"Northam Exposure"
written by Jemima
Hunt
Whether
playing a smoldering Austen hero or a biting Wildean wit,
Jeremy Northam has what it takes to make a girl swoon.
Jemima Hunt finds that off screen he's just as
gorgeous.
I'm trying to get out of London. First tube, then
train, then plane. Everywhere I go I find Jeremy Northam
staring at me from posters promoting his film An Ideal
Husband. The poster in my local tube station has been
decorated with juicy red lipstick kisses smudged across his
face. Somebody loves him.
I arrive in Cannes.
The sun is shining and all the way along La Croisette
- the hotel-spangled seafront - are billboards
framing the same face. The same dark eyes, distant stare
and a hint of a smile that threaten to surprise you
with something.
The posters are for David
Mamet's The Winslow Boy, which is in competition. An
Ideal Husband is closing the festival. Northam is the
man of the moment, yet his presence is hard to detect
in the film magazines and gossip columns churned out
every day. Then, in one of the magazines, I spot a
photo of a group of actors having lunch. Lurking at the
back is a man shielded behind dark glasses wearing a
bemused expression on an unshaven face. It's him.
Mention the name Jeremy Northam to women and you'll
provoke one of two reactions. Either they swoon - "Mr
Knightley in 'Emma'? God, he's gorgeous" - or they haven't
got a clue who he is. Read reviews of his recent
slate of films and you'll find him described as both
"ubiquitous" and "a new talent to watch". But with the release
of Happy, Texas and The Winslow Boy, the confusion
should be resolved. Northam is undoubtedly one of the
finest actors around.
A few weeks later we meet
for lunch at London's Claridges. I find him tucked
away, smoking, behind potted ferns and American
tourists. He's just back from a week's holiday in a Mexican
resort a short drive from LA. He's tanned and relaxed
and fighting jetlag, which lends him a tousled look
and a slightly sleepy air. He's wearing a light blue
suit with suede shoes and chunky silver bracelets slip
from both wrists. His smile falls somewhere between
knowingly seductive and boyishly shy and he has a gaze to
match. "I'm not very good at this," he says on the way
to our table. But Northam is the perfect lunch date
- charming and garrulous yet managing not to give
too much away.
The fact is, in America
Northam is a star. Playing Mr. Knightley in Emma did for
him there what the role of Mr. Darcy did for Colin
Firth over here. It established his sex appeal in
breeches and his silky charm. It saw him become the
subject of web sites, one of which, created by a devoted
fan called Cindy, has the mailing address
g_knightley. In the States he's recognised in the street.
"Sadly if doesn't tend to be 17-year olds," he laughs,
"Women old enough to be my grandmother ask if I'm into
older women." In Emma he also had the enviable task of
vying for the affections of Gwyneth Paltrow. At the
time she was seeing Brad Pitt. "Love scenes were
intimidating, knowing she was going out with the sexiest man
alive", he says. "But she made it easy. So kissing me
couldn't have been that bad."
What's impossible to ignore is
how well Northam has done when it comes to leading
ladies. Is it true that for on-screen chemistry you have
to fall in love? "Not at all", he counters, which
isn't however to say that he doesn't fall for them. In
Carrington Northam played Emma Thompson's devilishly
handsome lover - the man on the sailing boat with one hand
on the tiller, the other on Em. "Fantastic actress,"
is all he'll say. There's also been Anna Friel in
Stephen Poliakoff's TV drama The Tribe in which there was
a very naked bed scene. "It ended up being a very
funny piece: acting was great fun", he admits.
In the New York thriller Mimic, Northam played
opposite notoriously tricky actress Mira Sorvino. Together
they save New York from giant cockroaches. "I was
covered with green slime for most of the movie" is
Northam's singular comment on the film. However, in terms
of on-screen spark it looks as though the
cockroaches were more fun than Mira. Of Sharon Stone, whom he
plays opposite in this summer's gangster flick Gloria,
he is full of admiration. "She's wickedly funny and
very smart". However it is Cate Blanchett, his co-star
in An Ideal Husband, for whom he expresses genuine
emotion. "She has this breathing intelligence most actors
have to strain for", he says. "She's just alive in a
very understated way. She's also very married". So
what's the story with girlfriends? Is he the "confirmed
bachelor" as reported? Northam shrugs. "It's hard. People
don't trust you because you're away all the time and
you're an actor. I spend too much time on the hoof".
Past girlfriends? "There was someone a while ago, but
I was more in love with her than she was with me".
According to those in the know, he goes for very beautiful
women. Inaccessible women possibly, though not
exclusively actresses.
Northam arrived in Hollywood
as the smooth-talking villain opposite Sandra
Bullock in 1995's The Net. Since then he's gone on the
join the ranks of British actors winning American
roles, four in total. He spends a lot of time in LA. "I
go there to work but not to hang out because I find
it soul-destroying the way work has status attached.
