Colin Firth: Top film stars swap Hollywood for Holy Island (NORTHUMBERLAND GAZETTE)

Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman amongst film crew and extras take a strole along Berwicks walls while filming an adaptation of Eric Lomax's The Railway Man

Published on Friday 18 May 2012 06:00

HOLY Island Causeway is in the news again this week, but rather than stranded motorists, the focus was a pair of Hollywood superstars.

Oscar-winners Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth were in north Northumberland last week filming for The Railway Man.

The film is based on the book by 92-year-old Berwick resident Eric Lomax, who was captured during the Second World War at the fall of Singapore and was forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burma ‘death railway’ as a prisoner-of-war.

Firth has already visited Mr Lomax twice and took the opportunity to meet him again after filming wrapped on Friday.

The filming on Holy Island took place last Thursday, before the famous pair spent the night at Tillmouth Park Hotel, near Cornhill.

They were joined by Kidman’s two young daughters Sunday and Faith, along with their nanny.


READ MORE:  http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/top-film-stars-swap-hollywood-for-holy-island-1-4555162

Colin Firth: Lomax tale staggering, admits Firth (THE BERWICK ADVISER)

Published on Wednesday 2 May 2012 14:59

actor Colin Firth has revealed how he was “overwhelmed” after meeting Eric Lomax, the Berwick man who has inspired Firth’s latest film ‘The Railway Man’.

Firth and Nicole Kidman, who is playing Lomax’s wife Patti, gave a press conference in Edinburgh to herald the start of a month-long shoot in locations including Berwick, Edinburgh, North Berwick and Holy Island on ‘The Railway Man’, which explores the impact of years of brutality and torture as Lomax worked on the ‘Death Railway’ in the Far East.

Firth has twice travelled to Lomax’s home in Berwick to meet the couple as part of his research on the film, which will chart more than 70 years of his life.

Jeremy Irvine, who shot to fame in the Oscar-winning ‘War Horse’, will play the young Lomax, who was brutally treated after being found with a clandestine radio.

Lomax, who was originally from Edinburgh, was an army signals officer captured in the 1941 fall of Singapore and later sent to the Burmese border jungle prison.


He famously won the UK’s premier award for non-fiction in 1996 – three years after his wife helped organise a meeting at the River Kwai with Nagase Takashi, the Japanese soldier who became his main tormentor, dramatic scenes which will be re-enacted in the film.

It was several decades after the war that Lomax met his wife-to-be on a train journey. Firth said: “They [Eric and Patti] are both incredibly engaging and made me feel very welcome. I found them both a delight, although I did feel at times a little overwhelmed by the enormity of the story.

“He is 92 and not really demonstrating that at all. He is mentally far more agile than I am. I have to keep up with him really. He has a tremendous sense of humour that can be a little dark at times.


READ MORE:  http://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/news/local-headlines/lomax-tale-staggering-admits-firth-1-2269625