Daniel Radcliffe admits to having his little addictions. He was once a two-a-day Flake man, but has managed to drop the chocoholic habit.
Then he hit the Red Bull . . . ‘I was doing a 16oz can a day and wondering why I couldn’t sleep at night,’ Daniel tells me, adding that he now satisfies his caffeine needs with one coffee a day.
Chocoholic: Daniel Radcliffe once had to have two Flakes a day but he has now managed to kick the habit
He’s worried that he’ll lapse once he ends his barn-storming run in the Broadway musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on January 1. After that, he’ll travel to promote the spine-tingling Gothic ghost movie The Woman In Black (pictured), before starting two new movies.
‘On film sets, the joke is there are two options: you’ll either eat or smoke,’ he says. ‘I hope not to balloon.’
Daniel confesses to one other addiction — campaigning for his Harry Potter co-star (and good friend) Alan Rickman to get an Oscar nomination for his superb performance as Severus Snape in Deathly Hallows II.
It would be great for the Potter series to be recognised by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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Meet Tom, the new Errol Flynn
Steven Spielberg has dubbed actor Tom Hiddleston ‘the new Errol Flynn’. He meant Flynn’s heroic swashbuckling acting in classic silver-screen pictures such as Captain Blood and The Adventures Of Robin Hood — not his legendary swordsmanship, off screen, with the ladies.
And Hiddleston, 30, certainly cuts a dash as Captain Nicholls, the World War I British cavalry officer who purchases Joey, the red bay, and takes him to fight the Hun in Spielberg’s glorious big-screen version of War Horse, which opens here on January 13.
Compliment: Director Steven Spielberg has dubbed Tom Hiddleston, pictured right as Captain Nicholls in War Horse, the new Errol Flynn
When we meet at Soho House in London, heads turn as Hiddleston walks by. Spielberg told me that when the British actor visited his West Coast office to discuss the role, all the girls were swooning over him. ‘They went all googly-eyed and I said: “That’s the next Errol Flynn!”.
‘He’s got honest charm,’ he added. ‘It’s not false. He’s very sincere. He’s the real deal.’
Hiddleston’s old-fashioned swagger is totally in keeping with War Horse’s nods to great movies from the past: Lawrence Of Arabia; Gone With The Wind; the films of John Ford and Howard Hawkes. Hiddleston — a Cambridge graduate — has about 15 minutes of screen-time, as one of several people who take Joey’s reins for a while.
‘Captain Nicholls is not a soldier — he’s an educated gentleman, and he’s in the Army because he can ride,’ Tom told me. ‘For the officer class, it was almost summer camp for the generation that was fox hunting in the winter in red coats and in khaki in the summer.
‘They thought it’d be over by Christmas, but suddenly they’re charging across No Man’s Land with their sabres flashing in the sun, up against machine guns.’
One scene (right) shows Nicholls leading the charge on Joey. Spielberg wanted to capture the sense of confidence that abruptly turns to fear when Nicholls realises what he and his men are up against. The actor was 29 then; Spielberg told him to lop 20 years off his age.
‘He said: “I don’t want a look of shock and terror on your face. Show me the nine-year-old boy”,’ Hiddleston recalled.
You will know the moment we’re discussing because the expression on Hiddleston’s face is one you’ll never forget.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will attend the London premiere of War Horse on January 8.
Legendary: Errol Flynn pictured in The Adventures of Robin Hood
Hiddleston is about to ride another mount, in his role as Henry V in a BBC TV film. It’s part of a series of Shakespeare pictures based on Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. Tom also plays Hal in the two Henry IV dramas.
‘Hal goes from being a rebellious, drunken, irresponsible prince to one of the most courageous, charismatic kings of England we’ve ever had,’ he said.
He will shoot Henry IV, opposite Jeremy Irons, next month. Then, he’ll begin work on Thor 2, reprising his role as the dark prince Loki. Loki also crops up in The Avengers (out here in April).
Hiddelston has had a tremendous run lately: he’s also played F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, and a former fighter pilot in Terence Davies’s sublime film The Deep Blue Sea.
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De Vito brings a little sunshine to the West End
Richard Griffiths and Danny De Vito have found their place in the sun. The two stars will open in the West End towards the end of April in a new version of Neil Simon’s comedy The Sunshine Boys.
Producer Sonia Friedman confirmed a story that this column broke a couple of months ago: that the two men have ‘connected’ and that rehearsals will begin in March, with an opening at a London theatre which will be finalised some time in January.
‘I think these two — Richard and Danny — and the play will be just what we need to give us all a lift,’ Ms Friedman told me.
The Comedy Sunshine Boys: Richard Griffiths and Danny De Vito will open in the West End next April
The playwright has met director Thea Sharrock and is rewriting some of the play’s 40-year-old dialogue, inserting some new, up-to-date gags. Set in the early Seventies, The Sunshine Boys is a celebration of the art of vaudeville — told through the eyes of a successful, but now retired double-act called Lewis and Clark.
The funnymen performed together for four decades but grew to loathe each other. Clark, in particular, hates Lewis with a passion because he blames him for breaking up the act.