Yet to make an archetypal American [The Net] was a
fantasy come true," he says, before adding with typical
self-depreciation, "At the time I just remember feeling bemused and
that they had made some awful mistake". To date,
Northam has played a judge in Steven Spielberg's Amistad,
a scientist in Mimic and an Irish-American gangster
in Gloria. "Though I’ve never had any desire to be a
professional Brit," he confirms. Ironic then, that it was his
performance as arch gentleman Mr. Knightley in Emma which
convinced the director of the forthcoming Happy, Texas that
Northam was his man. "It was the way the character
listened and responded to situations then crossed over
into romance - apparently."
Happy, Texas
couldn't be further from a Jane Austen novel. It's a
screwball comedy littered with mistaken identities which
Northam describes as "'Some Like it Hot' set in the
desert". He plays an escaped convict who finds himself
handcuffed to actor Steve Zahn, George Clooney's moustached
sidekick in Out of Sight. They pitch up in a Texan town
called Happy and steal a camper van belonging to a gay
couple who organise the local beauty pageant. Northam
plays mean and moody, giving way to soft and tender as
the ex-cons find themselves seduced by small-town
values. Northam meanwhile has to rebuff the advances of
the sheriff (William H. Macy) who falls madly in love
with him.
"It's a spirited movie and a
great story," says Northam. "It's really about choices
and how when you're deprived of choice you actually
start to feel something exhilarating". It's a film that
caused such a buzz the holiday-makers at Camp David
request a copy of it. Yes, no lesser than Bill and
Hillary Clinton called up Miramax to ask to see it.
"Apparently they were kind of depressed and needed to be
cheered up. I hope it did the trick."
Now, about
Northam's other movie. To meet him and hear him talk is to
understand why David Mamet cast him in The Winslow Boy. He
has a very rich, velvety voice, perfectly pitched to
play barrister Sir Robert Morton in a performance that
has already earned him rave reviews at Cannes and in
America. An English costume drama, "It's set in 1912.
Ronnie Winslow is 13 and accused of stealing a five
shilling postal order," explains Northam. "His father
launches a campaign to clear his name in Parliament using
a barrister, who I play". Delivering powerful
rhetoric to save the day he also trades meaningful glances
with Rebecca Pidgeon, the lead female in a display of
restrained emotion - another familiar Northam trait. "It's
about intentions", he confirms.
Born in
Cambridge in 1962 and brought up there until he was 10, it
comes as no surprise to discover that Northam, the
youngest of four, is the son of an academic father and a
teacher mother. When his father left Cambridge to take up
a post teaching drama a Bristol University, Northam
ended up at Bristol Grammar. There he discovered drama.
"I was about 16," he says. "It was just something I
became more and more interested in. I liked the idea of
being preoccupied by someone else as I walked about the
place saying someone else's words." He went from there
to the now defunct Bedford College in London to
study English, then spent a formative year pulling
ropes backstage at the Hippodrome Theatre. There he
encountered actors for the first time and became convince
that "acting was a worthwhile thing to do and not just
an ego trip". Next stop was the Bristol Old Vic,
where he trained. Fellow students included actor Sean
Pertwee.
Following the Old Vic came the
traditional repertory theatre route. "I did a Chekov, Terence
Rattigan, pantomime and a musical," Northam says. Then
followed two years the National Theatre, where he was
named Best Newcomer at the 1990 Olivier Awards, and two
years at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He appeared in
"Hamlet", the same "Hamlet" as Daniel Day-Lewis, who, as
anyone remotely interested in Daniel Day-Lewis knows,
had a nervous breakdown on stage when visited by a
ghost of his father. It's an old story but a good one.
Northam smiles. "I was playing Osric but was an
understudy for Hamlet. I'd been doing it for six months when
I came off stage and heard, 'Dan's not going to
carry on any more'. The guy playing Horatio says, 'How
are you on the lines?' Fuck. I hadn't rehearsed the
part in months. I couldn't get a drop of saliva to
form in my mouth but had to start where Dan had left
it. It was horrifying".
These days Northam does mostly
films. Does he miss the theatre since landing his first
film role opposite Juliette Binoche, as Cathy's
brother Hindley Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights in 1992? "I
did 'Certain Young Men' at the Almeida last year
which was my first play in a long time", he says. All
the characters were gay and all the actors were
straight. "There's something about performing brilliantly
written words which is electrifying. It also meant I
could live at home".
Home is a flat in North
London, though these days, "Norfolk is where I like to
wake up," he says. Northam recently bought a 300-year
old house five miles from the sea with a garden
filled with plum and apple trees. It's an escape from
urban life. He thinks he'll be there for the
Millennium. "I find it dismaying waking up a different hotel
room in a different place after a while. I find it
lonely." Pets? He's not a cat person nor a dog person.
"What were you expecting?" he laughs when I phone him
in the country. "A black Labrador called Harry?" His
father comes up from Cambridge for weekends, as do
friends when Northam's around, which isn't often. "It's
an awful thing to say, but I'm usually happiest when
I'm working. I love acting. I also love knowing I've
got time off to do ordinary things. When I'm up here
I cook a lot of fish."
And now he's got
time to relax before heading off to Italy this summer
to take up a role in the next Merchant Ivory
production, Henry James' The Golden Bowl. Northam plays an
Italian aristocrat opposite luminous beauties Uma Thurman
and Kate Beckinsale. And which one does he fall in
love with? "That would be telling. You'll have to see
the movie to find out," he says.
