Jude Law

Thought I'd start out with the cover of the Sunday Times Culture magazine: Here'r a link to the article on Jude: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/02/25/sticulfil02001.html A Law unto himself by Matt Wolf Jude Law is the real thing, as an actor and a person, although it can't be easy for him to stay grounded when life takes its surreal turns. Mostly these have been for the best, such as the late-night phone call he took last year in Germany, where he was shooting his latest film, Enemy at the Gates. It was Steven Spielberg on the line, offering Law the co-starring role in his forthcoming movie, A:I. "What do you say?" laughs Law. "I was ready to say, 'Yeah, whatever. I'll do it.' It was like out of a dream - no, that sounds really naff. What it was, was dreamlike, in that there I was lying in bed in Berlin, with Steven Spielberg telling me this wonderful goodnight story." But every once in a while his heightened profile doesn't give cause for cheer. There's the unwanted photographer, for instance, who may or may not be stalking the north London gastropub where we are seated, just a short walk from the home Law shares with Sadie Frost and three children. His penetrating grey-green eyes occasionally turn towards the window to check. "In London, you like to think nobody cares about who you are and what you're doing, and they don't. But once they publish where you live, then, apparently, they have free rein to do what the hell they choose." He warms to the theme. "I mean, how many photos does anyone want of me taking my son to school? It's 'Jude Law goes to school with his son', and you think, 'Okay, great, they've done it once.' And the next week, it's 'Jude Law goes to school with his son again'. It's very, very boring," he says, lapsing into a faux-vampire-movie accent to finish the thought: "Eeez veh-ry, veh-ry boring." "Boring" is probably not an adjective much employed in the Law household. The upward spiral of his career could hardly have been more invigorating. It wasn't terribly long ago that he was making his mark in little-seen films (Wilde and Gattaca remain the two best known, and best, of the crop), interspersed with stints in the theatre, pre-eminently in London and on Broadway as the frisky male crumpet in Jean Cocteau's Les Parents Terribles. Things bolted up a notch or 10 when he played Dickie Greenleaf, the aristo American playboy with the rapier wit and ravishing allure, in The Talented Mr Ripley, and garnered an Oscar nomination and a Bafta en route. Suddenly the world woke up. This Great British Hope was hot. "Ripley was the first film of mine that a lot of people went to see," says Law, settling in for a lunchtime chat. He never takes off his jacket during the conversation, which gives the initial impression that he might bolt at any minute, but his rangy body language says otherwise. His legs stretched out across a neighbouring chair, a pack of Marlboros open but untouched by his side, he never once communicates the interview fatigue that must accompany having done "some 400 or so" in recent weeks to promote his new film. Public awareness of him may have shifted, but Law's own distinct amiability has not. "I don't feel like a movie star, and thank God I'm not allowed to," he says, although even off duty, as it were, he still has stardom inscribed large on a stubbly face blessed with cheekbones once characterised by his friend Sean Pertwee as ones "you could open a letter with". "The fact is, 200 million people went to see Ripley, and that changes your life. I mean, it is a great movie and it was in the hands of a really fine film-maker, but those are the crude realities of film-making: if a lot of people go and see something, then your career changes." But he adds, as if to pre-empt an unspoken worry: "The idea that that will ever affect the way I choose work from now on is kind of ludicrous." Enemy at the Gates, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, opens in America and Britain next month and looks unlikely to alter anyone's view that Law is an actor of considerable charisma. He relished doing it and claims to have enjoyed standing around in cold mud for hours at a time after being the fragrant golden boy Dickie in Ripley. "It was fun to play somebody dirty, having played someone so clean." The film is a formidable physical achievement and by rights should figure in next year's Oscar race for art direction and cinematography, at least. The human elements of the film pit Law's propaganda-fuelled Russian country boy, Vassili Zaitsev, against a legendary German sniper, Major K�nig, played by Ed Harris. Given both performers' razor-sharp eyes, it's tempting to think of this re-creation of the struggle for Stalingrad as a battle of the orbs. Law has not long been back from the film's world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, where the decision to use it as the opening feature might best be described as questionable. "As soon as we arrived there," says Law, "we felt like we were defending ourselves. And it annoyed me, because I'm really proud of the film. Jean-Jacques doesn't lay the blame anywhere - it's not like the Germans are the bad guys and we Russians are the good guys; it's a bigger film than that. It's