Dark & handsome
December 13, 2003
By Shari Roman

The sleek car carrying Jude Law slips slowly along the back streets of London’s legendary Pinewood Studios, from the shooting stage to his dressing room for lunch and a short rest. As the enormous sound stages – which have hosted mega-films such as Tomb Raider, the James Bond series and Alexander the Great – wash by in the golden afternoon light, the 30-year-old actor looks out the window. His almond-shaped eyes are watchful, his graceful body deceptively slumped into the back seat. This is Jude Law in a rare moment of solitude, and you may be sure that his mind is far from blank.

In wardrobe earlier, he could pass for a close cousin of his Oscar-nominated Dickie Greenleaf, the resplendent wastrel from director Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley. As befits his current role – he is shooting an ‘update’ of Michael Caine’s career-making, silver-tongued lady-killer in Alfie – Law is smoothly tailored and subtly erotic in a pink shirt, smooth dark trousers and shiny black shoes.

Although he is reported to have said once of Cinderella that he had always thought Prince Charming was the most boring role and would rather play the Wicked Witch, today he looks as if the royal treatment suits him just fine. Law tweaks his cufflinks with a flourish, poses and laughs. “I’ve done this batch of spiritually searching roles,” he says, in the frayed tone of one who has sat too many exams.

“I was ready to relax, to play a philanderer, a guy who is out for himself. He’s blatantly honest about women. A great face, a great body, beautiful breasts – that’s what interests him. It’s what a lot of men feel,” he adds ingenuously, while casting himself out of that category.

Toying with various theories that give rise to biogenetics, society, cultural behaviourism, Law argues back and forth with himself until surrendering. “Oh well. It is completely politically incorrect, of course, and it doesn’t mean it’s right, but it is true and has been going on for hundreds of years. And we shouldn’t necessarily pretend to cover up the basics of human behaviour, should we?

“Thank goodness women, generally, are more interested in a man’s soul,” he adds playfully.

Mentally, he is miles removed from his south London, working-class roots, where he was unstintingly teased by the neighbourhood children for his beauty. And geographically he is far, far away from his seven-month acting stint in Romania, where he rejoined Minghella for Cold Mountain, playing a battered Confederate soldier who flees the horror of the Civil War and makes his way across the Blue Ridge Mountains to rejoin Ada (Nicole Kidman), the woman he loves. His pilgrimage brings him into strange and sometimes perilous situations with thieves and slaves, bounty hunters and characters that could be doppelgängers for angels or demons.

Adapted from the lauded novel by Charles Frazier, and enriched by an outstanding cast that also includes Renée Zellweger, Natalie Portman and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the production itself was marauded by tabloid controversy. Kidman recently won damages after suing a tabloid newspaper for printing a story claiming that she had an affair with Law, and caused the split from his now ex-wife Sadie Frost.

Tipped for a slew of awards and receiving breathless advance word, the success of the project seems to rest squarely on Law’s shoulders. “It is, to me, a film about looking for one’s soul, about looking for life and love amid tragedy. One learns something on every film,” he says slowly, “and Cold Mountain, in so many regards, was an interesting turning point for me – physically and mentally.”

Based in part on the Greek legend The Odyssey, Law’s character, Inman, is a warrior badly wounded and incurably disillusioned by war. And although it is set during the American Civil War, Law points out that it retains a sense of otherness, of another world.

Endurance-wise, Law knew he had to be in good shape. Not only was it slated to be a long shoot, but he was playing an extremely physical character, a man of the land. “In taking on the part, I wanted to share the responsibility of the job at hand with Anthony [Minghella]. I wanted to keep my morale and spirit high for the sake of myself, for the cast, the crew, for everyone’s contribution to the film.

“Of course I want it to achieve, for all the obvious reasons. But, on the other hand, there is also this selfish element to it – that audiences perhaps won’t understand.

“Tarkovsky once said that cinema is like poetry – it’s a collaboration of gifts, which comes together in so many different mediums.

“For seven months, I was with 200-odd people in the mountains of Romania, in North Carolina, all with different gifts to share. I had this amazing experience,” he offers buoyantly, “so if you don’t like it, screw you. I think it’s great.”

Law is unafraid to parody what genetics have given him; a braver feat than one might presume. In an age where one is increasingly dependent on the eye, on the swashbuckling of the movie star, Law – in his own anarchistic fashion – continues to hold tightly to his convictions.

Minghella has said, “It’s odd that the camera finds in him a lot more edge and darkness than he possesses off-screen. On screen, he’s absolutely alluring and tantalising, but also dangerous company, which is what makes him so seductive. He gives such a sense of somebody saying yes to life, of living with the volume controls turned up.”

Reaching the building that houses his dressing room, Law bounds up the stairs two at a time, announcing various excited thoughts over his shoulder, from “Are you hungry?” to “We’ll be in New York in a couple of weeks” and “I’m starving”. He pushes open the door. “What book did you say you were reading?” he asks. “Can you write that down for me?”

There are no signs of stardom here. The room is simple; a mussed-up bed, a fridge, bland pastels. Photographs, lovingly worn at the edges, of his children – Rafferty, Iris and Rudy – have been lodged into a mirror above a table that holds heaps of papers and correspondence. Law is pointing out various items that might take my fancy – “Wine? Water? Um… water?” – and begins shedding items of clothing.

