Laying Down the Law
March 2004
By Joanna Schneller

AT FIRST, ANTHONY MINGHELLA HAD NO IDEA WHAT HE was looking at. It was early morning, barely dawn, foggy and bitterly cold. The director was being driven to the “Cold Mountain” set in a remote corner of Romania, “full of that familiar apprehension and misery that you have each day when you’re shooting,” he says, and something was loping down the road in front of him. “Just a silhouette of a creature; I couldn’t work out what it was.” He thought it might be a bear. The cast and crew saw them all the time in Transylvania; after dark, they strolled the streets of the village where the production was bivouacked. As he got closer, however, Minghella realized the figure was Jude Law, his leading man, out for a run.

This was not unusual. For months, Law had been bulking up to play Inman, a farmer, carpenter, and Confederate soldier who deserts after a near-fatal injury and walks hundreds of miles home to Ada (Nicole Kidman), the minister’s daughter he loves with blind and blinding faith. “She’s the place I’m heading, and I hardly know her,” Inman says. Law was determined to grow strong not by working out in a gym, but by doing things Inman would have done: digging ditches, sawing wood, hammering nails.

That’s why his silhouette was odd – he wasn’t simply jogging. He was running down a road at sunrise before a grueling day of shooting with his trainer on his back. “His trainer,” Minghella says, “is a very, very big man.”

Inman doesn’t say much. Law has maybe 50 lines in the entire movie. “Jude didn’t have the luxury of language, the ability to make his performance through the turns of the lines, so he was determined to get inside the physicality,” Minghella says. “Not simply to get some muscles, but a sense of endurance. I kept saying to him, ‘It’s Sisyphean, this film. You’re constantly knocked over and knocked back; you’ve got this huge weight on you.’” He carried his trainer because he wanted the weight.

JUDE LAW HAS BECOME WEIGHTY IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE. HIS performance as Inman is the nearest thing to a lock this awards season, earning both Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Actor. After shooting “Cold Mountain”, he signed on for a string of films with Hollywood’s most sought-after directors, including Martin Scorsese, David O. Russell, and Mike Nichols. And if biology is destiny, then it is only a matter of time before Law is the ruler of everything: The man is biology’s proudest achievement.

“He’s very sexy, he has charisma and this great, dry wit; he’s incredibly charming and truly a brilliant actor. Jude somehow got it all,” says Charles Shyer (“Father of the Bride”, “The Affair of the Necklace”), who just directed Law in a remake of Alfie, the 1966 film that helped define the sexual revolution and made Michael Caine a star. “And he’s a well-adjusted guy; I’m very envious of how together Jude is at such a young age. If a director gets the chance to work with him, he should jump. It’s like a vacation.”

And it doesn’t hurt that he’s hysterically good-looking. His clear, pale eyes are a blue-gray-green, swooningly romantic – in them, you can see the sky, the sea, infinity. He has masses of silky hair, which he wears squinched into not curls, but whorls; a jawline so sharp you could open cans with it; a husky, cultured voice. Thankfully, he’s also modest, or he would be intolerable.

On top of that, he is a serious young man, calmly thoughtful, insightful without being pretentious. At 31, he is a happy, unconflicted father – of Rafferty, 7; Iris, 3; Rudy, 18 months; and Finlay, 13, his ex-wife Sadie Frost’s son from her first marriage. “When we did ‘Ripley’, I was so dazzled by how devoted Jude is to his family,” Gwyneth Paltrow says. “His kids and his parents were around all the time. I remember thinking, ‘Such a young guy, so good-looking, but he really knows what he wants, he really loves being a family man.’ We’d be working, and he’d say, ‘I can’t wait to go home and crawl into bed with my babies.’ I wish I had a photograph of that, the most gorgeous man in the world curled up with the most gorgeous children.”

His recent divorce from Frost has darkened the skin under his eyes. The roughening-up looks good on him, though, as do the extra pounds. Before, his cheeks were almost too elfin, his body too delicate, as if his bones were hollow reeds. Now he seems more hero-sized, wiser, every inch the leading man.

IT IS LUNCHTIME IN MID-DECEMBER, THE DAY AFTER COLD MOUNTAIN’S NEW York City premiere and its party at the New York Public Library, where everyone was hugging – from Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein and producer Sydney Pollack to costars Nicole Kidman, Kathy Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Natalie Portman – and hundreds of guests wandered the candlelit halls eating southern barbecue. Law arrives at the restaurant in his hotel a few minutes late, apologizing impeccably, wearing jeans and a fitted midnight-blue blazer that, as he steams through his publicity duties, will also make appearances on Charlie Rose and Conan O’Brien. His voice is as rough as stucco from too little sleep and too much yap. Formerly a vegetarian, he began eating meat to play Inman and hasn’t stopped. At lunch he orders chicken and salad, and butters his bread with gusto. “And please bring a glass of this wine,” he politely tells the waiter, “but not with the salad, only with the chicken.” When his meal comes, he doles out generous portions to share. Throughout, paparazzi with long lenses stand shivering on Central Park West and snap photos through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Law cutting his food and wiping his mouth with his napkin.