that war doesn't work, war is an inhumane thing." Several commentators have already, somewhat bizarrely, seen a parallel between Zaitsev's exaltation and Law's own elevated status as the latest Brit to have broken out of the thespian pack. "But I chose this profession," Law smiles in response. "Vassili didn't choose to go to Stalingrad." Law, though, knows what it's like to live in the shadow of a myth. "There's this person that's written about and talked about that you can't take seriously," says Law. "Vassili has the responsibility of a nation on his shoulders when, in reality, he is a very humble and simple man, while my persona is this person that I don't so much turn off as just step away from." To that end, he says, he chooses "mostly not to read the stuff or open a lot of the letters about me, because that's not my reality. There's always going to be a slight dust storm over 'Oh, he's the new young thing, the new hot thing', but there's only so long that can last". Not for Law the weight of national symbol-making, despite predictions that he will eclipse, say, the Fiennes brothers and rise to the eminence of an Anthony Hopkins or Sean Connery. (And even they have had duds of the order of Law's risible home-grown gangster clunker, Love, Honour and Obey.) "Luckily, I've never been given the role of some great British hope" - well, he has, actually - "and I hope I don't get given it. I don't feel any responsibility, really, even to the big companies that finance these big movies. Sure, I want people to see the film, and the idea of people seeing what you've done is, of course, very gratifying; it's a validation of your job. But I don't lose any sleep over something not being No 1 at the box office." Law's big commercial breakout will no doubt arrive this summer, when he plays a character called Gigolo Joe alongside Haley Joel Osment - his fellow Oscar nominee last year (they lost to Michael Caine) - as an 11-year-old android in A:I, Spielberg's first film since Saving Private Ryan. The sci-fi movie was a languishing Stanley Kubrick project until Spielberg took it over, following Kubrick's death, and it seems poised only to intensify the heat around Law, though the actor laughs at press reports that the project has hoisted his asking price into the double-digit millions. "If that were the case, I'd be out of the country on the island I've always dreamt of, with my feet up, a large martini and a guitar." Instead, he remains rooted to London ("I enjoy LA but I wouldn't want to live there") and to family life. That, he says, is his salvation. Baby Iris - born in Santa Monica and hence "an A-mair-uh-can" (Law does a mock cod-Yankee accent) - is now three and a half months old, and his and Sadie's older child, Rafferty, is four and due to start school in the autumn. "I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids," he says - the day after our talk he was heading to Iceland for an outdoorsy weekend with the boys, Rafferty and 10-year-old Fin, Frost's son by Gary Kemp, the erstwhile rock'n'roller who is currently in the play Art. "Having a family has been my saving grace because the rules - the laws - they apply have narrowed my choices down; they've made it a little more straightforward, in as much as I can't work back-to-back on anything because what would I be like to myself? I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I would never see." That explains Law's firm resistance to work just for the sake of it, especially now that he can pick and choose. In March, he heads to America for five weeks on Sam Mendes's new film, The Road to Perdition, playing a hired killer in Al Capone's Chicago. Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig and Alfred Molina are in the cast. Ironically, though Law and Mendes are near-neighbours in Primrose Hill and both were bred in the London theatre, the two only met for the first time last year in LA. Further ahead are the prospects of The Good Shepherd, to be directed by Robert De Niro from a script by Eric (Forrest Gump) Roth, and a long-awaited film for Natural Nylon, the thespian-backed London company of which Law is a founder member, about the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein. Next spring, he returns to the Young Vic, home of his 1999 stage appearance in Tis Pity She's a Whore, to play the title role in Marlowe's Dr Faustus; David Lan's revival will be the first venture of the newly formed Natural Nylon Theatre Company. "I've never understood why Faustus is always done by older actors," says Law. "For me, he's a young man because he's got his life ahead of him. He says, I'm not going to sit and wait for life to deliver all its riches. I'm going to claim them - I mean, demand them - right now." Aptly enough, Law attended a school, Alleyn's in Dulwich, named for the first actor to play Faustus. "Christ, I'm nervous enough to say I'm doing Faustus," says Law, whose trajectory comes endearingly tempered by self-doubt. "I'm still, I have to say, a little nervous about feeling that I'm up to claiming anything." Does that mean he is warily looking over his shoulder for the next Jude Law, whoever that may be? "God help them," he says, laughing. "Then you know it's time to move on." Not bloody likely.

