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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Dec 11, 2009 12:42:36 GMT -5
oh this is great!!! thanks so much for posting!!!
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Dec 12, 2009 10:18:09 GMT -5
Rupert Friend on Renny Harlin’s GEORGIA
A theater-trained Brit, Rupert Friend wanted to be so many different things growing up that he decided to become an actor so that he could just play them all. During the press day for the soon to be released The Young Victoria, the actor talked about having just made the film Georgia, about the recent conflict between Georgia and Russia, and helmed by director Renny Harlin, where he plays an American war correspondent who gets captured and accused of being a spy.
Of working with Harlin, he says that he really enjoyed the experience because, instead of the filmmaker’s usual tendency to use CGI, they were instead surrounded by real Apache helicopters, tanks and the Georgian military.
Check out what he had to say after the jump:
Question: Do you have any idea what you’ll be doing next?
Rupert: I’m starting rehearsals for a play on Monday, in the West End in London. It’s an American play, called “The Little Dog Laughed,” that was done on Broadway. We’re doing it in England.
As an actor, what do you get from performing in the theater that you don’t get from making films?
Rupert: I haven’t done theater for six years. I did three years of theater school and then I’ve exclusively done films. I’m going back to the stage because it was the most terrifying thing I could think of doing. It was literally the most terrifying thing for me, and it still is, so that’s why I have to do it.
Do you hope that it will be stimulating and scary?
Rupert: I hope it’s both, yeah. It’s a play about the dangers of greed and ambition and a thirst for fame, and those are things that I’m very frightened of. So, for me, it’s an exploration of the very dark side of this industry. It’s a side that I don’t want to personally become a part of, but through a character, I’m interested in exploring it.
Do you see yourself working in Hollywood someday?
Rupert: I don’t think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it’s shot. The studio system doesn’t really exist. You make a film where it’s best to shoot it. You make a film like The Young Victoria in England, you make a film about Russia in Russia. I’ve just been in Georgia, making a picture there. Before that, I was in London doing a picture. Before that, I was in Canada. The actual town of Hollywood is what it is, and I would be happy to do a picture there, but it’s not the be all and end all.
What is Georgia about and who do you play in that?
Rupert: Georgia is a film about the conflict that Georgia had with Russia last August. I play an American war correspondent who gets word that something is kicking off, and he goes over with his camera man to cover it and witnesses a civilian execution by some militia men in a village, and he captures it on film. They get captured and accused of being spies. That’s the story.
How was it to work with Renny Harlin, as the director?
Rupert: He was really great. He was so keen to not use any CGI. We had the use of the Georgian military, so we had eight Apache helicopters, MiGs, tanks and troops. We evacuated an entire village and basically tried to recreate the effect the war had on the civilians of the country. And, Renny has a great desire to make a film that’s different to what he’s done in the past. He wanted to make a film that’s got a lot of heart, soul and intelligence. His first day of cutting the film is today, so I’m wishing him luck from afar. He’s a lovely man.
*ermmmm...Rupert dear...Georgia is not Russia...careful...you can get in trouble saying that*
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Jan 3, 2010 12:42:13 GMT -5
The Observer interview: Rupert Friend
He's been feted for his appearances with Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer and is soon to open in the West End. Yet the media only want to discuss his relationship with Keira Knightley. No wonder he is wary says Elizabeth Day
Rupert Friend already knows how this interview is going to be written. "You start off with a humorous anecdote about meeting me," he says, as if reciting a shopping list. "Then you end on something that neatly refers back to the beginning. It's so boring." He sits back in his chair, a small smile on his face.
It seems fair to say that Friend, 28, has developed a fairly healthy contempt for journalists. He tells me that he refuses to read any newspapers because they are saturated with meaningless celebrity trivia and he seems to believe most of us who work for them are hopelessly ignorant. At one point, when talking about a film he recently shot in Georgia, the country that was last year invaded by Russia, he asks me if I am aware of the recent war. I nod my head. "Do you know or are you just nodding?" he asks crisply. I tell him that yes, I do know, given that I am a journalist and it is my job to have keep abreast of current affairs. "Well you'd be surprised," he continues. "Some of them..."
Still, I don't think he means to be rude. It is simply that Friend has more reason than most to be wary of the press, given that he has been dating an international superstar for the last four years. He met his girlfriend, Keira Knightley, while filming the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice (she was Elizabeth Bennet, he the dastardly Mr Wickham). As a couple, they are hounded by paparazzi everywhere they go and most of Friend's past interviews have been overshadowed by their relationship. When I bring it up, he insists that he does not talk about it "because it's private", before leaning close to my tape recorder and bellowing: "She's asked it now!"
