning for playing real people also have gone up: 40 percent since 2000, compared with 10 percent in the 1990s. Since 1990, nearly every year has seen at least one of the four acting trophies go to someone playing a real person. Last year it was three: Christian Bale and Melissa Leo in "The Fighter" and Colin Firth in "The King's Speech."

Why the trend? Oscar watchers say Academy voters admire when actors transform themselves, stepping out of their own personas.

While it can be tricky playing a familiar figure, getting it right can turn into a career peak: Jamie Foxx as blues singer Ray Charles in "Ray," Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I in "The Queen" and Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in "Capote" all won Academy Awards for nailing known personas.

Oscar also admires when actors transform themselves from something beautiful to something else.
Charlize Theron gained 30 pounds and wore false teeth to play mass murderer Aileen Wuornos in "Monster." Nicole Kidman donned a grotesque fake nose to play writer Virginia Woolf in "The Hours." Marion Cotillard, a beautiful young French actress, appeared nearly hairless and feeble as aged chanteuse Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose." Sean Penn wore a prosthetic nose, false teeth, contact lenses and an altered hairline as politician Harvey Milk in "Milk."

They all won Oscars.

Even when the role is not a public figure, actors can feel a special responsibility to get it right when playing real people. Sometimes, as with Amy Adams in last year's "The Fighter," they'll meet with the person to pick up an essence of realism.

Other times they form the character to meet the needs of the script and don't worry about re-creating the real deal. That was the case for Jesse Eisenberg playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" last year. He didn't meet Zuckerberg until after the movie was released.

Some read extensively and study video, as Forest Whitaker did to play Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland." It's one route to disappearing into another's skin.

A recent article in Paste magazine suggested that Oscar voters need to separate impersonation from interpretation. Embodying a character in a living, breathing performance, the article said, requires much more than physical resemblance.

That's how both Anthony Hopkins, in "Nixon," and Frank Langella, in "Frost vs. Nixon," won trips to the red carpet, even though they didn't particularly look like the late president.

Others make their mark playing real people who are not famous but who lived extraordinary lives that inspire. Such examples include Julia Roberts as a paralegal in "Erin Brockovich," Adrien Brody as pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman in "The Pianist," Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo as hoteliers Paul and Tatiana Rusesabagina in "Hotel Rwanda," and Will Smith as Chris Gardner in "The Pursuit of Happyness."

One thing's for sure: The real-people trend on award night isn't over.

Besides Streep's, this year's lauded performances include Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier in "My Week With Marilyn"; Brad Pitt as Oakland A's manager Billy Beane in "Moneyball"; Leonardo DiCaprio as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Armie Hammer as his companion, Clyde Tolson; and Jim Broadbent as Thatcher's husband, Dennis, in "The Iron Lady."

Next year, Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis will appear as the president in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln." Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays his son, Robert Todd Lincoln.