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copyright of article belongs to "the Face" magazine, U.K.
[TEXT FROM TABLE OF CONTENTS]
JUDE LAW
(Shopping and f*cking with Britain’s young buck actor-king. Or, how he stopped worrying and learned to love dubious films about joy-riding, give it some Wilde style, and takes his cues from Clint Eastwood and Kevin Spacey. Oh, and donate his piss to Ethan Hawke and his saliva to Uma Thurman. Deborah Ross is all ears (and lips)
[INTRO WITH DOUBE-SIDED RATHER DARK PIC WTH JUDE LYING ON HIS BACK ON A MEADOW]
SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS
Jude Law is sex on a stick. His best friends are fellow actors Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller. He is 25 years old, married, with a wee boy. He has kissed Uma Thurman (and Stephen Fry), drunk beer with Clint Eastwood, and will soon compare chest measurements with Matt Damon. Is Jude Law too good to be true?
[ARTICLE]
Jude Law. An excellent actor, possibly. An extremely beautiful 25-year-old, certainly. I am overcome. Jude, you’re so gorgeous, I say. Jude, understandably alarmed:
"Would you like to go for a walk?" And: "Do you need some fresh air?" A walk? What with uphill bits and things? Fresh air? Does it hurt? Can’t I just sit here, looking at your eyes. I’ve never seen eyes so exquisitely green". "Yes, a walk", he announces firmly.
So off we go. Him, energetically. Me, sulkily. Jude lives in Primrose Hill, north London. So does pretty much everyone else, it would seem. "That’s Ewan McGregor’s road", Jude points out. "Sean Pertwee lives just behind that square", he continues. "That’s Jonny Lee Miller’s place", he concludes. Yes, they are all terrific mates. Always popping in and out of each others houses. Even have their own production company. Natural Nylon, with quite a few scripts in development, plus a co-production with David Cronenberg due to start shooting in Canada in a few weeks, which stars Jude and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Jude is so hot and so booked up, he won’t even be reading any new scripts until October. This month he has two films coming out, one directed by Clint Eastwood (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), the other starring Jude with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke (Gattaca). Jude’s agent can put his feet up and read Hello! for the rest of the year. If I can’t marry Jude, I’ll be his agent. Either would do, I think.
"Though tabloid criticism will miss the mark, Shopping isn’t without its problem. The minimal script may avoid preachering, but it doesn’t give the cast much to work with, and for all his efforts to appear dorky, Jude Law is too good-looking to come off as anything other than the archetypal cool rebel". THE FACE, March 1994
JUDE LAW. When did we first take note of that name? In 1994, probably, when he starred in the disastrously received film Shopping. Intended as an exploration of ram-raiding culture, it just never cut it. "Embarrassing", was the best anyone could say about it. Jude knew it was bad while he was making it. He had to say lines like: "Come on Jo, this is the nineties. Sex isn’t safe any more."
Still, he was 21, had the lead in a film, plus a driver to pick him up and drop him off. "It was nice for the ego." Now though, he realises "That’s not, what it’s about.". He isn’t ashamed of Shopping. He wasn’t even disappointed when it was so universally panned. It was good experience. Now he is even proud of it, in a strange kind of way. "It did pave the way for Trainspotting"
He packed himself off to the theatre. The London fringe, then starring a role in the National’s production of Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents terribles, which transferred to Broadway in 1995 with the more American-friendly title Indescretions, caused a bit of a stir with Jude’s full frontal nudity, and earned him a Tony nomination. That, plus the attention of important movie people with important movie scripts. He auditioned for Gattaca, which would become his first Hollywood film, and he was seen by Clint’s "people". Two years later, "Midnight" would be his second Hollywood film.
And it was while on Broadway that fellow Brit-thesp-abroad Rufus Sewell handed him the script for an Oscar Wilde biopic. "This is a really good script", Rufus said to June, as they headed out to "get toasted" one night. "There’s a really good part for you."
So it came to pass that Jude’s UK debut, this time round was Wilde. He played Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) to Stephen Fry’s Oscar. Bosie is wilful and vindictive and reckless and spoilt yet, still Oscar loves him. Bosie’s beautiful, but he can’t return love, having never been loved himself. Jude certainly brought a necessarily vulnerability to the part. Ewan and Sean and Jonny tease Jude about his looks. "You’ll be fine", they say. "You’ll just play the pretty boys"" He won’t though. Hugh Grant, yes. Jude Law, no. He will be a great deal better than that, I think. And hope.