Aside from these skirmishes, Friend proves to be engaging, thoughtful company. It must, admittedly, be galling to be pigeonholed as someone's boyfriend when he has built up an impressive body of work in his own right. After training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, he made his film debut in 2004 alongside Johnny Depp in The Libertine as the gay lover of the 17th-century Earl of Rochester. In 2008, he put in a chilling performance as a Nazi prison guard in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. "I get more people asking for that picture to be signed than any other, it really worries me," he says. "It's a Nazi. You want that on your wall? Really?"
This year, critics praised his understated turn as Prince Albert in The Young Victoria and his performance in the title role of Stephen Frears's Chéri as a disaffected bon vivant who falls in love with an older woman, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. From January, Friend will be appearing at London's Garrick Theatre in Douglas Carter Beane's satire, The Little Dog Laughed, as an American movie actor desperate to conceal his homosexuality.
"There's this belief [in Hollywood] that if it's a gay guy playing a gay guy, audiences won't accept it because it's a little bit too dangerous, it's too close to the truth," says Friend. "Whereas with a straight guy, everyone knows that at the end of the day, he shrugs it off and goes home to his wife and family.
"Then the question arises, when you watch somebody and you know anything about their private life, does it influence your perception of the role? I think the less you know about someone, the better. I, as an audience member, slightly resent when things are in my head that I don't want to be there… like knowing people's marital status or how many children they have or their sexuality or whatever. I don't want that. I want to be taken on a tour and submerged into another world which I believe in totally and I then believe the characters are who they say they are, rather than coming in saying, 'There's that guy I know everything about pretending to be that guy.'"
Much of the play pivots on the extent of the central character's self-delusion. Does Friend ever deceive himself? "Yeah," he deadpans. "I'm a terrible dancer... I think saying you're bad at something is rather wonderful because then it doesn't matter anymore." He drifts off. "Milk. I hate milk and, again, for years I forced myself to like it because you're supposed to have milk on your cereal, milk in your tea, it's an English thing to have. It makes me gag and the liberation of saying, 'No, I don't think I like milk' was like 'Wow'.
"I didn't want to be an actor because you watch a film like Leon where he drinks a lot of milk and you think, 'I'm not sure how I would do that if the director asked me to do it and I wouldn't want to let him down.' Maybe it would be coloured water or something."
He is joking, though it can be hard to tell because he barely smiles, instead sitting across from me for the best part of an hour looking intense, occasionally munching pensively on tuna salad ("You can write about what I'm eating," he says). His clothes are scruffy – black T-shirt, battered leather jacket – and give the impression of someone who does not like drawing attention to themselves. Does he dislike the idea of becoming too famous? "I don't think you can decide how famous or not you become. I think you can decide how much of yourself you're willing to make public."
Friend, the son of a solicitor and an art historian, grew up in the small Oxfordshire village of Stonesfield and attended the comprehensive in nearby Woodstock. "I was bullied a lot... doing anything overly well was punished by the kids." He didn't tell his parents what was going on: "I was a stubborn little bastard and I sort of thought, in that quasi-poetic, dark room, early teenage way, that it would be a good thing to try and get through it. I came out not expecting anything of the world... whatever I turn my hand to, I will fight as hard as anything because I don't care if I get knocked back. It doesn't hurt. I've got thicker skin than you, so it's fine."
The sense of being an outsider has stuck. "However much you might like to say, 'I'm such an individual and I'm such a trailblazer', what you possibly really mean is, 'I'm not allowed in the gang.'" What gang is he not a part of now? "Um, the theatrical community. I'm perfectly happy not to be. If I'm in LA, it's 'Brits in Hollywood'. They're all these little gangs and as soon as I get even an inkling that I might get invited to join them, I run away."
After school, he applied for Webber Douglas without telling anyone ("I didn't want to get written off") and won a place. He was asked to audition for The Libertine before graduating. Although his parents both went to Oxford, university held little appeal: "I didn't like the idea of doing one thing for three years." Where does that restlessness come from? "I get bored quickly. Always have. Short attention span." He has no permanent home and does not own a television or a radio, seeming to prefer the romanticised notion of a nomadic existence. "That routine thing is not comforting to me. It's the opposite to that. I find it quite unsettling if I'm doing the same thing that I did yesterday."
Is he difficult to be around? He nods his head. "Nightmare. But I hope at least not too boring. I mean, fucking tiring, probably very irritating, frustrating, but not too boring. That would be fine if that was my gravestone: tiring, frustrating, irritating but fun at times."