Then there's the review of Enemy at the Gates, plus a photo gallery link: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/02/25/sticulfil02003.html From Wolf's article above: The film is a formidable physical achievement and by rights should figure in next year's Oscar race for art direction and cinematography, at least. Pfft! What a ridiculous statement at this point. From the reviews, this is a film that will quickly come and go and be forgotten.

A mention of Jude's part in The Road to Perdition from Empire today: Happily it seems Law is under no strict instructions to stay schtum about his next role opposite Tom Hanks as a crime scene photographer in The Road To Perdition. Law's character 'dabbles in murder and is obsessed with collecting the perfect still of a dead body. He's a kind of Weegee-esque psycho.' ~~~~~~~~~ And speaking of weirdos, I saw last night that Wisdom of Crocodiles is coming out on tape/DVD next week or the 13th but has been renamed "Immortality."

Forgive me if this is old news but Jude has been voted Britains Best Dressed Man in a GQ magazine poll. Their top ten is eclectic to say the least 1 - JL "simply the coolest guy in the country" 2 - Guy Ritchie 3 - Johnny Vaughan 4 - Robbie Williams 5 - Bryan Ferry 6 - Dan Macmillan (who he?) 7 - AA Gill 8 - Charlie Watts 9 - Richard Ashcroft 10 - Sir Elton John 1/2 page piece in todays Metro newspaper plus pic of himself in velvet suit (Hmmm nice) * thinks - wonder why a certain CF doesn't appear ...surely his parka would have done it for somebody!*

CF needs to work on his wardrobe big time. Poor guy can't get the collars right. ;-) Guy Ritchie???? Elton John??? Bryan Ferry is a stylish dresser.

Charlie Watts? The Rolling Stone? I thought he was dead. I'm hoping to catch a sighting of Mr Law here. Who cares about Tom Hanks or Paul Newman. Also, read today that Stanley Tucci's in the film too. The Talented Mr Ripley was on TV the other night. I found myself drawn to watching the first hour again. When Dickie died, who wanted to watch Old Silly Grin and Big Ears. ;-D

Interview with Jude in today's Evening Standard free mag Hot Tickets...was just about tp type it all out for you when I found this...... http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/html/hottx/film/top_direct.html .....which appears to be the same piece (although there's a different pic with the paper article. Unfortunately cannot scan at present but if you desire can do so and post tommorrow.)

Thanks Tracy. "I am not a celebrity,' he insists. 'Celebrities now are quiz-show winners, sportsmen, other actors and, occasionally, politicians. I am just not in that category.'" Sure....the guy has an American and UK agent, publicist in LA...he's no Joe Six-Pack. Still I admire his work and can't wait to see "Enemy at the Gates".

Vassili has to make love to Tania, surrounded by sleeping soldiers. It is hurried, furtive and sexy. Joe Fiennes said, 'It's probably the sexiest scene I've seen in any film.' Oooh, another good reason to see this flick, which Ebert & Roeper gave two thumbs up. This link will take you directly to the article: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/film/film.html?in_review_id=369263&in_review_text_id=314647 Thanks for posting, Tracy, and if you want to scan and post the pic, I wouldn't complain. Saw that Jude was on the cover London's Time Out last week too.

There was a very good interview with Jude about three weeks ago in the Telegraph too.

Here goes... Apologies for the quality *thinks- must get a new scanner*

Mmmmm, looks pretty good although you wonder why they used that first pic with him looking elsewhere. Have seen him on the cover of another magazine here too.

Apologies for the quality *thinks- must get a new scanner* Not at all...excellent pics. He is a v. good looking guy and a fabulous actor.Thanks

Thanks Karen and Tracy and Moon for articles and pics. He's in "Heat" magazine this week (looking not buying!) under a "Doesn't he look rough, must have been up all night with the baby" photo article. Shows him , not at his best, with a "mystery" male friend.

Jude Law is the most beautiful person, male or female, in movies today. And he can act, too.

A pretty good compendium: http://ewangirl.simplenet.com/jude/

Methinks the pretty boy doth protest too much. He is getting interesting and meaty roles here (Spielberg's AI and now Mendes' Road to Perdition), neither of which sound like pretty boy parts as Gosford Park might have been. From Ananova: Jude Law hates being a pretty boy Jude Law says he's fed up being the pretty boy of cinema. Law reckons his looks stop him being offered interesting roles. Law insists despite being an object of desire for millions of women he rarely thinks about his looks. He says he certainly does not spend every morning standing in front of the mirror thanking God for his appearance. He told German magazine InStyle: "If somebody is looking for a beauty to fill a role then they think OK, lets take Jude Law. "I can really imagine how it must feel to be a woman who is always reduced to her outward appearance."