Gattaca has just opened here. This is Andrew Niccol’s stylishly eerie sci-fi thriller, set in a world where embryos are genetically programmed to be perfect. To cut a two-hour script short, Jude plays Eugene, a genetically superior athlete who, after an accident, becomes a bitter, alcoholic paraplegic in a wheelchair. Jude gives good paraplegic. Or, as Niccol himself said: "He became so convincing that after the production I saw a photograph of him standing up and didn’t recognise him."
To earn money, Eugene rents out his genetic identity to someone inferior (Hawke), who dreams of becoming an astronaut. Jude says the film is about "the human spirit that will always rise". He says: "It’s like, no matter how much concrete you put down, grass will always push through."
Jude can be touchingly earnest. The New York Times described his performance as "the most stunning movie debut of the year" (Wilde is only about to open in America). He gets to kiss Uma Thurman a bit. Jude: kissing Stephen and kissing Uma. Compare and contrast if you will.
"Well, unfortunately, I had the longer kisses with Stephen."
No, of course, he didn’t mind having to kiss Fry. "It’s part and parcel of the job."
Who couldn’t you possibly kiss, even if a script demanded it? David Mellor? "It would have to be a very good script."
Michael Portillo? "Ditto, I think."
Cilla Black? "I love Cilla Black."
"What was so great about the part of Bosie, and which is why I so wanted to do it, is that on one hand he was commanding, he was manipulating, and that shows the power of his personality. But at the same time he was victimised and used. It was interesting, too, playing a younger man in an older man’s world. It kind of drowned him. Is that a metaphor for myself? A young man in an old man’s world, hmm - I don’t know. This is what I’ve always wanted to do, I’ve always really enjoyed it, but when the opportunity arises you’ve got to take it and do your damndest to do it well. There was always part of me that didn’t want to go for the easy option, keep quiet, keep my head down, please the institution." Jude Law, Contents magazine, spring 1998
WE ARE climbing the hill in Primrose Hill by this time. I am lagging behind rather. Jude is fit. Jude goes to a gym. We reach the top. No, let’s get this right. Jude reaches the top. Then, 10 minutes later, I reach the top. Jude is glowing. I have to have a sit down.
I must say, now I’ve got my breath back, the view over London is very fine from up here. Jude comes here a lot with his 18-month-old son, Rafferty, to fly their kite. Jude is a besotted father. Jude’s got a burn on one elbow from breakdancing for Raff the other day in the kitchen; he fell and scraped his arm along the wooden floor. A breakdancing besotted father! I wish I had one of those.
If Jude is worried about anything, it is: "Am I spending enough time with Raff?"
Jude plays as volatile hustler in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Also featuring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack, Midnight is based on the best-selling book which itself was based on the real-life shooting of a bisexual druggie (Law) by his antique-dealing socialite lover (Spacey) in Savannah, Georgia in 1981.
"He’s sort of the ultimate rebel, but he’s also a little boy lost in a toy shop. My main aim was to make Billy as real and unglamorous as possible." Jude said that of his Shopping character in 1994. It could equally apply to Billy Hansen, the whippet-thin lowlife he plays with convincingly seedy allure in Midnight.
Jude didn’t meet Clint until he got on set, because Clint doesn’t audition his actors. "He thinks he’ll intimidate them", says Jude. Clint took Jude out for a drink at Pinkie Masters, "a dirty bar in Savannah where you can buy boiled peanuts". They just talked about babies. "Clint had a new baby he was crazy about. He said that when he was young, he never got to see his kids."
Jude is quite mature, I think. A lot of men don’t get it when it comes to children, but he does. I like him a lot for it. But, more importantly, Clint? What’s he like? Clint’s just so "cool", he says. He never says "Action" or "Cut". He says "Begin" and "Hold it there". Yes, Jude is married, sadly. And, even more upsettingly, he seems happily married. His wife is Sadie Frost, the actress he met while filming Shopping ("Jude looks prettier than me", humphed Sadie on the set). Sadie is also one of the Natural Nylon gang.
She was, he says, by far the best thing to come out of that film, bar the door-to-door drivers. She was married to Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp at the time, "so it was a complicated start, yes." They went on a secret holiday together after the filming. They came back and it wasn’t Sadie and Gary anymore. It was Sadie and Jude. "She just blew me away", he says.
It’s very blustery up here. I can’t get my fag lit. Jude wonders if we should go down to the pub. What’s there to wonder about? We go down. Downhill is easier.
Into his local. A bloody Mary each, although he shouldn’t, really. He is trying not to drink so much, he says. It’s a bottle of white wine a night, at least. He’s trying not to smoke, either. He smokes mine, which is always the way with people who imagine they’ve given up.