He pauses, then backtracks. "No, not fun, I don't like that word. Fun is like 'nice', isn't it?" He struggles to come up with a new word. "Diverting? No, that's rubbish." In the end, Friend has to go back to rehearsals without completing the epitaph, but not before baldly telling me that he won't be bothering to read this interview. Presumably he already knows that I am going to write a humorous last sentence that seamlessly links back into the introduction.
*look at that...and he is absolutely right actually*
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Jan 3, 2010 12:45:53 GMT -5
Rupert Friend's Hot Hook-Up!
In the new "Royals in Love" movie The Young Victoria, The Devil Wears Prada's Emily Blunt plays teen queen Victoria and hot Rupert Friend is her soul mate hubby Albert. These real-life royals met as teens and defied their elders to hook up, rule a nation and start a family.
We've seen the film and we're in a cozy Beverly Hills hotel with Rupert, who looks mega hot with short, dark hair and wearing a tight while shirt with cute bandana. Here's his take on the movie, co-star chemistry with Emily, teen love and rebellion.
Is there chemistry between you and Emily?
Rupert: (Chemistry) is a magic thing that sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't. You can take two wonderful actors and a wonderful director and wonderful script and put them together and it's really boring and horrible.
Other times, it's riveting and I honestly don't know why. It's one of those things that, if it works, you go 'suuusssssh, nobody move. It seems to be happening and step back quietly'.
Are you a real-life rebel like your character?
Rupert: I'm not very good at being controlled. I guess as a kid I was a naughty boy at school. I was very badly behaved. If people wouldn't explain to be why I had to do something,
I used to get so angry and frustrated and I still do. When somebody takes the time to explain something to me, then I'm very patient but if they do the 'just because' answer then I have no time for it and you can do it yourself.
Are teens in love the same now as then?
Rupert: This (film) is about two teenagers who had to go through a relationship under the eyes of people watching. We all know what it's like to realize you are falling in love with someone, to go through the arguments, the ups the downs, the ins and outs and for those things to strengthen that relationship into a bond that kept them so closely united.
For me it was two awkward teenagers who maybe hadn't had a relationship, maybe hadn't even kissed people before and that's really at the heart of it; the royal crowns and scepters and orbs aside.
What surprised you the most about this royal love affair?
Rupert: I didn't realize that theirs was a genuine love story; that they were a team, they ruled together. They had a family together. It wasn't a cold, 'you father my children and then go sit in the study'. They did everything together.
They were never apart for a day and I hadn't realized quite why she was still wearing black at 80. It was just that. She'd had half of her soul ripped away from her.
What would you like us to take away from seeing the movie?
Rupert: Can I say 'love is possible' or something like that?
Yup. Sounds romantic to us.
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Post by kcknight on Feb 9, 2010 9:57:22 GMT -5
Tabloids are stupid. The latest from the Daily Fail: What's happened to your Friend, Keira? Miss Knightley's lover looks shockingly thin on late-night dinner dateKeira Knightley's actor boyfriend Rupert Friend cut a worryingly thin figure last night as he picked his girlfriend up from work. With his sunken cheeks and tired, red eyes, the Young Victoria star looked gaunt and stressed as they left Blacks members club in Soho after a late night post-work dinner. Perhaps the 28-year-old actor is feeling the strain of performing nightly in the West End and his girlfriend's recent harassment by an alleged stalker. Both Friend and Knightley, 24, are currently starring in their West End debuts just a few minutes away each other. Friend is starring alongside Gemma Arterton and Tamsin Greig in The Little Dog That Laughed at the Garrick Theatre, while Knightley is starring in the Comedy Theatre production of The Misanthrope. After their respective curtain calls last night, Friend picked up Knightley at the Garrick and they walked to the Blacks members club in Soho, whey they joined friends for a midnight dinner. Understandably feeling stressed after Knightley's recent problems, the couple held hands tightly as they prepared to return to their east London home. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1249576/Rupert-Friend-looks-shockingly-treats-Keira-Knightley-late-night-dinner-date.html
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Feb 22, 2010 8:21:25 GMT -5
Was really hoping to see Rup @ Baftas yesterday...yeah didn't think he'd show up either...*shrugs*
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Mar 20, 2010 22:06:40 GMT -5