Griffiths, who appeared in the Harry Potter films, and who won accolades as the brilliant teacher Hector in Alan Bennett’s landmark play The History
Boys, will play level-headed Al Lewis. De Vito — who made his name in movies such as One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Terms Of Endearment and Throw Mamma From The Train — will play difficult, argumentative Willy Clark.
Although the role will mark De Vito’s London theatre debut, the actor is not a stage novice. He’s very much of the theatre, having trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
He has appeared in many off-Broadway productions, including the original stage version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
The Sunshine Boys is being scheduled to run until July. If it clicks in London, it will head to Broadway.
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It's a good job New York has no Shame
When director Steve McQueen and screenwriter Abi Morgan were researching sex addiction for their new movie, Shame, they got nothing from zipped-up Brits, so they flew to New York and it all spilled out.
‘We were like Miss Marple and Columbo, delving into people’s sex lives the way detectives probe murders,’ McQueen told me.
The result of their labours is Shame, a scorching picture from McQueen, who also gave us the powerful drama Hunger.
Shame features a virtuoso performance from Michael Fassbender (also the star of Hunger) as a Manhattan-based advertising executive who needs sex the way a junkie needs a fix.
‘It’s an illness,’ McQueen asserted. ‘This man struggles with his sex life.’
No shame: Steve McQueen pictured with Michael Fassbender. The director had to go state-side to get the dirty about sex addiction
Fassbender’s character has to clear out his porn videos and magazines when his estranged sister (Carey Mulligan) arrives to stay.
McQueen told me he hadn’t intended the part for Mulligan, but she wore him down. ‘I wasn’t ready to give it to her initially, but she wasn’t going to let me go,’ he says. ‘I’m glad I did — she’s a terrific actress.’
Shame got slapped with an NC-17 rating in the U.S., which McQueen thought was the name of a rap group.
‘They’re usually given to irresponsible movies, and this is a responsible movie,’ said McQueen. ‘It’s not as if we’ve got scenes with an assault rifle and heads being blown off. The elephant in the room is that people never talk about sex.’
I ask whether Fassbender had a stand-in, as it were, for his naked close-ups. ‘It’s all him and it’s all his own,’ McQueen replied.
The movie isn’t just about sex, though. It also looks at alienation and loneliness. It opens here on January 13.
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The third season of Downton Abbey starts shooting some time in February, and I hear Julian Fellowes has already sketched out a storyline for a fourth series of the phenomenally popular ITV drama.
It has to be the most entertaining show on television, and even though I’ve already seen the 90-minute Christmas Day special (and it’s a cracker!) I will be tuning in on Sunday to have a second look. The show certainly deserves to scoop a few gongs at the Golden Globe Awards next month.
Hugely popular: The next series of Downton Abbey starts filming in February with a fourth series already in the works
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2077769/Christina-Hendricks-sixties-sex-bomb-accepts-role-era.html#ixzz1hMCaj08i
Keira Knightley vs. Carey Mulligan
Jennifer Garner vs. Amy Adams
Ryan Reynolds vs. Ryan Gosling
Don Johnson vs. Alec Baldwin
Rachel Bilson vs. Mila Kunis
There are a number of reasons why a dark movie about sex addiction might encounter obstacles in its quest to become a broad crowd-pleaser or a popular Oscar choice. But could a severe rating be one of them?
It’s far from a hypothetical question as Fox Searchlight opens “Shame” this weekend. Steve McQueen’s drama, a movie whose artistic virtues we've been touting in this space since the movie premiered at the film festivals of late summer, tells of Brandon (Michael Fassbender) and his struggles to find emotional connection while engaging in emotionless sexual activity with seemingly every woman, real and virtual, in the New York metro area.
The movie is also rated NC-17, one of the rare films to be released with the Motion Picture Assn. of America's harshest grade. (Fox Searchlight didn’t have the option of going unrated because it’s part of the MPAA.)
Although movies like “Midnight Cowboy” and “Last Tango in Paris” kicked up a storm when they received the MPAA’s most severe rating (an X) for sexual content four decades ago, McQueen believes the issue is as out of date as the Nixon administration. Filmgoers and voters aren’t scandalized by the rating anymore, he says.
“What we did in this film is tame compared to what you can get on the Internet,” he told 24 Frames. ‘The debate [about sex] should not be about cinema.”
Of course, it cuts the other way too: “Last Tango” and “Midnight Cowboy” attracted ticket sales and Oscar heat precisely because they seemed taboo and edgy; with sexual content as prevalent as it is now, “Shame” might not be able to ride those same coattails. (There’s a certain irony in this, because one of the reasons McQueen made the movie in the first place was to comment on a world in which sex was ubiquitous.)
Still, it would be an exaggeration to say there isn’t any resistance from theater owners. John Fithian, who runs the National Assn. of Theater Owners, said that he doesn’t believe the stigma exists. “There’s a myth perpetuated over and over again by the media that members won’t play an NC-17 movie, and that’s patently untrue,” he told 24 Frames.
But Fithian did acknowledge that a top-10 chain did have a formal ban on showing NC-17 films.