Matthew Macfadyen talks 'Ripper Street' and 'Anna Karenina' New BBC America drama premieres on Saturday night BY DANIEL FIENBERG SATURDAY, JAN 19, 2013 3:33 AM (HIT FIX)

Like many a British thespian, Matthew Macfadyen has reliably bounced back and forth between the big screen and television, whether wooing Elizabeth Bennett in "Pride & Prejudice" or battling international intrigue in "MI-5."

Fresh off a well-received supporting turn as Oblonsky in Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina" this winter, Macfadyen is back on TV on Saturday (January 19) night fighting crime in Victorian England in BBC America's "Ripper Street."

During the Television Critics Association press tour this month, I sat down with MacFadyen to talk about his role as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid on "Ripper Street," which was created by Richard Warlow and co-stars Jerome Flynn and Adam Rothenberg. We also talked a bit about Wright's highly theatrical Tolstoy adaptation, as well as his creative process.

Click through...

HitFix: I know you said on the panel that it was the script that attracted you, but what was the kernel that piqued your interest?

Matthew Macfadyen: It's the whole thing, I think. I wasn't a kernel. It was the writing, the character, the idea of doing a series sorta appealed and it took me by surprise, because it wasn't my plan to do another series. I wasn't looking for a series to do and it just sorta ticked a lot of boxes and it was... yeah.


HitFix: How much was it that you didn't want to do a series and you were surprised to find one that appealed to you and how much was it just that you weren't specifically looking to do another series?

Matthew Macfadyen: I just read it like this [he mimes flipping through the pages swiftly] and thought, "This is fabulous." That's the acid test, whether you want to read it and want to be in it.


HitFix: It seems like there are these rules that America actors often seem to stick to, like "I don't want to do television, I want to do..." And British actors seem not to feel bound by that same restrictions. And that always seen a little odd.

Matthew Macfadyen: Yeah. I feel like an actor. I'm not a movie actor or a theater actor. I'd like to work in all three mediums.


HitFix: But when you have a pile of scripts, does your eye go to what medium an individual project is destined for?

Matthew Macfadyen: No. A little bit. You sorta factor it in. It's a combination of practicalities and the script and also how much it's going to stretch you or how different it is to the thing you've done most recently. Those kinds of things.


HitFix: So tell me about how the character here, about how Reid stretched you from the thing you did previously?

Matthew Macfadyen: Well, what was the last thing I did? I'd played this buffoon in a movie before that, so it was a very different kind of character. He's quite a solid detective part. I just wanted to be part of the show.


HitFix: Is this a time period that you have an interest in? Or does that factor into your decision?

Matthew Macfadyen: Sure. Yeah. More and more I found it fascinating and I looked at a lot of... I spent hours looking at photographs before we started shooting and during the shoot, which I found endlessly fascinating. You're sorta looking to see how different it is, because I know the streets, I know the area where we were shooting, so it's fascinating life. They had these big pictures of London life in the period. So... ummm... Yeah. It's all interesting stuff.


HitFix: Where were you doing this research?

Matthew Macfadyen: At home on my computer.


HitFix: Just Googling...

Matthew Macfadyen: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.


HitFix: How does that kind of research inform you when you're actually putting together the character, what you can learn from looking at pictures?

Matthew Macfadyen: I don't know. I don't know how my performance would have been any different had I not looked at the photographs, but it's just interesting. You can't play "research." You can kind of have ideas, but it was just sort of interesting and allows your imagination to work, I suppose.

Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/the-fien-print/matthew-macfadyen-talks-ripper-street-and-anna-karenina#5GpDdYDQ06hqVFrM.99 

Russia gives new ‘Anna Karenina’ chilly reception (KHALEEJ TIMES)

(AFP) / 20 January 2013

The latest film version of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ has prompted a storm of passions in Russia where some critics have slammed it as cliched, shallow and insulting to Tolstoy’s monumental work.

British director Joe Wright’s costume drama starring Keira Knightley in the title role opened in Russian cinemas this month but its reception highlighted how hard it is for foreign versions of Russian classics to win recognition in the country.

‘This is like a lavishly illustrated, glossy children’s primer,’ wrote the Izvestia daily.

‘Anna Karenina has been crushed by the scenery,’ wrote Kommersant business daily, saying that Wright’s stagey concept of setting the film in a theatre made it ‘hard to take it too much to heart.’