this is not new...but obviously it has not been posted here* MEET RUPERT FRIEND KEIRA KNIGHTLEY'S HUNKY BEAU IS OK WITH BEING COUGAR BAITIF you already know about Rupert Friend, it's probably for one of three reasons: He's extremely good-looking; he played the weasely Mr. Wickham in the recent film version of "Pride & Prejudice;" and, the most likely reason, he's the longtime boyfriend of that movie's star, Keira Knightley (whom he flatly refuses to discuss with the media). Now Friend, 27, gets his own starring role opposite the long-absent Michelle Pfeiffer, in Stephen Frears' new movie "Cheri," which hits theaters Friday. In it, Friend plays Cheri, the debauched young son of a Paris courtesan who becomes involved with one of her colleagues, Pfeiffer's Lea de Lonval, struggling with middle age and its impact on her career. We caught up with Friend as he was gamely making some new friends on the morning-show circuit. You just finished filming "The View." How was that? Um, it's a very lively show. Did they paw you? Sometimes they paw the guests. The male ones.You mean, like, stroke me? No, I didn't get stroked. They were very respectful. Maybe I did something wrong. You were on with Michelle Pfeiffer, with whom you spend a lot of the movie in bed. Did you find her easy to work with on such intimate terms? We were very lucky, because we became friends early on. We had a trust, which allowed us to fool around and be mischievous and to play. That's very important when you have to do work which is just the two of you. The movie is about a very specific time and place: Paris in the 1920s. Did you do much research into the era? Well, it's based on the book [by Colette], so that's the best source I had. But there were also elements of "The Jungle Book" that I found quite useful. Oh, and I took ballet classes. "The Jungle Book?" How so? There was something about the lazy danger of Shere Khan that I found was helpful to bring to the character of Cheri. Speaking of big cats, what's your take on the "cougar" phenomenon? Is that term being thrown around in the UK like it is here? No, we don't have that word. I learned it on this trip. I suppose I'm less shocked by it than everyone else seems to be. To me, it seems like if you love somebody, their age is irrelevant.
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Mar 20, 2010 22:19:20 GMT -5
Rupert Friend on The Young Victoria, Emily Blunt, and British AccentsRupert Friend knows a thing or two about being treated like royalty. Since he first began dating Keira Knightley when they met on the set of the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, the British press has covered the two as though they were a glamorous king and queen — with all the scrutiny that entails. He’s one half of a different British supercouple in Jean-Marc Vallee’s The Young Victoria, where he plays the young Prince Albert of Belgium, who married Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) in the mid-1800’s. In a chat with Movieline, the 28-year-old actor talked about the time travel aspects of moviemaking, the tyranny of British regionalism, and the Rolling Stones. I enjoyed you in The Young Victoria and in Cheri earlier this year, but I wonder: Do you ever get frustrated with the fact that directors always want to put you in a waistcoat and stick you in a period piece? [Laughs] I think there probably have been some modern-day films I’ve been in that didn’t come over to the States. I actually just got back from shooting a movie in the country of Georgia in which I play a U.S. war correspondent. I suppose that’s moving towards something! Renny Harlin’s directing that. Is it an action film, a war movie, a drama…? I hope it’s going to be a bit of everything. There are going to be elements of war in it, but it’s not following one side fighting the other side. It’s following this journalists and his cameraman who get caught up in this war, captured by militia, and accused of being spies. It focuses on the damage that’s done to civilians by war — there are hundreds of thousands of refugees from that fight. It’s less of a political film and more of a humanitarian one. The Young Victoria is very focused on the beginning of Victoria and Albert’s romance, even though a lot of juicy stuff comes later. What do you think is gained by that very specific timeline? I think the story really is about this young girl who’s being handed the biggest responsibility in the world at the age of 18. It really is the transition from girlhood to womanhood, from princess to empress, and it’s that changeover that this picture is focusing on. You’re completely right, there’s another movie to be had out of their twenty years of marriage, but I think that would have been rather squeezed to get that all into one picture. I was happy that your character had a German accent, because so often in these movies, everyone speaks with a British accent whether they’re British or not. It definitely had to be there from my point of view because one of the key things about Albert was that he was a foreigner in a country that didn’t accept him. He was married to a woman whose family and politicians didn’t trust him, and a lot of that had to do with xenophobia, and it was very important to me to make him so that he didn’t quite fit in. Especially in England, that has a lot to do with accents, whether they’re foreign or just regional. They key for me, though, was that instead of playing him as German and “not from here,” I played, “I want to sound English. I want to fit in.” In a way, I had to learn German and then try to speak English after. That really is something I notice whenever I go to London. I mean, they can cut each other down to size on those accents. They know what street you grew up on and everything. There’s that famous quote by Bernard Shaw: “An Englishman betrays himself when he opens his mouth.” I think that’s true of England specifically more than France or certainly the States, because it’s so large. The accent in England can change literally from street to street, and people have this sort of feudal tribalism whereby