Page 15 - Fujifilm Exposure_8 Wildlife John Downer_ok

facing the camera
S Catherine McCormack on her latest role in a bittersweet comedy
Playing For Laughs
Playing For Laughs
he was Mel Gibson’s wild Scots tru- 20 minutes or so on screen - not counting a couple Brought up by her businessman father in elove in Braveheart, a rustic Irish single of spectral walk-ons later - she’s reunited with her Hampshire after her mother died when she was mother in Dancing At Lughnasa and a childhood sweetheart (Gibson as the heroic six, McCormack’s first love was the theatre. 16th Century Venetian strumpet in The William Wallace), has a topless scene in the glens, Thanks to her spectacular showcase in Honest Courtesan. But when the real marries secretly, barely escapes a brutal attempt- Braveheart, the stage still awaits as film roles, Catherine McCormack stands up she is ed rape and finally suffers cruel execution at the punctuated by the occasional stinting barmaiding, a petite, rather softly spoken young hands of evil English soldiers. have flowed quite freely since 1995. Later this year
Englishwoman whose manner, accent and junky she appears alongside Michael Caine and Randy clothes style clearly betrays her middle- Quaid in an American road movie, The Debtors.
class Home Counties background and an Oxford drama school training.
After a string of period roles which also included the rather stiff-upper-lip Stella in The Land Girls, McCormack, 26, now finally gets the chance to play contemporary and trendy in the London-based This Year’s Love, a new British comedy-drama.
And her role in this sharply-written ensemble piece about six twentysomething singles in the Smoke? Wait for it... Hannah McClafferty, an impul- sive Scottish clothes designer and Camden market stall holder whose turbulent wedding at the film’s outset sparks the bittersweet action which encom- passes love, sex and heartbreak across three years.
So what prompted this swift return to the Celtic fringe? McCormack was filming Dancing At Lughnasa in Ireland with Kathy Burke when she first met This Year’s Love writer-director David Kane who’d written a part in his film for Burke: “She said that he should get me to do a part. She thought I was a bit barmy and crazy.
“I wanted to be part of it because I hadn’t done comedy and I think I’m more suited to playing char- acter roles than the costume drama romantic parts I’ve played until now,” adds the actress.
There can certainly have been no more colourfully romantic costumer than the Oscar-win- ning Braveheart in which she made her film debut almost straight out of drama school. In an eventful
For the time being McCormack, recently “linked romantically” (as they say) to Joseph (Shakespeare In Love) Fiennes, is just revelling in the freshness of her This Year’s Love stint
Talk about start- ing at the top. McCormack recalls standing alongside Gibson on the top of the hill as a camera helicopter swooped around the pair and how her co-star would burst out laughing from time to time. What was so amusing, she asked him. Apparently he just smiled and said, “Because this is so beauti- ful and I am being paid so much to be here.” “It was at that moment, McCormack realised, “that being a
film actress wasn’t such a bad life.”
It was the culmination of a thrilling process
which had started with, in her own words, a “com- pletely cocked-up” first meeting with Gibson at a London Hotel. Then after an altogether more suc- cessful second encounter came the answerphone message which remains one of her more prized possessions: “Hi, this is Mel. Phone me at the Mayfair Hotel. I may have some good news for you.” McCormack first thought he meant he’d found her missing watch but history relates a much more profitable outcome.
What influenced her characterisation? “Mrs Overall, Julie Walters’ old hag which I just love - I squeezed it for a laugh. But to be serious, I didn’t base Hannah on anyone but me. I let my madder side come out and had a laugh with it. There are some very dark moments in the film, though. It’s about people’s breakdowns and what happens to them at certain times of their lives.
“David was happy to leave us with the script and let us do things with it. The script is brilliant and we didn’t need to change it but if an idea came up he was happy for us to improvise. I was talking to him about it and he said it was because he was directing too that he didn’t mind. He didn’t feel precious about the dialogue.
“I’ve felt the least pressure I’ve ever felt doing a film and I got to play a quirky character which was lovely,” she smiles. ■ QUENTIN FALK
This Year’s Love, photographed by Robert Alazraki AFC, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative and is currently on release in the UK
Photos: from left: Catherine McCormack in The Honest Courtesan, This Year’s Love and Braveheart
EXPOSURE • 15