‘From the very first minutes of Anna Karenina, your heart sinks at the excessive production,’ wrote Boris Nelepo on Afisha lifestyle magazine’s website.

‘This constant scenery-changing is the only device, a fairground attraction at the heart of the film.’

The new film version faced a tough audience of Tolstoy buffs in Russia, where it was released January 10 and has made $4.7 million, according to Variety Russia magazine.

Here school children are forced to read Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ in its entirety and even those who skip ‘Anna Karenina’ are familiar with a 1967 Soviet film version starring eyelash-fluttering Tatyana Samoilova.

Nit-picking critics and viewers slammed howlers in the new film such as aristocrat Levin living in what appears to be a peasant’s wooden hut — topped with onion domes.

‘Two hours of absurdity,’ one commentator wrote on the Kommersant website.

‘It’s not bad if you watch it as a comedy.’

Wright’s Bafta-nominated film was scripted by Tom Stoppard, who is a regular visitor to Russia and wrote his ‘The Coast of Utopia’ trilogy about Russian thinkers.

The film ‘could only be bought and released in Russia in a state of complete moral collapse,’ thundered award-winning biographer and poet Dmitry Bykov on Openspace.ru arts website.

He slammed it for ‘making a mockery’ of the novel and even suggested passing an ‘anti-Wright law putting a parliamentary embargo on all Keira Knightley’s future films.’

‘The English Karenina is too bony’—



READ MORE: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?section=entertainment&xfile=data/entertainment/2013/January/entertainment_January34.xml

Gino sits down with Matthew Macfadyen to talk about Anna Karenina (FOX 6 NEWS, MILWAUKEE)

Posted on: 9:16 am, December 8, 2012, by Brittney Sager

Click here Gino sits down with Matthew Macfadyen to talk about his role in “Anna Karenina.”

All Tumblrs are from

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/oblonsky?before=1347679415

Jude Law: ‘I’m Not That Young Pretty Thing Anymore’ 11/29/2012 AT 09:15 AM ET (PEOPLE)

While most people dread getting older, Jude Law is actually thrilled about it. And not for any reason you’d expect.

“In a weird way, it’s kind of a relief to think, ‘Oh, I know I’m not that young sort of pretty thing anymore,’” Law tells T, The New York Times Style Magazine. And at 39 years old, the actor admits he’d much rather reflect on his heartthrob days than relive them. “It’s quite nice talking about what it was like to be the young pretty thing, rather than being it.”

And though Law might not consider himself pretty anymore, he was still a bit too good looking for his role in Anna Karenina, in which he plays Anna’s older controlling husband (below). The director, Joe Wright, reveals in the T Magazine cover story, “I had to stop him [from] doing his ‘handsome face.’”


READ MORE PEOPLE:http://stylenews.peoplestylewatch.com/2012/11/29/jude-law-aging-anna-karenina/?xid=rss-topheadlines

ANNA KARENINA REVIEW (CINEMA BLEND)

Reviewed By: Katey Rich

The film's biggest innovation is to set the entire story within a decaying old theater, a very literal translation of the prying eyes and strict rules of late 19th century Russian high society, where the upper class was so pretentious they spoke French amongst themselves. Wright uses the theater to stage all kinds of improbable scenes-- a horse race, an intimate bedroom encounter-- and occasionally lets us witness the stunning set changes, a choreography of actors and camera that rivals all the celebrated long takes in Wright's previous films. Characters sit among the footlights when they want to be alone, chatter up in the opera boxes to gossip-- but they are always trapped in this dilapidated theater, with no awareness that the world might change around them.

The one exception to this is Levin (Domnhall Gleeson), a farmer who only begrudgingly visits high society but who falls hard for a young girl (Alicia Vikander) who initially rejects him. Early on Levin pushes open the back door of the stage to walk into a snowy field, a simple but stunning photography trick that sets up a fascinating contrast between "real" and artificial spaces (in a film where, of course, everything is fictional). As Anna (Knightley) begins her torturous affair with the young, caddish Vronsky (Aaron Taylor Johnson) they frolic among real hedges and in fields of flowers, but they inexorably return to the theater, where gossips make their lives impossible. And even when Anna visits the frigid bedroom she shares with her stern husband (a marvelous Jude Law), the bedchamber can open up to the wings of the stage without warning. Love-- for a wife or husband, for a child, for an illicit affair-- is real in this story; it's the world itself that can constantly shift and redefine everything.