you an identify somebody’s provenance by their voice. Although it’s never been like this for me, it does seem to play a huge part in how people interact in England. I appreciated that the film didn’t simply make Albert a saint — we saw the ways that he sometimes bristles in his role. Was it important to you to show those sides of him? I’ll tell you, there’s no goodies and baddies in the world, there’s just people with intentions that sometimes clash. Victoria and Albert were a very real, lively young couple and he had a lot of ambition. Had he not married Victoria, he would have been king of his country, and I think that his drive coupled with her ambition and forcefulness inevitably would lead to a clash. What was extraordinary about it is that every time they did have arguments — and they argued a hell of a lot — they did make up, and I think it made them stronger. They didn’t give up, and I was inspired by that. What is it about Emily that makes her such a good scene partner? She’s got a really great balance between being committed to the work and making it absolutely as good as it can be, and being great fun. She’s not dull, she’s incredibly excited by her work and everyone else’s work, and she feeds off other people’s passion, laughter, and excitement. It’s infectious, and she set the tone for the whole cast and crew: We were going to work hard and play hard, to use the worst cliche. She’s a joy to work with. Victoria’s story is well-known, but as an Englishman, did you know Albert’s story before you made this film? No, I had no idea, only that his name was often paired with hers and that he had buildings and statues and monuments erected to him all over London. I didn’t know of the man at all, and I sort of went on this massive journey of discovery where I found out just how much he did that we don’t give him credit for. I think because he died so young, and she continued to reign, it’s often forgotten how many contributions he made to the marriage and the monarchy. You’ve made so many period films, but I’m curious whether Jean-Marc was able to bring something new to the table. To be honest, they’ve all been as different from one another as I could have hoped for. Each period is so vastly different — the Restoration is worlds away from the Belle Epoque, for example. I’ve enjoyed the time-travel elements certainly, but Jean-Marc has very much of a rock attitude to filmmaking, which I loved. He’s very big on music and we had music on the set all the time to use in scenes you might not have expected — where you’d normally expect to find soaring strings, he’d play the Rolling Stones. I found that very refreshing. The way he thinks about scenes, he has this irreverent attitude. The truth is that this is about two teenagers who’ve never had a relationship before — probably never even been kissed — and they’re trying to figure out their feelings for one another. The fact that they’re kings and queens is simply another layer. Jean-Marc may be irreverent, but the screenwriter Julian Fellowes is something else entirely. Julian is very excited by newness, while having one foot very firmly in the past. His research is exhaustive and his knowledge is incredible — it’s absolutely encyclopedic. It’s extraordinary! Julian was there, but we also had the real-life queen’s adviser there every day, the man who tells the queen how to use a knife and fork. We had this combination of Jean-Marc trying to get at the truth of everything and Julian making sure everything was true to form the way it had to be. Behind closed doors, we just don’t know what they did. We have so many resources for the public face of these people, so we wanted to make sure that side was accurate, but for the private side, we hoped to get at some truth. Was it stunning to be in some of those locations? Growing up in England, you’re sort of spoiled, in a way. You sort of take it for granted that within a half-hour’s drive, you could be walking around a stately home from the 1700s. It’s not very hard to do — in California, you’ve got to take a flight! My father is an art historian, so I was taken to some of these places when I was young — admittedly, somewhat unwittingly. There’s a great sense of history that lies in those stones.
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Post by kcknight on May 10, 2010 9:50:07 GMT -5
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on May 10, 2010 11:59:14 GMT -5
oh really???!!! Love it! So Rup's really taking the director's duties...just one more thing why respect him more*
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on May 10, 2010 12:06:27 GMT -5
not really Rup but here the lovely Gemma praises Rup on his stage work*
around 6.52*
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Post by kcknight on Aug 3, 2010 8:21:53 GMT -5
New pics next month!
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Gwen
New in Town
Posts: 32
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Post by Gwen on Aug 9, 2010 9:48:59 GMT -5
Can't wait to see those pics! Will anyone be there on 15 September?
Thank you for posting the news!
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Post by DizzyMissLizzie on Aug 9, 2010 18:00:02 GMT -5
oh bugger...i'll be in Luxembourg on that time*
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Gwen
New in Town
Posts: 32
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Post by Gwen on Aug 10, 2010 2:58:54 GMT -5
It's a pity! It would be great if some of you could go and report back!
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