From today's Broadway.com: Jude Law is set to return to the stage in a production of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus at London�s Young Vic. The play will begin an eight-week run the week of March 25, according to Variety.

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? *hee hee*

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? hee hee might just hafta head to London after seeing KB in Sheffield - oooh what a theatrical week that could be, I'm such a luvvie *ROFL*

From Ananova: Law and Wahlberg to star as love rivals in movie remake Jude Law and Mark Wahlberg are set to co-star in a remake of sexual drama Forbidden Relations. It focuses on a remote farming community in the '70s where a young widow finds solace in the arms of a mysterious stranger. She later discovers the charismatic drifter is her half brother. Despite a spell in prison and being ostracised by the community, they set up home together. Ashley Judd is being tipped to play the widow, with Law taking the role of local sheriff and Wahlberg's love rival. The story is based on a Hungarian adventure of the same name which was released in 1983. The film is due to go into production in Dakota next summer. [Ed note: What or where is Dakota? ;-) ]

Ashley Judd will be Catwoman in the next Batman. What is it with her? I don't think she's that good an actress (and her ears are very Minnie Mouseish). (So did you miss me, Karen?) ;-))))

Nice interview in The Guardian with Jude as he rehearses for Doctor Faustus: He pops a Marlboro Light into his mouth, nestles the match manfully in his closed palm and tells me what fun it is to be back on stage. "The thing is," he says, "if you're a musician you can go home and play by night, and if you're a painter you can paint by light, but if you're an actor you can't really do much unless you're on the stage. When you're acting in film it's strangely redundant. You're waiting to do your five minutes. You're paid to wait. But when you're working 10 till six in a room it really oils the cogs." Entire article here: http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,652252,00.html

Thanks Karen...he's got wonderful eyes. I've got my tickets :-)))

Lucky you, Evelyn! Thanks, Karen!