Tom Stoppard's fluid, very streamlined adaptation makes Anna Karenina a series of love stories, with the politics left to the fringes for curious viewers. The focus on Levin and Kitty's slow courtship contrasts beautifully with Anna and Vronsky's fevered affair, and though the martial fracture between Oblonsky and Dolly is one of the film's quieter notes, they're played so beautifully by Matthew MacFadyen and Kelly MacDonald that they feel essential as well. Wright is famous for working with the same technical team on every film, and all the elements of production here-- from Dario Marianelli's propulsive score to Jacqueline Durran's bravura costumes to Seamus McGarvey's sharp cinematography-- synch up so perfectly that the movie sweeps you along like the train on one of Anna's immense dresses. Anna Karenina is a massive, boldly imagined work, the rare novel adaptation that's purely, thrillingly cinematic.

READ MORE: http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Anna-Karenina-6160.html

Keira Knightley talks about playing Anna Karenina (HUFFINGTON POST)

 

http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/entertainment/Keira-Knightley-Talks-Playing-Anna-Karenina-517502934

Anna Karenina: Behind the Scenes from "W" magazine

More beautiful pictures at "W" magazine:

http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2012/10/joe-wright-anna-karenina-on-set

More Anna Karenina pictures

Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jude Law: More clips from Anna Karenina (MY SPACE)

Forgive the commercials before each one with the chirpy girl announcer











TWO MORE CLIPS: http://www.myspace.com/whats-hot/2012/9/11/five-new-clips-from-anna-karenina-feature-love-and-betrayal-period-piece-style

Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Law, Keira Knightley - video of Day one- TIFF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcwEGYXZGcA

Press Conference: 'Anna Karenina' Submitted by Jason Palmer on Mon, 09/10/2012 - 02:00 (EF)

The stars were out in full force for the UK press conference of Anna Karenina. Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Matthew Macfadyen and Director Joe Wright gave us a valuable insight into this motion picture re-imagining of the classic story by Leo Tolstoy.

Set in late-19th-century Russia high-society, the aristocrat Anna Karenina enters into a life-changing affair with the affluent Count Vronsky and sets into motion a devastating fall from grace.

Check out our press conference report below!

Joe Wright

You’ve pretty much broken the rules when it comes to making a period film in a brilliant and poetic way. Was that what you set out to do?

Joe Wright: Um, no. It kind of grew really. I’ve always wanted to make a film like this and I kind of held it like a little guilty secret. And as the film developed... we were originally going to shoot in various stately homes around England and palaces in Russia but I already had the idea that I wanted to stylise the performance style and was already talking to the choreographer about how to achieve that. And then I was kind of scouting places and in Russia they’d say: “Yes, we have shot several Anna Karenina’s here before.” And in England they were saying: “Yes, you were here before, don’t you remember?” And so I kind of felt like I was treading too familiar ground and then thought: “OK, well maybe this is the one to do it with.”

You’ve worked with Keira and Matthew before and, indeed, you work with a lot of people over and over again. Is that something deliberate?

Joe Wright: Definitely! I like the idea of a company atmosphere and I like working with the same actors and crew members – more so with crew. When Matthew [Macfadyen] was doing Pride & Prejudice he had to be very serious and sombre and I knew that there was another side of Matthew that I’d really like to engage with and so it seemed like a perfect opportunity for that.

You changed the accent of the final scene a little bit. As I recall, Anna was really mad when she was about to jump in front of the train [in the book]. What made you change the accent?

Joe Wright: Keira had a very interesting thought about the suicide. She described suicide as being a shy person’s homicide and I thought that was very interesting because, for me, there was a lot of anger in her suicide and I agreed with Keira that it shouldn’t be played like a victim; it should be played like an active gesture... not a giving up. And so we really went for that. It is mad to throw yourself under a train... or it seems very mad to me, so that madness needed a reality. One didn’t want a generic madness.

The dancing in the film is mesmerising. Did you find it difficult?

Keira Knightley: Yes, really, really, really difficult [laughs]! Luckily, I had a lovely partner! I think I’m quite quick at picking things like that up but I found this almost impossible. But Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] picked it up in about five seconds and just showed everyone up.