Unloosening his tie, his belt, kicking off his shoes and dropping back all in one movement, he stretches out on the sofa, tucking his right hand over his stomach, under the waistband of his trousers. He lets out a huge, satisfied sigh and smiles, radiating happiness. But it is only for a moment. He jumps up and snatches another pillow to bolster his head before he relaxes back in a liquid motion into the sofa. “A therapist,” he muses softly, languorously, “would say I am not questioning enough how comfortable I am.” He waves his hand at the tape recorder and laughs. “Let the analysis begin.”

He explains, “I’m at an interesting point where I have three children, and I’ve begun to worry about where life will take them.” His gaze shifts over his snapshots of them.

Despite his marital difficulties, fatherhood and the love of his family will always be at the centre of his life. “You can see in them, in their ideas, that anything is possible, as they are surrounded by creativity. And at the moment, they are fearless about that.

“My eldest son, who is seven, in a way is prompted by what I do. He makes films. He writes them, he films them; he is at home with the medium. My daughter, she comes to me, and she has invented a dance. And one can explain by saying, ‘Oh look at their parents…’ but I also wonder if they will get to a stage where they will question all that. And then doubt themselves.” He pauses. “Do we all do that? Why is it when it is all right there in front of you, you begin to question it?”

As the second child of Peter and Maggie, both teachers – his elder sister Natasha is a photographer – Law grew up in Blackheath. While performing in a school play at the age of six, he has said, he found that he naturally understood “the concept of creating imaginative scenarios”. By the age of 12, he had enrolled at the National Youth Music Theatre.

Only five years later, he broke into public consciousness opposite Kathleen Turner, finding himself nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway for Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles, wherein he spent the first scene of the second act naked in a bathtub. Of course, superlatives and top tens were heaped upon him, and still are, for his looks, but the Tony Award was not for a pretty face.

Even then, as an actor, he had a magic flaw; when he gets an idea into his head, he cannot bear to release it. Instead, he lets it run through his body like a current of electricity. It is a flaw that no one wants to remedy.

“For Road to Perdition, I wanted a soft-voiced, gentle killer who could bring a combination of danger and charisma to the role,” director Sam Mendes has said. “I knew Jude could do that. He can create something utterly three-dimensional and complex without ever uttering a word. Plus, he has enormous presence. He has got that movie-star quality of being able to suck the camera into his eyes.”

“It’s movement, it’s certain natural energy that you bring to the part,” offers Law. “It’s manipulating that energy. The surprise of how one can adapt to anything – pushing it with or against another actor, the director, the environment. It’s also instinct. Freeing yourself to know that this person, this situation, is going to take you to the places you want to go.”

He pauses, runs his hands through his hair and shrugs. “Want me to be honest? By the time I was 23, I had spent nine years in the theatre being an actor. I didn’t want to step into the world of film and be accused of being a pretty boy. The new, young, hot, good-looking thing.”

He twists one ankle over the other and rolls his eyes. “The truth is, one can work for another ten years and be playing parts, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You’re still tainted with that brush. I’m not called Jude Law, I have three names; I’m called ‘Hunk Jude Law’ or ‘Heartthrob Jude Law’.”

He brushes pieces of imagined dust off his trousers and laughs. “In England anyway, that’s my full name. That’s the cheap language that’s thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn’t look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.”

Everyone is vulnerable who is both gifted and gregarious. But when Law takes on a character, he injects the essence into his system rather than tattooing it all over himself. The latter is the star’s way, and Law purposely shrinks from it. And yet, that need to prove himself above and beyond is perhaps why he throws himself so completely into his work.

For the war epic Enemy At The Gates, he was unwashed, unshaven. Crawling around in mud and slime, he even caught a little shrapnel. In Gattaca, he refused to walk during the entire shoot. In The Talented Mr Ripley, he broke a rib after falling backwards while filming the murder scene on the boat. During the last year’s London stage production of Faustus, he caught a blood infection that laid him flat out in hospital for five days.

Generally, he is rarely ill. And he confesses that it was this hospital stay that permanently dented his youthful immortality and made him delirious with a workaholic fervour. One man’s anxiety is an audience’s pleasure – which is why Law may seem to be appearing in half the films opening this year and next.

He has David O Russell’s latest work, I Heart Huckabee’s, coming out, as well as The World of Tomorrow, which he also produced, and a war movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. Next year is also completely booked out with three films; the adaptation of Patrick Marber’s play Closer, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events with Jim Carrey, and Tulip Fever with Kiera Knightley, which was scripted by Tom Stoppard.

His long-time assistant, Ben, enters the room with a tray of food and cutlery. Discussing the details of the week’s schedule, he lays the food on the table. Law rushes towards him, nearly engulfing him in his arms before Ben, laughing, manages to extricate himself.

After eating, Law rises from his chair, buttoning his shirt before returning to the set. He invests the simplest departure with an atmosphere of truant adventure; he leaves the room for all the world as if through that other door something cheerily illicit is about to occur. And should you be so lucky as to fall into his good graces, he might just take you along. He turns. “If you had asked me the question, ‘Do you plan your life, do you plan your career?’, I’d have said no. You have to use what you have. You find your way there organically rather than by the usual paths.” His eyebrows briefly shoot skyward, signifying a thousand stories.

“One gets into things at an angle that is available. I still do. That is the logic of life. After that, it’s all up to you. And for the moment,” he considers, “I am moving along, exactly to where I am supposed to be.”