The common line on Law is that he’s a reluctant leading man – that he has resisted his beauty and the lure of Hollywood. Although he has stood out in every film he has made, on paper his choices were “wrong.” He played a weakling in “Gattaca”, then two gay roles in a row, in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “Wilde”, followed not long thereafter by “the girl’s part” (second lead to Jennifer Jason Leigh) in “Existenz” – all considered death to an actor with ambition. When he finally played to his looks, in “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, he got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination (his character, Dickie Greenleaf, was so gorgeous and burnished that he even looked like an Oscar), though he lost to Michael Caine for The Cider House Rules. After a graceful turn as the robot Gigolo Joe in “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, he uglied himself up (patchy hair, terrible teeth) to play Tom Hanks’ hitman in “Road to Perdition”. Only now, runs the general consensus, with Law’s scalding work in “Cold Mountain” – in which Inman’s passion appears all the hungrier because it is so controlled – is he finally willing to embrace his starry fate.

But that thesis could not be further from the truth. There is nothing reluctant about Law and his success. From the beginning, he vowed to accept nothing less. “I’ve always known the kind of directors I’ve admired and want to work with, and the same with actors,” he says. “If I was never given a chance to be part of that scene, then I would take it as a message and get on with something else. I only want to be doing this if I know for a fact that I’m improving, that I’m still learning and still enjoying and challenged.” He’s simply taking his time, playing it smart. “I avoided certain parts in the last nine years because I didn’t like them. Or I didn’t have faith in the director, or I didn’t like where playing a certain part would lead me. I’ve always been a fan of, ‘Have an opinion, but be able to back it up with experience, some knowledge.’ I wanted to make sure I had all of that in my back pocket. Because I see this as a long journey. It’s about making films, being in plays in my eighties, I hope. We live in a very disposable age. I don’t want to be disposed of.”

“You could see him trying to build his sense of himself as an actor before he was a movie star,” Minghella says. “The fact is, you can be both. I said to him, ‘There’s nothing you can’t do. Why do you imagine there is? It’s all right to kiss a girl, fight with a guy. You can do all those things and convince me.’”

“Cold Mountain” was a departure for Law, however, in two ways. First, he had to “bare all,” he says. “There was nowhere to hide in affectations or technique. Quirks were not an option. Inman needed to be an open pore, an open heart. This is the biggest clich?, but he had to be me.”

On the day Minghella – who had previously directed Law in “Ripley” – met with the actor to discuss playing Inman, they talked a lot about readiness – “whether Jude believed as an actor that he would be able to take on the burden of a film,” the director says. “Which is very, very different from dazzling for a few minutes. The job of the leading actor has to be approached with great respect. Because this film is about a journey, new cast members were arriving 12, 15 weeks into shooting. They turn up and wonder what kind of film are they in? How do they acclimatize? The job of that is partly mine, but it’s also the actor’s they’re going to be working with. Jude took that duty so conscientiously. I remember seeing him with Natalie Portman [who plays a widow terrorized by Yankee troops], just sitting and contextualizing the filming, welcoming her. He worked very hard to make her feel comfortable. And to enable her. This all sounds rather fuzzy, but it’s very, very important. An actor who’s just showing up to do his bit, then walking away again, can be very damaging. I was looking for an ally in the film, and he is that.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of generous actors, but Jude is at the top of the list,” says Philip Seymour Hoffman, who costarred with Law in both “Ripley” and “Cold Mountain”, in which Hoffman plays a fornicating preacher on the run. “For that scene where Inman comes upon me in the swamp, Jude was miked, standing waist-deep in murky water full of stumps. Any miscalculation of his steps meant that he would fall in and have to wade out, change, dry off, and be rewired. I, meanwhile, was off-camera on dry land, but I was struggling; it was one of those days when I couldn’t get it right. I think he fell in four times. Anyone else would have blown up. I would have. But from Jude, I never heard a frustrated word. He would walk right out, change, go back, and he was always a mensch. I respected the hell out of that.”

