Jude Law – When he was young, eager, and in demand

                                                  December 2003 By Philip Berk

Even after being nominated for an Oscar four years ago, Jude Law has never been considered a superstar.

His current release Cold Mountain, however, ought to change that.

In the movie he plays a wounded Confederate soldier named Inman who deserts the battlefield and embarks on a 300 mile journey to be reunited with his true love Ada (played by Nicole Kidman.)

Ever since he started shooting the film in Rumania in July of 2002, his life has been in turmoil, first kindled by rumors that he was having an affair with costar Kidman, denied by both and eventually quashed when Kidman successfully sued two London papers for libel. 

Later that year his name was plastered all over the world press when it was reported that his wife, the former Sadie Frost, had suffered post-natal depression after the premature birth of their third child, son Rudy born in September of 2002, 

A month later the tabloids again had a field day when their three-year old daughter Iris was rushed to hospital after swallowing an Ecstasy tablet found on the floor of a London club during a children’s party. 

Jude hurried to London to be with the his wife and family but soon returned to the set of Cold Mountain. 

The family was reunited for most of last until Frost filed for divorce in August, citing Law’s “unreasonable behavior.” The divorce was granted in October but details such as child custody are yet to be worked out. Besides Iris and one-year year old Rudy, they have another son Rafferty, aged seven.

At his press conference in Los Angeles for Cold Mountain, Jude’s the very model of a modern English thespian: ravishingly handsome, inordinately articulate, ingenuously modest, and obscenely intelligent for someone who didn’t finish high school. 

I ask him if his good looks always placed him at an advantage over his peers, and he’s puzzled by my question.

“It never occurred to me,” he tells me.

Does he hate being told he’s good looking?

“Not at all,” he is his bemused answer.

Unlike best friend (and former business partner) Ewan McGregor, his was no overnight success story.

It took him eight years, from the time he dropped  out of school (at fifteen,) to gain  recognition, in Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles, and that may have been because he discreetly disrobed on stage every night.

When the play was transferred to Broadway (under the title Indiscretions) he was the only member of English cast asked to the repeat the role. 

Film roles followed, but none that allowed him to shine .

Until five years later when Anthony Minghella cast him in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a role won that him an Academy Award nomination and made him the darling of Hollywood film directors.

Since then he’s worked with Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, and recently Martin Scorsese.

But it is his work in Cold Mountain that should make him the most bankable of British actors.

At a press conference two years ago I asked him if he minded all the media attention? (At the time he was enjoying domestic bliss in London.)

“I’m not a great fan of that.” he answered. “You have to learn to live with it and remove yourself from it. Fortunately I am not someone that’s written about. People often assume you are the role you play or the person they think you are. The real me is the person at home eating toast.”

Which of course is no longer the case.

Not surprisingly he won’t talk about the break-up of his marriage (although he’s been quoted as saying “it happened for the usual reasons”) or his current girl friend Sienna Rose Miller, an actress he met on the set of his Alfie.

He will however talk about his children.

How does he explain to his children that their parents are no longer together?

“How do you explain that to any child? You tell them that there are up’s and down’s to everyone’s way of life. You just hope that something positive comes from it.”

How important is it for him to spend time with his children?

“If I don’t see them for two weeks, that’s too long. It just takes a lot of planning. You just make it work,  and  you should  never underestimate how incredibly adaptable they are. When we were in Rumania, it just so happened we shot through the summer so the children were with me throughout their summer holidays playing in those beautiful Rumanian meadows and forests. But when they’re at school, of course it’s a lot harder.”

Ironically when asked how he will spend New Year’s, he makes no mention of the kids.

“I used to celebrate New Year’s Eve with my parents They always used to have huge New Year Eve parties. I remember being allowed to stay up late and enjoy singing Auld Lang Syne. But I have to say I’ve lost my enthusiasm for it. I don’t like that sort of party celebration anymore.”

Will he be able to share custody if his work takes him to Hollywood?

“It’s something I’m going to have to weigh up. Until I get some kind of resolve in my separation and know where my children can be, I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. But over the last eight  years I’ve worked on and off only two or three times in America, the rest of the time I was in Europe, so it’s doable. It just needs modulating.” 

And then as if  to assuage his guilt he adds,

“I grew up in a house of teachers, and as a parent I always pretended I wasn’t as actor, that this was like a hobby. But then two distinguished actors I worked with, Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman, told me, ‘Look, you’re in a fantastic position and in a wonderful profession. Enjoy it. Stop beating yourself up. It’s a good life. Your kids will enjoy it. You don’t have to be a nine-to-five parent to be a good parent. Your kids can enjoy a life with you making films.’ And allowing myself to think that  took a huge burden off my shoulders.”

Is that why he seems to be working non stop lately?

“You’ve got to remember I spent so many years doing maybe one film a year. I took a lot of time off, and I really liked that. I sort of felt I was at school and my obligation was to challenge myself and do varied roles and work with as many directors I admired as possible. But at the same time I felt I was also at school with myself trying to come to terms with what I wanted to be as an actor and as a man. But now I want to change the game and try to do a series of films. It’s almost like I’m in rep, rehearsing one, while filming another, and at the same time prepping for a third.”

Isn’t that rather taxing?  