Continuing on the Dr Faustus publicity, here's an article from the Sunday Times: Cover story: Jude Law interview: Jude awakening The divine-looking Jude Law is British acting�s golden boy, but starring roles in the Young Vic�s Doctor Faustus and as a hired killer in the new Sam Mendes film show that he�s desperate to reveal his dark side, says Lesley White Green eyes are the thing you remember with Jude Law � first his, and then your own. If you are going to envy anyone, you might as well make it a movie star with a perfect family, fabulous friends and a beauty so arresting it seems wasted off-screen. And don�t forget the humility. Law is soon to appear as Christopher Marlowe�s serial sinner, Doctor Faustus, at the Young Vic, a show co-produced by his own Natural Nylon company, its first theatrical venture. It was his idea, though, after the sort of rehearsal that tears the text apart, he can�t quite remember why. �My head is swimming with ideas about it. I wanted it badly, but I also wondered if I was too young, if I could really do it. I had all those great Shakespeare roles in my head � Hamlet, Macbeth, you know ... I was thinking: �One day, when the time�s right.� But now I�m fast re-evaluating that. Bloody hell, this is difficult! A bit of me is crying out to play another robot for Steven Spielberg. But thank God this play is hard and stretching me.� Theatre has always been central to the charmed life of the 29-year-old actor, the place he always hoped to work: �When you come from Lewisham, being in movies doesn�t seem a realistic ambition.� While other big movie players treat it as an arduous route to low-paid credibility, for Law it has been a professional security blanket. On the rebound from his disastrous 1994 debut movie Shopping (the only memorable aspect of which was meeting his wife, Sadie Frost), he produced three of his best stage performances, including Cocteau�s Les Parents Terribles at the National Theatre, which transferred to Broadway. �I was disillusioned, a bit mystified by film, and it took me a while to get over it. I just wanted to be a theatre actor, and I went back to it with huge relief.� Better film work arrived after he chased, and won, a role in Andrew Niccol�s sci-fi film Gattaca, but working on the London stage is also how he convinces himself he is more of an actor than a mainstream product. After the world swooned at his errant playboy Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley, and his �love robot�, Gigolo Joe, in Spielberg�s AI, Law could have taken his pick of LA offers. Instead, he took nine months off to be with his small children, then came to struggle with the labyrinthine meanings of Faustus, who he is playing as an ambitious young man of his own age. �It�s interesting that people have said I�m quite young for it...apart from the fact that I don�t have the clout or the mettle for it.� (Since, one is pretty sure, nobody has said any such thing, we can interpret this as insecurity.) �But he�s young, impatient for experience, he doesn�t want to sit around waiting for things � and is it so wrong to crave knowledge? I love the great puzzle of the play: the reward for sin may be death, but if you�re going to die anyway, you might as well sin.� The actor himself is far less mercurial, remarkably cautious about signing his own pact with the devil of motion pictures, preferring the riddles of Elizabethan language when celebrity life becomes �too absurd�. Much as he craved membership of its elite, film seems to unsettle Law as much as its lighting flatters him. �It�s all the baggage that comes with film. You spend 15 years longing to be an actor and then, when you are one, you stop and ask why you wanted it in the first place. What kind of an actor am I?� Always a determined one, at least. The schoolteachers� son never doubted what he wanted to do. His easy-going parents ran a theatre company, Theatre Impact, and did not protest when he left school at 16 to join the ill-fated BBC soap Families. He was a member of the National Youth Music Theatre, shone in am dram, appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, fell in love with that mend-and-make-do dedication of the ensemble. From those days, he has inherited a fear of shallowness, but his own rise through the profession has been the starry, de luxe version. Given the contrast, his ease with his successful self is admirable. Much is written about his glitzy friends, but close-up he seems unassuming, almost homely. �I don�t think I flaunt my celebrity,� he protests with mild indignation. Yet he is rarely out of the party pix and gossipy supplements, whether promoting his wife�s debut fashion show, or their antifur film short, or Natural Nylon, formed with his teenage flatmates Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller, and recently floated on the Ofex market to become part of a �12m media group. Whatever the reason, Jude and Sadie never seem far away from their darling Kate Moss�s tireless social conga. One suspects that Law is biddable in such matters, a people-pleaser who can be persuaded to support this or that cause, help out by making an appearance. His loyalty probably also leads him into collaborations a more ruthless careerist would avoid: films like the lumbering gangster flick Love, Honour and Obey, which starred his wife, Sean Pertwee and other friends. No matter, the extended-family ethic matters to him. The Laws have no plans to accept LA�s open invitation; they are happier in north London, especially since they exchanged their nanny for a PA so that they can look after the children while someone else makes the phone calls. �Once you�re out there, you�ve got to keep doing the back-to-back movies to pay for your staff,� he groans. �Your groundsman, your pool man, your driver � you�re excluding yourself from the real world. I like walking to the shops, I don�t want to have to have security guards when I take my son to school.� Becoming a father � his son, Rafferty, is 5, his daughter, Iris, 18 months and his stepson, Finley, 10 � has only made him more wary about the work he chooses. �It has to be something worth my being away from them.� This year, he is staying put in London so as not to disrupt Rafferty�s schooling. So devoted is the five-star celebrity that he spends his holidays camping, and even sleeps in the tent in Sadie�s mum�s garden to please the kids. Before he met Frost at 19, he had known no other significant relationship, and seems to have been definitively swept away by their romance. "Once you experience it, it�s like this great unavoidable force that surpasses all other joys. I�m all about my work, but peace of mind and a happy home come first every time.� Is the child of two movie actors a good thing to be? He frowns: �They get to go on set, and Raff sees me dressed up as robots and soldiers, and thinks my job�s really silly. It has enhanced his sense of play � he acts all the time, and he needs to get the costume and action dead right, and for everyone to listen to him. He�s very bossy, just like me when I was a kid. But I feel guilty, too. He�s started noticing the paparazzi when we go out.� After Faustus, he will start shooting David Mamet�s take on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Diary of a Young London Physician, which focuses more on laudanum addiction than scary monsters, preserving its star�s crowd-pulling assets. �I don�t suddenly turn into a great hairy beast.� Were the transformation required, he would be more than game, though. �That whole handsome-leading-man thing is such a trap. I know there are parts I don�t get offered because of how I look, interesting parts, so when I read the Sam Mendes script,� he gushes gratefully, �I couldn�t believe he was asking me to play that character.� In Mendes�s forthcoming film, The Road to Perdition, starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, Law plays a seedy hired killer in Capone�s Chicago, a part he raves about, even if the company was daunting. �I wasn�t nervous about the work, but I was nervous about what to say to them when we were hanging out together � I was worried that if I opened my mouth I wouldn�t be able to close it. If you�re a confident person, that sort of thing�s easy, but the truth is I�m not.� When another hero, �Bobby� De Niro, called to ask Law about playing an Ivy Leaguer in his as yet unmade political thriller The Good Shepherd, he didn�t wipe the answer-machine messages for a month. They bonded instantly. �He�s shy and charming. We sat and watched telly in his hotel room.� After a summer in London with Mamet, he and Frost will star in their own film production of Christopher Fowler�s novel Psychoville; she playing a woman emerging from heavy sedation, her husband a homicidal maniac bent on revenge. �It�s the nasty side of the new towns,� he grins. Law�s flight from the pin-up�s destiny is giving an unexpected shape to his career, his choices garnering as much character work as his lovely countenance allows. Playing himself holds no interest. Because he glows with a lifetime of easy popularity, because his temperament is benign, because he talks about his kids being �so gorgeous, I want to eat them�, he is drawn to work with darker characters than his own, is as fascinated by the miscreant Marlowe as by his dramatic creations. Gradually, he is seeking to repel the good fairy who has hovered over him since birth, to make life a little more gritty and challenging. When Anthony Minghella asked him to play Dickie Greenleaf, he had understood the actor�s hunger for balancing light nd shade. Sam Mendes goes further, letting the golden boy revolt us. �He let me be as freaky and disgusting as I wanted, and believe me, I am truly horrible and repellent in this film,� he beams with pride. And then he stops to laugh at himself. �But very attractive at the same time, of course.� Doctor Faustus opens at the Young Vic, SE1, on Mar 18

