Hot from her Tony award-winning success in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, Jenifer Ehle has returned to these shores to work in the film verison of A.S. Byatt's Booker-prize winning novel Possession.
The cast, which includes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Toby Stephens and Aaron Eckhart, begins rehersals next week in London on the tale about two contemporary scholars who discover a tragic love story involving 2 19th century Victorian poets.
Ms Paltrow and Mr Eckhart (he was Julia Roberts' biker boyfriend in Erin Brockovich) play the modern day literary detectives, while Ms Ehle (famous as Elizabeth Bennett in TV's Pride and Prejudice) and Mr Northam play the 19th century lovers.
Byatt modelled Ms Ehle's character, Christabel, and her poems on the work of Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti.
The project will be given an infusion of 21st century hipness by writer-director Neil LaBute, who has charged his work on screen and on stage with a sense of sexual fury.
from Empire Online, 8/25/00
After the sweetness and light of Nurse Betty, which opens in the UK next Friday, it looks like director Neil LaBute is returning to more familiar territory. The man behind such caustic films as In The Company Of Men and Your Friends and Neighbours is about to start filming A.S.Byatt's novel Possession in England this autumn.
"It will be a surprise for some, others will say it's a natural progression," says LaBute of his choice to shoot the novel. "There are two really f***ed-up couples, and who better to deal with them [than me]?". The story of two contemporary academics (to be played by Gwyneth Paltrow and LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart), the film follows their growing love for each other as they uncover a hitherto unknown affair between two Victorian poets.
Unlike the casting of LaBute's Nurse Betty star Ren�e Zellweger in the forthcoming (and very English) Bridget Jones' Diary, the choice of Paltrow, who honed her British accent on Shakespeare In Love and Sliding Doors, shouldn't raise any eyebrows. "She's frankly good," says LaBute. "She's adept at it. I knew she wouldn't have to go through the kind of thing I was watching Ren�e go through playing Bridget Jones. We couldn't even have a press conference about Nurse Betty without people saying 'Could you do the dialect for us?' I knew it was past that."
LaBute is currently living in London during pre-production, having scouted locations including Whitby and Lincoln, along with casting a nearly-all British support cast. Backing Paltrow and Eckhart will be Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle as the Victorian poets, with roles also for Trevor Eve, Toby Stephens and Anna Massey.
LaBute, who adapted the novel with screenwriter Laura Jones came to the book originally as a reader. "I read it a few years ago, and loved it," he says. But - with two previous directors already having tried and failed to adapt it - LaBute's efforts to film it mark the tenth year that the novel has been in the hands of Hollywood. "I was looking at the book from a nationalistic perspective," he says. "My experience of going to the Royal Court, of being the big, loud American, with everybody looking at you. I saw a lot of that in the book."
Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle have joined Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart in USA Films/Warner Bros.' co-production Possession for director Neil LaBute. The project is slated to begin shooting this week in London.
Possession is an adaptation of A.S. Byatt's 1990 novel of the same name about a pair of literary sleuths who unearth the amorous secret of two Victorian poets only to find themselves falling under a passionate spell. USA Films is slated to release Possession domestically, with Warner Bros.Pictures handling international rights.
LaBute revised Laura Jones' screen adaptation of Possession, which has Paltrow as an English academic researching the life of poet Christabel LaMotte (Ehle). Eckhart plays an upstart American scholar in London on a fellowship to study Randolph Henry Ash (Northam).
Toby Stephens also joins a cast rounded out by Anna Massey, Graham Cowden, Trevor Eve, Tom Hollander and Tom Hickey.
Paula Weinstein and Barry Levinson are producing with David Barron executive producing.
Northam's most recent credits include The Golden Bowl, Happy, Texas, An Ideal Husband and The Winslow Boy. Repped by ICM, Northam will next be seen with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet in Intermedia's Enigma.
Ehle, who recently won a Tony Award for her performance in The Real Thing, stars on screen in Istvan Szabo's Sunshine for Paramount Classics. The actress, repped by WMA and London agent Sally Long Innes, also starred in the 1995 miniseries Pride and Prejudice and last year's indie feature This Year's Love.
Stephens, repped by ICM, most recently was featured in Space Cowboys, Onegin and Cousin Bette.