"Oily English Villain"
written by Jeff Dawson
Let's call it the Lou Cypher
syndrome. In American thrillers there's a simple rule:
never cop off with someone whose name is a cheap
literary symbolic device, especially when it's a symbol of
something satanic. Take note Sandra Bullock, who loses her
heart and her bikini bottoms to one Jack "Devlin" in
this month's techno-thriller The Net (her name's
Angela, geddit?), but then we'd have missed the spectacle
of Jeremy Northam doing the quintessential oily
English villain thing in his first Yank picture. How is
it, Dennis Hopper aside, Hollywood villainy seems to
be the sole preserve of gentlemen from Albion?
"I've asked this of people and the answer I've got most
is that people hear that the English are reserved
and in that reserve there is something to be
mistrusted," ponders Northam, on a break from a night shoot on
Santa Monica pier, filming one of The Net's key chase
sequences.
"Because we're not perceived to be very
open people, that we're holding something back,"
considers Northam. "I think that's something to do with
it." ("It wasn't because he was English, but because
he was incredibly good and sexy," coos Bullock in
contradiction.)
Though he now has two other films in the
bag -- the Cannes favourite Carrington (as one of
Emma Thompson's suitors), and Voices From A Locked
Room, the story of the composer Peter Warlock "who had
a double personality and committed suicide in 1930"
(both of him?) -- as with most British screen actors,
the 33-year-old Northam's sensibilities are very much
rooted in the theatre.
After a stint at
university in London and drama school, Northam spent a year
pulling the ropes in the playhouses of his home town,
Bristol, before graduating to the boards of RSC, picking
up an impressive Olivier Award for Outstanding
Newcomer in 1990. But his greatest stage moment is still
his performance of Hamlet in which, as an understudy
to Daniel Day-Lewis, he was suddenly thrust into the
breach when Danny Boy cried off midway through a
performance.
"I was playing Osric originally, who
stands around for nine-tenths of the play and listens
and doesn't speak until act four," he remembers. "And
then I ended up going on for Daniel. It was wild."
Ironically, the lead role in The Net was almost an accident
too, with Northam turning up to read for desperate
director Irwin Wrinkler at a time when most of the most of
the mooted actors had gone off on their Christmas
hols.
"It was amazing because I'd come straight
off a film in Canada (Voices From A Locked Room),
which I'd been waiting most of the year to do," he
explains, puffing on a king-size snout in the cold night
air. "And the rest of the year I was working full-time
in the theatre. I came over here to meet an agent
who had sent me a lot of scripts, this was one of
them, and I read it on the plane the day before I came
in. I was fucked. I was wiped completely, and that's
probably why I got it because I didn't go in desperate to
do it. I never thought I'd work here."
Despite a starring role in one of the summer's many
hi-tech thrillers, Tinseltown is still not tempting.
London's Finsbury Park will remain, very much, home. In
fact, not even the opportunity to romp in the sack with
the likes of Bullock can convince him to cash in his
chips with Hollywood... yet.
"What are you
supposed to do? Brush your teeth and do some extra
press-ups?" he chuckles of his onscreen grapple with
America's favourite schwing-mistress.
I mean, who
needs all that when you can stay at home in London N5?