How was being reunited with Matthew Macfadyen again but this time playing brother and sister?

Keira Knightley: We just giggled. I think it was because we were trying to learn to dance and initially it was just us together. And we just found it absolutely hysterical so we brought that into our brotherly and sisterly relationship.


Matthew, it looked like you had a lot of fun with Oblonsky?

Matthew Macfadyen: Yeah, 90% of it was the moustache! It just sort of gave me a lift. No, it was a lot of fun.


READ THE ENTIRE PRESS CONFERENCE: http://www.entertainment-focus.com/news/press-conference-anna-karenina

Keira Knightley: Bennet role was daunting Monday 3rd September 2012, 9:20PM BST. (EXPRESS AND STAR)

Keira Knightley has said she found stepping into Elizabeth Bennet’s shoes far more intimidating than playing her latest alter-ego, Anna Karenina.

The actress, 27, plays the protagonist in writer Tom Stoppard’s new adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic, Russian love story.

But she said playing the heroine in the big-screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Pride And Prejudice, the 2005 film which was also directed by Joe Wright, was daunting.

“Playing someone like Elizabeth Bennet is more terrifying because it’s a character that people love, a lot of women … see themselves as,” she said.

“People don’t see themselves as Anna. They don’t have this love for her … from that point of view, it’s not as terrifying.”

Keira said that views about marriage had changed since the publication of Tolstoy’s novel, set in Imperial Russia.

“I think what it’s morally saying is that you shouldn’t do what Anna does, you shouldn’t leave your husband, you shouldn’t cheat.”



Read more:  http://www.expressandstar.com/entertainment/showbiz-news/2012/09/03/knightley-bennet-role-was-daunting/

Keira Knightley And Aaron Johnson Picnic In 'Anna Karenina' Image Posted 8/31/12 4:23 pm EST by Terri Schwartz in Fall Preview (MTV MOVIES)

Ever since the 2007 release of "Atonement," we've been dying to see Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright work together again. The two have teamed up on both that film and "Pride & Prejudice," but it's their next project that looks like it will really take their partnership to the next level.

As part of our Fall Movie Preview Week, we can present to you an exclusive new look at Knightley and Wright's adaptation of "Anna Karenina." Considering the way in which Leo Tolstoy's eponymous novel plays out, we doubt main characters Anna Karenina (Knightley) and Vronsky (Aaron Johnson) will look this happy for much longer. So enjoy those smiles while you can, fans of Knightey and Wright, because the story is likely to get much more somber soon after this.

READ MORE: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/08/31/keira-knightley-aaron-johnson-anna-karenina-image/

The wait is nearly over for the hotly anticipated Anna Karenina Joe Wright’s lavish adaptation of Anna Karenina hits our screens next Friday, but will it live up to our great expectations? (PERISCOPE POST)

Joe Wright’s bold new vision of Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 classic novel will be released on 7 September and has proved to be one of this year’s most anticipated releases. The film reunites the director with his Pride &Prejudice and Atonement star, Keira Knightley, to take on one of literature’s most iconic heroines.
The film will reweave Tolstoy’s esteemed tale of the doomed love affair between the beautiful aristocrat Anna and the enigmatic Count Vronsky (played by Aaron Taylor Johnson), against the backdrop of 19th century Russian high society; expect grand balls, opulent feasts, ominous steam trains and lots of snow.

The buzz

Time magazine included Anna Karenina as one of its most anticipated movie releases for 2012, declaring: “If this isn’t the most sumptuous movie of the fall, we’ll eat one of Anna’s fur hats.” Empire has also tentatively-gauged reaction to the film, based on its stellar credentials (a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, no less) and an impressive roster of acting talent: “With the likes of Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Holliday Grainger and Olivia Williams also among the laden cast, Anna Karenina looks set to bother the awards season.” In the awards race, The Guardian has already pitted Wright’s film against Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, to be released later this year. Another lavish period piece, it boasts a similarly impressive cast of Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway.