“It is, very taxing, but I chose to do it and it’s my own fault. I can’t blame anyone else. I think time off is very precious, and my children make that very precious, but it’s also thrilling, the realization  that I’m doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing. For a while I was doing it with the handbrake on. I was involved, but I wasn’t  committed to my career.  But now I’ve sought of released the hand break, and I’m trying to go in with all guns blazing.” 

In the past year he’s completed, The World Of Tomorrow, a science-fiction thriller with Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie,  I Heart Huckabee’s, a satire from director David Russell with Naomi Watts and Catherine Deneuve, and a cameo playing Errol Flynn in Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biography, The Aviator. 

Alfie, which he’s still shooting in New York, is based on the 1966 classic which starred Michael Caine as the philandering Cockney playboy. (Girl friend Sienna Miller plays one of his conquests.)

Is it a remake?

“It’s a rethink. We’re not remaking Alfie. You can’t remake it. It’s too much of a classic, but we’ve taken the essence of Alfie Elkins and set him in a modern age with modern women, which puts a completely different slant on how he behaves and what he can get away with. The one thing I definitely didn’t want to do was a Michael Caine (imitation.) I would have been digging myself a deep pit  because he was so brilliant in that role. But I have talked to him a lot about it, and he’s so gracious and generous and I think just excited that suddenly every one of his films is being remade.”

Not the least of which is Sleuth, in which again Jude will play the Caine role and Caine himself the role made famous by Sir Laurence Olivier.

Getting back to Cold Mountain, obviously what drives the movie is not Inman and Ada’s struggle to survive but their passion for each other.  

How important was it that they have that chemistry?

Carefully he responds to the question.

“Nicole and I hit it off very quickly, and it was clear from the get-go that we had very much the same work ethic and held this piece very close to us. Both Nicole and I were willing to go to the nth degree for Anthony (Minghella.) We knew that the emotions of that first scene had to last for a good hour and ten minutes when they are not together; they’re almost in parallel but separate stories. We also played on the awkwardness and out of that came a kind of tension that created that chemistry.”  

The film is about fathers and their children.

What’s his relationship to his father?

“My dad’s a great dad. He didn’t have a dad so he tried to compensate for that. Rather than disciplining me — not that he embellished me — he embraces me with everything he wanted as a kid, and so we were best friends and we fought like crazy. He used to call it big bull and little bull, and I always tell this. He gave me two pieces of advice, and they’re both things I live by. One is, ‘Do what you do well, and no one will touch you,’ and the other is, ‘If you’re going to be late, enjoy being late.” 

And yet, he once told another journalist, “If you watch me in Ripley, you might learn something about my relationship with my father.” 

In the film father and son shared a mutual distrust..

Working with Minghella a second time, how special was that?

“I never felt happier than when I was making this film. And that’s because Anthony made it clear even before we started filming that it was time I kind of stepped up and took the full responsibility of a film of this size. That was a career decision and a personal decision as well. The heart of this film is about self discovery, about a man who is very introverted, very moral, very simple. And I think that rubbed off on me. It was the first time I played someone I wanted to emulate in my own life.”

Surprising words coming from someone who’s walked out on his family!

Are his kids aware that he’s a famous movie star?

“My children don’t see me as anything other than dad. They don’t know me as a movie star. When I go home I take the character off.”

Would he ever move to Hollywood if that’s where the work was?

“Fortunately, I have no need to move there. Whenever I get a job they very nicely fly me over and put me up, and I enjoy that. I quite like moving around.”

Two years ago he told me, “London’s still got that consistency for me. It’s still my home and it’s where I want to bring up my kids. I grew up in London, I know the educational system there. I sort of know what’s right and wrong in London. I feel more comfortable, more confident with my kids there.”

It’s rare for young actors, competing for the same parts, to form a production company, which is what he, Ewan McGregor and Johnny Lee Miller did. 

Whatever happened to competition?

“Being all friends, Ewan, Johnny and me, there was no competition. With Ewan I respect him and love him as a friend. We recognized early on, when we actually shared an apartment together and were competing for parts, if he got a part or I got one, it was not a case of  one  being  bad or wrong. It was because the other one was right and happened to be what someone was looking for. It taught me that competition is an unhealthy route to take in this business because it’s self destructive. Ambition is fine, but competition is full of trip wires.”

He and Ewan have one thing in common. They have no problem with nudity.

“He loves it,” Jude jokes.

Didn’t his Broadway producers (of Indiscretions) exploit that?

“No, not at all. We actually stuck pretty close to the original Cocteau script  which reads: ‘Act 2 opens with Michael in the bath. Madeleine comes down the stairs and then a page later, Michael gets out of the bath, dries himself and gets dressed.’ People were always surprised that I was drying myself, but I wasn’t going to put the clothes on soaking wet because I had to spend the rest of the act on stage and the costume wouldn’t have survived; so I dried myself, but there was nothing gratuitous.”

Still, it sold a lot of tickets.

“It certainly did — at the matinees.”

(Interestingly, when discussing David O. Russell, his I Heart Huckabee’s director, he comments. “He’s so anarchic, we had to fight to keep his clothes on literally everyday.” That’s a first, a nude director!)

Is he into fashion?

“The only designer I like is when I wear suits.  I’m a stickler for Saville Row. I have a friend who works at a very old tailor called Kilgore, Rench and Stanbury in Saville Row. They’re very simple, proper English suits, gentlemen;’s suits, very British and I love them. Three buttoned single breasted, narrow leg.”