We run out pretty quickly. I offer to go to the newsagent next door to replenish supplies. He says I can’t. The newsagent was rude to Sadie last week. She was flicking through a magazine as one does. The newsagent shouted at her. "Are you buying that or what?" She said she was. He said: "Don’t bother. I know about people like you." Jude later rushed round to have it out with him. "What did you mean? ‘People like you?’ How dare you be so rude to my wife."
Jude was tempted to punch the newsagent, yes. He went to a tough school. He knows how to fight good. He decided against it. He’s learned to restrain himself, he says. He’s decided to boycott the newsagent instead. This doesn’t seem so dashing somehow. "I’m not buying my Variety from you, you horrid newsagent" does lack a certain drama.
But Jude does seem a very sane, sensible sort of bloke, actually. At least I think though, until he tells me where the next nearest newsagent is. It’s down that road, across that square, past Sean’s, round the corner and then round the next corner. Another walk? Are you mad? I settle for a brand I don’t like from the pub machine.
Jude grew up in Lewisham, south London. His father, Peter, was the deputy head of a primary school. His mother, Maggie, taught English as a second language to immigrant children. Jude has a sister, Natasha, who is now part-writer, part-artist. Jude’s called Jude because, he says, his mother has always been much taken with Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Jude didn’t read it until he was 18. He was quite shocked. "So depressing!"
Jude attempted his local comp, Kidbrooke School, which was a rough place -
"a kid was macheted to death there."
Jude was known as "poofter" initially, because he was so pretty. He spent a lot of time trying to avoid the roaming gangs who wanted to beat him up. He did this until he got bored of it, and decided that if anyone punched him, he’d punch them back. He did. And got good at it. He learned, he says, "how to not feel pain, while inflicting it". He became one of the best thugs in the school. So Jude’s parents took him away and - "against their political sway" - placed him at Alleyn’s School in Dulwich, a private job.
He didn’t mind. By this time, there was only one thing on his mind, and that was acting. The first film he remembers seeing?
"The Rescuers at the Lewisham Coronet. My sister was scared. I remember being impressed it could have such an effect."
He says he went to John Travolta’s house in Hollywood once. And? And? "He had an aeroplane on his lawn!" Jude is still deliciously starstruck. I ask him about Hollywood stardom. Is it something you choose? Or something that’s thrust upon you? He thinks, initially, it’s something that’s thrust upon you, "depending how big the film is". I disagree. I think it’s something you choose. Hugh Grant is a Hollywood star. Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t, though he could be if he wanted to. He thinks I might have a point. No, he doesn’t want that kind of stardom. Although if it means "working with great people", he wouldn’t mind brushing up against it every now and then.
"In the summer I’m working with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow in a film directed by Anthony Minghella [The English Patient]. It’s called The Talented Mr Ripley, and it’s adapted from the book by Patricia Highsmith which was also made into a film called Plein Soleil. But it’s Matt Damon’s film. He plays Ripley, and I play the one Ripley kills. I’m into it because I’m playing a real all-American boy-next-door. And I like the challenge of that. Because I have been playing weirdos. This one, it’s what you see is what you get. All-over-tan, tennis-playing, yacht-sailing. I kinda like that." Jude Law, February 1998
JUDE’S FIRST performance? In a primary-school play, he thinks. He was George in a production of George and the Dragon. He got to run about with a sword. The dragon was made up of three boys. Every time he stabbed the dragon, one of the boys had to run off. It was thrilling. He started acting for proper at 12, with the National Youth Music Theatre. By 14, he had become grossly theatrical. And hateful. He even started writing a book, called My Autobiography.
"so arrogant," he remembers wincingly. He had a lot of friends at 14, but not by the time he was 15. He is not so arrogant now. I tell him he is the current "Guy of the Month" in Cosmopolitan. He is thrilled.
"Am I really?" You’re not having me on?" He can seem quite childlike and innocent sometimes.
He left school at 16, for a part in the Granada TV soap, Families. An Anglo-Australian affair, I didn’t really land properly anywhere. "The bucket end of soaps", he admits. His parents, yes, would have liked him to have gone on to further education, "but where cool about it. I still had time to go back, if things didn’t work out." Jude played Nathan, who was into drugs and bad behaviour.
"Rather like me at that point,"
Jude spent less time acting, more time rewriting his own dialogue, because it was just so unsayably bad. It was even worse than the dialogue in Shopping. No, he can’t remember any lines now. He’s probably blanked them out. Still, he had a good time. The money was terrific. He had a flat in Manchester. It was girls, drugs, booze, clubs, more girls, nice suits, more booze.