Green eyes are the thing you remember with Jude Law � first his, and then your own. If you are going to envy anyone, you might as well make it a movie star with a perfect family, fabulous friends and a beauty so arresting it seems wasted off-screen. And don�t forget the humility. LOL! That says it all! �But he�s young, impatient for experience, he doesn�t want to sit around waiting for things � and is it so wrong to crave knowledge? A man after my own heart! ;-) I am truly horrible and repellent in this film,� he beams with pride. And then he stops to laugh at himself. �But very attractive at the same time, of course.� Indeed, LOL! You know how much the role of Faustus appeals to me and how much I wanted it for ODB. But he turns it around to be the role of a young man. Bravo, Jude!

Besides, when you watch him, he obviously is having such a good time playing the role. It's not just a job. The consummate professional.

From Ananova: Jude Law and Eddie Izzard are being lined up to star on Broadway. Law is expected to take Doctor Faustus to New York. Izzard will star in a Broadway production of A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg. Both actors have already appeared in London productions of the plays. The Ambassador Theatre Group, which staged both shows in the UK, hopes to transfer them to America over the next year. Managing director Howard Panter told www.variety.com: "Jude Law and I are chatting about dates. "We're going over his film schedule right now. We plan to bring Doctor Faustus over in 2003."

"We plan to bring Doctor Faustus over in 2003." He'll sell-out the house.Two kids, new baby due in August, flouishing film career, co-owns production company...yet he finds time to do classical theatre. Like I said the consummate professional.

From Dr Faustus:

Wow! Very intense, great lighting. Thank you, Karen.

(Variety) - Natalie Portman is in advanced negotiations to co-star in "Cold Mountain," joining a high-wattage ensemble cast the likes of which hasn't been seen since "Ocean's Eleven." The Miramax/MGM co-production, which is set to roll next month, also stars Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Brendan Gleeson and Kathy Baker. Anthony Minghella will direct. An episodic adventure based in part on Homer's Odyssey, "Cold Mountain" offers a slew of high-profile supporting roles. It's the story of Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier played by Law, who embarks on a perilous journey home to Carolina, hoping to reunite with his prewar sweetheart, Ada (Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to revive her father's farm with the help of a young drifter (Zellweger). "I could not be more thrilled with the quality of actor this material is attracting; it's a real testimony to the appeal of Charles Frazier's magnificent novel that we have been able to assemble such a formidable ensemble," Minghella said. "This is an epic venture."

From Ananova: Jude Law 'set to play The Dane' Jude Law is reportedly being lined-up to play Hamlet on stage next year. Ambassador Theatre Group are said to be in talks with the actor about playing Shakespeare's most famous character. According to The Stage, the production would be part of ATG's venture with Natural Nylon, the company Law runs with Ewan McGregor and others.

Just testing ... JL