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facing the camera
Award-winning British actress Emily Watson on her role as famed cellist Jacqueline du Pré
New Strings To Her Bow
Few actors have made such a splash with their debut film as Emily Watson did in Breaking The Waves. Subsequent roles in The Boxer and Metroland not to mention TV’s The Mill On The Floss have been solid if less flashy. But her next could prove her most acclaimed yet. Cast as cel- list Jacqueline du Pré in the controversial biopic Hilary & Jackie, Watson’s performance has already drawn praise from the festivals at which the film has played. Based on the bestseller A Genius In
The Family, written by Hilary and Piers Du
Pré, the film also stars Australian actress
Rachel Griffiths (Muriel’s Wedding, Jude, Divorcing Jack) as sister Hilary.
Although the 31 year old English born actress admits that she knew little about Jacqueline Du Pré before embarking on the film, she characteristically proved commit- ted in her preparation. Many interviews have reported that her fingers bled with the intensity of her cello practice, as the research that goes with any role based on a real life evidently inspired her to such extraordinary dedication.
“I had heard some of her recordings
before doing the film, but didn’t know a lot
else about Jackie. That got me really excit-
ed,” she adds. Watson, who’d played the
cello for a year when she was just 14, now
had suddenly to start looking like a virtuoso.
She took the instrument to Dublin where she was shooting The Boxer and then embarked on three, three-hour lessons each week for eight weeks as well as hours alone in a rehearsal room.
“I learned to play 14 or 15 pieces varying in range from ten seconds to two minutes long.We devised a code whereby it was easy for me to learn. My teacher would play the tune on the piano and I’d sing it until I’d learnt it. I didn’t learn scales. I can’t read music really and I never looked at the score at all. I’ve got a book full of numbers, letters, arrows and squiggles which are gobbledegook to anyone else but me. It’s my bible.” During filming Watson had to step up on to the podium in front of a huge orches- tra comprising many musicians who had known and played with du Pré. After the first run through three minutes of the Elgar Cello Concerto, the orchestra applauded her. “God knows how Emily does it,” said one hard-bitten musician, “but she had me in tears.”
For the record, du Pré’s own famous recording of the Elgar is used at the heart of the film and to record
the rest of the music, the film-makers settled on for- mer BBC Young Musician Of The Year, Caroline Dale. The last three years have seen a major transition
in Watson’s fortunes, as she has evolved from strug- gling unknown to headline star. She appears quite unaffected by the fuss surrounding her career, con- cerned instead with more mundane details of a recent house move with her actor husband Jack Waters, or the fortunes of her beloved Arsenal. She has come a long way in a short time, experiencing the hype and
Meeting the world’s press after her break- through role, as a pious Scots lass from a remote island community, it seems that the media were just as caught unawares by Watson as she was by them.
“I think people there were quite taken aback when they first met me, because they expected me to be this 19 year old flaky Scotswoman. That’s under- standable, but of course it’s not who I am.”
Roles of such emotional intensity as the ones that have made Watson’s name naturally take their
toll from time to time.
“My job is to help tell a story,” she
states, “and if that involves me diving into some deep emotional waters then I’m well prepared to do it. But it’s not something I do for the sake of it. Fictional characters do influence us, that’s the point of literature and art and film. These things are an expression of feelings and ideas that are supposed to communicate with us and inform our lives.”
Further feelings and ideas will undoubtedly be explored in her forthcom- ing films: The Cradle Will Rock for Tim Robbins, and another high prestige project, Angela’s Ashes, directed by Alan Parker. Emily Watson’s star is burning brighter than ever these days and looks set to shine for some time to come. ■ ANWAR BRETT
Hilar y & Jackie is released in January 1999.
EXPOSURE • 15
glory of film premieres, press junkets and Oscar cere- monies with a kind of detached bemusement.
“America was a laugh,” she beams. “It’s crazy though. The first time I went to L.A. I was picked up in a limo, with darkened windows, driven for ages and taken to this huge tower block somewhere. There Iwasmetbyawomanwho-Ihavetosay-hadthe most extraordinary breast implants I’ve ever seen, and I was taken there to do an interview on the Internet. It was a case of: ‘Welcome to L.A., where we’re really in touch with reality!’.
“I’ve only done a very little bit of that LA thing, with the round of meetings. Just a couple of days, and I didn’t really enjoy it very much because it was too much too soon and I was a bit bewildered by it all. I tend to get sent scripts in the post, which I prefer, instead of being taken out to lunch and smooth talked. You can feel impressed by someone personally but if they give you a script and it’s crap, that’s awkward.”
Photos; top: Emily Watson as Jacqueline du Pré and above with Rachel Griffiths who plays Hilary du Pré in Hilary And Jackie.