- The Observer, Sunday November 18 2001
Last week two films shot in the UK and crammed full of British acting talent - Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone and Robert Altman's Gosford Park - received glittering world premieres. But behind the flashbulbs and headlines the local film industry is facing a crisis. While the bar is being raised on the budgets of UK films, there is an acute shortage of box-office friendly homegrown stars. Their attachment to a project attracts investors because their fan base guarantees a large opening weekend audience, giving producers a good chance of making a profit down the line. But with so few 'names' available between Hollywood jobs more British projects than ever before are hitting the buffers.
'I'm trying to get two films off the ground in the UK,' says the director Peter Chelsom, whose latest movie, the romantic New York-set Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, opens here next month. 'But there are probably no more than five actors working in this country who can get either one made. It is a complete nightmare.' Or, as one leading producer complains: 'If Kate Winslet catches a cold the whole industry grinds to a halt.'
The producer has a point: during the last year, at least two films earmarked for the actress were mothballed, including a contemporary version of Thérèse Raquin, first because of her pregnancy and then her marriage woes. Another, Bridget Jones's Diary, was rescued only after the film's producers accepted that Renée Zellweger could adopt a credible English accent.
Winslet is one of a select band of British actors - which includes Ewan McGregor, Hugh Grant and Jude Law - who can command a fee above a million pounds and who regularly appear in British films, unlike US-based stars such as Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones who rarely work at home. Winslet turned down the leads in Hollywood movies Shakespeare In Love and Anna And The King to make Hideous Kinky after Titanic catapulted her into another realm. The film community is already reeling from whispers that next year she may tread the West End boards with Nicole Kidman in Three Sisters.
McGregor, who has made more than 20 films including Moulin Rouge!, the first two Star Wars prequels and Ridley Scott's upcoming Black Hawk Down - and who pocketed at least £5m in the last 12 months - is equally delighted that his studio excursions can subsidise his labours of love. 'In Hollywood, no matter how well they are paid, actors are treated like prostitutes, pieces of meat,' he says. 'The best thing about being successful is that you can choose where you want to be and what you want to be involved with, independent films, theatre, whatever.'
Next March McGregor will be in Glasgow making a low-budget adaptation of Alexander Trocchi's cult book Young Adam for veteran producer Jeremy Thomas. 'When stars work at home they have to work within the economy of the film,' points out Thomas. 'But Ewan is passionate about this particular project. Put it this way, the film would not be going ahead without him.'
Chelsom says the problem is accentuated because the British industry is dependent on US finances: 'Americans are only ever interested in running the numbers on every single element. I wanted Dawn French to have a part in Serendipity but the producers said "no way!"'
The paucity of bankable British actresses is underscored by the array of English accents perfected in the last few years by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Kerry Fox, Frances O'Connor and Rachel Griffiths. Working Title Films, which justifiably put its faith in Texan-born Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones, has pushed back its planned epic about Queen Bodicea more than once because it has failed to find an appropriate actress to fill her chariot. One leading casting director says at least 10 projects have floundered in the last year because no suitable British actress between the ages of 25 and 35 was available. 'It's not even a question of bankability in some cases; it is about technical ability.'
This is due to the vicious circle the industry has created according to producer Nik Powell, whose films include Mona Lisa, The Crying Game and the upcoming Last Orders. Simply put, if actors don't have sufficient opportunities to hone their skills they will never be in the position to claim the plum roles. 'It is a shame because it also means there are so few role models for aspiring actors. Many talented, attractive people turn to modelling or the music industry instead,' he laments.
'Because our television industry is so strong it militates against TV actors ever becoming film stars,' says Duncan Kenworthy, producer of Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill . 'Film stars need distance from the audience. We want film stars to be icons but our tabloid culture is so obsessed with tele vision that we already feel we know our TV stars intimately. We don't need to dream about them. It is significant that neither Jude Law, Ewan McGregor nor Kate Winslet have done any TV work. Audiences feel uncomfortable by the clash of genres.'
Tellingly, Zeta-Jones followed her TV work in Britain by going to America to be 'discovered' as a film actress. So did Colin Farrell, who debuted in Ballykissangel, and had bit parts in The War Zone and Ordinary Decent Criminal, before his performance in the low-budget US film Tigerland led to major roles in Hart's War, opposite Bruce Willis, and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, with Tom Cruise.
However, Powell says it is a myth that all television actors want to work in movies. A typical fee for a leading role in a small British film is £100,000 - before the late Nineties boom it was around £25,000 - but television work is less precarious and often more lucrative. 'Films do collapse at a moment's notice whereas once dramas are commissioned they will usually go ahead and the shoot will last much longer.'
Jonathan Cavendish, who produced Bridget Jones's Diary - and who is counting on Zellweger for the sequel - rubbishes the theory that the crisis in British films can be put down to a lack of acting talent. 'To be a star you have to be able to hold the screen but there have to be the vehicles to put you up there in the first place. Nevertheless, stars have to be able to manipulate and stimulate those two prerequisites, and most British actors are particularly bad at doing that. The only international star working regularly in Britain is Hugh Grant. He's a very good actor but he is also very smart and he knows how to play the whole media thing brilliantly.'
'Unlike the Americans, very few British actors play the game. They're either very serious - they want to be perceived as actors and not stars - or they resent the media,' muses Dan Wakeford, news editor at Heat magazine.
One of the few British film stars to excite the gossip sheets is Anna Friel, but this is more to do with her status as a former soap star and girl about town than her big-screen triumphs. Sandra Goldbacher, director of Friel's latest film, Me Without You, which opens in Britain next Friday, says: 'Anna is a very serious actress but she was an iconic figure on television. It is very hard to reinvent yourself in this country.'
Of course, Friel has reinvented herself several times in some real clunkers. 'The biggest measure of a star is the ability to choose the right roles for themselves,' says Cavendish. 'This is why Hugh Grant is probably the only British actor, who still resides in the UK, who can now actually open a film here and abroad.'
Four Weddings And A Funeral, the film that propelled Grant to stardom, was actually Grant's fifteenth film and his fee was around £30,000. For playing essentially the same role in Notting Hill in 1999 he received £5m and still kept his backers smiling.
'It's a chicken and egg situation,' says Kenworthy. 'Is it that we can only make small films in Britain because there are so few big stars or that we cannot hold on to our big stars because we can only make small films? This predicament will really only change when the industry can sustain enough actors who, firstly, are not working in television and, secondly, who are not hell-bent on moving to Beverly Hills.'
But Sally Hibbin, who has produced several of the defiantly unstarry Ken Loach's films, says the current obsession with big names and commerciality will be the undoing of the British film industry. 'In the past we have created stars simply by putting good actors in edgy, risky films - from Michael Caine in the Sixties to Ewan McGregor in Shallow Grave and Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting. Now producers just want to minimise their risks and to feel comfortable. But if films are only getting made because of a particular star and not because of the actual material we will simply end up with poor, bland facsimiles of films that audiences won't want to see.'
Britain's 15 highest-paid film stars (per movie)
Sean Connery £8m
Anthony Hopkins £7m
Hugh Grant £5m
Daniel Day-Lewis £4m
Gary Oldman £4m
Ewan McGregor £3m
Tim Roth £3m
Jude Law £3m
Kate Winslet £2m
Emma Thompson £2m
Ralph Fiennes £2m
Michael Caine £2m
Dougray Scott £2m
Catherine Zeta-Jones £2m
Liam Neeson £2m