READ MORE: http://www.periscopepost.com/2012/08/the-wait-is-nearly-over-for-the-hotly-anticipated-anna-karenina/

ANNA KARENINA - THREE CLIPS FROM THE MOVIE (ROPE OF SILICON)

 BY: BRAD BREVET 

While Joe Wright's Anna Karenina will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in early September, it will hit theaters in the UK only days later on September 7 and promotion across the pond is already underway as three clips from the adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel have just arrived. The film marks the third collaboration between Keira Knightley, playing the titular role, and Wright as they go the unconventional route and virtually the entire film is confined to one location as Wright recently said over a six-minute clip from the film, "Just as the Russian aristocracy of the 19th century could be described as living upon a stage, our story unfolds in a dilapidated theatre. We shot almost all of the film in this single location, over 100 sets were built within the theater, creating a kind of fluid linearity. You can walk from one house under the stage, straight onto the horse-training ground, or go through a door and there's a Russian landscape."

(THE CLIPS RUN ONE AFTER THE OTHER)





3READ MORE: http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/watch-three-clips-from-anna-karenina-starring-keira-knightley/

Keira Knightley hated Karenina character (BELFAST TELEGRAPH)

Keira Knightley has revealed that she sometimes disliked her Anna Karenina alter-ego, to the point that she wanted "to shake her".
The Oscar-nominated actress stars as the titular character in Joe Wright's big-screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel, alongside Jude Law and Aaron Johnson.

"She's a wonderful character, but very strange and complex. I found her a challenging person. I wanted to shake her and tell her to pull herself together. There were times when I thought, I really hate this person," she told the Daily Mail.



Read more:  http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/film-tv/news/knightley-hated-karenina-character-16193486.html

Anna Karenina Concept Trailer - Very Unique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjXsmkAiovQ

Keira Knightley stars as Anna Karenina (in a film that breaks all the period film rules) -- VIDEO EXCLUSIVE by Sara Vilkomerson (EW.COM)

“The rules of a period film have been completely broken,” says Keira Knightley in this exclusive video about the new big-screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 classic, Anna Karenina (due Nov. 9). Knightley, in her third film for director Joe Wright (after 2005′s Pride and Prejudice and 2007′s Atonement) stars in the title role; Jude Law plays her aristocratic husband; and Aaron Taylor-Johnson portrays the cavalry officer with whom she falls into a passionate affair.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE BEAUTIFUL 'CONCEPT' TRAILER ON EW.COM

Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Matthew Macfadyen: Sneak Peek Anna Karenina Keira Knightley reteams with director Joe Wright for an ambitious new take on the beloved Russian novel, due in theaters this fall By Sara Vilkomerson (EW .COM)

Image inappropriately stolen from

2005 Pride and Prejudice Website

http://prideandprejudice05.blogspot.com/2011/12/first-synopsis-for-joe-wrights-anna.html

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina has already been adapted for film and TV at least a dozen times, so Joe Wright knew he had to find a fresh approach to the classic 1877 novel. ''I didn't want to make a standard period drama again,'' says the director, whose previous films include 2005's Pride & Prejudice and 2007's Atonement. ''I liked the idea of setting it in one location. I was reading Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes, and he talks about Russian society in the 19th century living their lives as if upon a stage. I found that fascinating.'' For his adaptation (out Nov. 9), Wright took the idea literally. The majority of the action — including horse races, snowstorms, and dazzling ballroom dances — is set in a theater, allowing the film to venture into the fantastical without the hindrance of reality.

read more: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20612787,00.html

'Anna Karenina' Poster: Jude Law And Keira Knightley Are In A Winter Wonderland (PHOTO) Posted: 07/06/2012 1:25 pm Updated: 07/06/2012 1:25 pm (MOVIEPHONE)

Anna Karenina' Poster: Jude Law And Keira Knightley Are In A Winter Wonderland (PHOTO)

Posted: 07/06/2012 1:25 pm Updated: 07/06/2012 1:25 pm

"Anna Karenina" has been adapted for the big screen before, but in the upcoming version (hitting theaters November 9), audiences will get a lavish new interpretation, courtesy of Joe Wright, the Oscar-nominated director of "Atonement."

This new presentation of Anna's story might be the most visually audacious yet, filled with ornate costume design and theatrical art direction. To get a taste of the extravagant style, Moviefone is premiering the newest poster for the film, which you can check out below.

READ MORE: http://news.moviefone.com/2012/07/06/anna-karenina-poster_n_1654081.html?utm_hp_ref=moviefone