"I went bananas."
He says by the time re returned to London, and met Sadie, he was ready to settle down. He didn’t have any wild oats left to sow. "I just didn’t want to go clubbing any more."
He is still quite bad with money though. In particular, he can’t resist new trainers. His justification is: "I have very smelly feet, so I need new ones every couple of weeks."
Sadie gets a bit cross about this "Are those new trainers?" she will ask. "They’re newish", he’ll reply sheepishly. Having identified this at the weak spot in their marriage, I tell Jude that, should he wish to come and live with me, I won’t have a problem re trainers. He can buy six new pairs every day before breakfast, for all I care. He can charge them to me, even. He says, he loves Sadie very much.
"She taught me about what love means. She taught me about the friendship, the companionship, the being there for each other. Sadie pops into the pub. Sadie is young and pretty and thin. There is lots of kissing on the mouth. Excuse me. I am trying to do an interview here
After 18 months of Families, Jude thought: "Enough’s enough", He could have gone to role on The Bill or Coronation Street, but he didn’t want to. He really though it was time he did some theatre.
"I’d earned a lot of money. I’d spent a lot of money. But I hadn’t paid my dues."
Back in London, Jude did plays at the Hampstead Theatre, the Bush, the Gate, then it was off to the National. Then he gave his regards to Broadway.
Ironically, it was being on Broadway that turned him back on to films. Before the casting agents came to watch, and before the scripts started to come his way, there were his friends. He phoned Ewan almost daily from his dressing room. He’d met him a few years before, when both were struggling actors. They met when they both auditioned for a film which was never made.
"It was set in the Sixties, and was about a group of teenagers stained by sex and drugs and rock’n’roll."
The director, wanting to see them in action, gave them £20 and sent them down the pub "to get pissed". They duly obliged. A friendship was formed. Jude even shared a flat with Ewan, before moving in with Sadie. Did they tag their milk in the fridge? You know, "JL" felt-tipped on one carton, "EM" on the other? No. "We were lucky, if we even had milk in."
Ewan was making Trainspotting while Jude was on Broadway. Often when Jude spoke to him, Ewan would have just got back from a shoot. "And I could see the excitement. The excitement you only get with films." An excitement you can’t get at the theatre? "You do get impatient with audiences after a while. You want to shout: Keep up! Keep up!" Nowadays, Jude’s the one it’s hard to keep up with. He’s lined up for so many things. eXistenZ, the Cronenberg film about a virtual reality game gone berserk, is next.
"It’s David Cronenberg’s take on existentialism. It’s set in a contemporary world where there are metal detectors everywhere, so all your hardware has to be made out of human flesh and bone." Then it’s the Matt Damon film in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, waiting to land, is The Wisdom of Crocodiles with Timothy Spall the Stewpot from Grange Hill. It’s "a film about a guy who lives to love" and it’s "a film with a serial killer side", and it sounds like a cross between American Psycho and In the Company of Men. Then there’s The Final Cut, a lo-fi, largely improvised film directed by a "very old friend" of Sadie’s. "Me and Sadie kind of play ourselves, and Ray Winstone’s in it. It’s basically about dealing with your friends.."
Natural Nylon seems pretty busy, too. Nora, a film about James Joyce’s wife which stars Ewan, is due out later this year. Scripts are being worked on. There’s one about Brian Epstein. Natural Nylon are using eXistenZ - their co-production with Cronenberg - as a warm-up for their fist stand-alone effort. "Cause there was part of us going, ‘Christ, we’ve got these big projects lined up, and as an actual physical production company, we have no experience!’" The first big one, starring all the gang together, is to be a period drama called The Hellfire Club.
"The club was perceived by eighteenth-century London society as this elite. But it was a bunch of guys who were, for various reasons, the best of their generation"
Frankly, I am not sure if this Natural Nylon stuff is pretentious, or encouraging. It’s one thing to rent an office in Soho, but another to make a half-decent film. It’ll be interesting to see what these boy-men come up with. Watch this space, as they say, which shouldn’t be too difficult, because if Jude’s in it, it won’t be a space any more, It’ll be Jude, and he’s lovely to watch.
Jude, shall we have sex?
"Err, I am afraid I really do have to go off to a meeting now"
This is a good job, actually. What with that hill, I find I’m quite tired. I wouldn’t have been at my best.
Very, very special thanks to Annika who typed this whole article up for us, and scanned the photographs!