The Talented Mr. Law
January 2000
By Susan Irvine

In his latest role, Jude Law loses his identity but ends up stealing the show. Susan Irvine meets Britain’s golden boy.

America is about to feel the full force of the Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley, director Anthony Minghella’s first film since The English Patient. In it, the swooningly handsome Jude Law consistently steals scenes from Matt Damon in his role as Dickie Greenleaf, a hedonistic playboy living the fast life in Italy in the 1950s. In Ripley, Damon is sent from America by Law’s millionaire father to fetch him home. Instead, he gets seduced by Law’s life and sucked into his identity.

“Imagine,” says Law, 27, sitting in a London café, “me having to walk on the set and play it cool with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow. Matt had just won an Oscar. I mean, even the crew, which was pretty much a mirror of The English Patient, all had Oscars tucked in their back pockets.” He laughs incredulously, a deep, chocolaty laugh.

At home in England, Law is at the center of his own sort of British brat pack, which consists of his actress wife, Sadie Frost, and fellow actors Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor, and Sean Pertwee. Together, the so-called “fanciable five” make up Natural Nylon, a production company that coproduced David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. “When you’re young you’ve got to do work that’s got a risk,” says Law, who appeared in the film. “Most of the films that I do have flaws.”

It was on the heavily flawed British joyriding flick Shopping that Law first met Frost. After she gave birth to their son, Rafferty, they were married on a barge on the Grand Union Canal. Law says they had flirted briefly with the idea of a Quaker wedding. “Have you heard about it?” he asks. “Your friends stand in a circle and you kneel in the middle, facing each other. You don’t say anything; you just hold each other’s gaze.”

Clearly this boy was made to play romantic leads. Women are particularly charmed by the fact that he seems to be besotted by his wife; he even has SEXY SADIE tattooed on his arm. “I was not the guy who got all the right girls,” he claims. “Until I met Sadie.” So how, finally, did Law acquire the aching cool he radiates in Ripley? “I made a noneffort. You know, I’m not that kind of Method actor who walks around with a hump on his back. I’d come home from the set and be, like” – he snaps his fingers- “right, let’s go out!”