The second way in which “Cold Mountain” differed for Law is that it marked the beginning of a string of work unprecedented in his career. Formerly, he would often do one movie a year. In the last two years, he has made seven. “I wanted to change the game a little bit,” he says. “I thought it would be interesting to create a sort of rep situation, where I was literally walking from one to the next. I’d never done that, and I don’t know that I’ll ever do it again. But it’s certainly a new energy level. You can probably hear it in my voice.”

LAW FINISHED HIS WORK ON COLD MOUNTAIN IN DECEMBER 2002. IN February ’03, he started “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”, a stylized paean to the futuristic comic books and films of the ’30s, set in a reimagined 1939 New York City. Law is the title character, a pilot who saves the world from evil robots, and Gwyneth Paltrow plays his girl, Polly Perkins, a reporter in marcelled hair and fitted suits designed by Stella McCartney. The film, due this June, is a wholly original fusion of live action and computer-generated imagery, a process that fledgling writer-director Kerry Conran developed over several years on his garage computer. Shot on high-definition video in a barren, blue-screen soundstage over six weeks, the film used no sets and hardly any props. “It was like staging an experimental play, only with cameras and close-ups,” says producer Jon Avnet. Computer-generated locations, including the Himalayas, the jungle, and the deepest sea, were added later.

“After ‘Cold Mountain’, it was terrific fun,” Law says. “Not hugely taxing or resonant particularly in its depth. But it was a challenge, because it was make-believe on a whole new level.”

“The film is a fun adventure, but it’s not camp, it’s not a spoof,” says Conran. “We needed actors with a weight and credibility that are not normally associated with the comic-book genre. Jude made everything I was trying to do a thousand times better. I’m biased, but I think what people will see now that he’s becoming more public is that he’s one of the greatest living actors.” The only piece of set they built was a quarter of the Sky Captain’s cockpit, stuck on a crude gimbal, shaken by stagehands. “It was pivotal that the scenes of the captain flying at 200 miles an hour come off as realistic, but they never did in our tests,” Conran says. “When it was finally Jude in the cockpit, he was so compelling, he was able to persuade me that what I was looking at was real.”

“At first it was thrilling; we moved so quickly and everything was so cool,” Paltrow says. “But after the third week we were seasick from the blue screens, and kind of punch-drunk. At one point, Jude and I were trapped in the cockpit for three days. There was no air, it was really claustrophobic, and Jude would say, ‘It’s okay, we can get through this without freaking out. Unless…’ And then he’d threaten to fart, and we’d just crack up laughing.”

After “World”, Law flew to L.A. to shoot “I Heart Huckabee’s”, directed by David O. Russell (“Flirting With Disaster”, “Three Kings”). He plays Brad Stand, an alpha-male chain-store executive who has amassed all the trappings of success, including a trophy girlfriend (Naomi Watts) – until his soul is investigated by “existential detectives” Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, and his high-flying life breaks down. “I love David’s humor, and the story seemed relevant, both politically and spiritually,” Law says. “It’s the kind of movie I haven’t seen made lately, which I think needs to be made. David is interested in what he can subvert under what seems to be an approachable comedy.”

“What happens to the character mirrors what was happening to Jude in his personal life,” Russell says. “He was going through a lot of shit, and he would have had a legitimate excuse for giving us less, or being a bitch, or hiding. But Jude’s a real artist. He was willing to use all of it, the laughing, the weeping, the vicious anger. He was game, available for anything, and a total ball. That, to me, says a lot about his character.”

Law pinged to London for two weeks of rehearsals on “Alfie”, then ponged to Montreal for a week to do a small part as Errol Flynn in Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator”, a biopic of Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Then he went back to London and New York to shoot “Alfie” opposite a host of gorgeous women, including Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Jane Krakowski, and Sienna Miller, a young British TV actress who is now Law’s girlfriend.

Shyer cowrote the film with Law in mind. “I loved him in ‘Ripley’,” he says, “and I thought it was time for him to really step out, to stop playing the other guy, the character role, and play the lead.” Law resisted at first: “I am a huge fan of the [Caine] film, and I’m not a fan of remakes. And I knew that any involvement would mean crucifixion in the British press. Not without good reasons, too. But it struck me that, in the same way a theater director may do two or three productions of Hamlet in their lifetime, here was a very interesting exercise in taking what has become a classic role, a unique, honest look at life, and using that to have a look at how we’re doing in the modern day.”

“Working with Jude was the best experience I’ve had with an actor, honestly,” Shyer says. “He collaborated on the script, he’s in every scene. The paparazzi were after him and Sienna the whole time. They were lining the street, shooting from rooftops, but they never rattled his concentration.”

Law finishes “Alfie” tonight; tomorrow he begins rehearsals on “Closer”, based on the award-winning play about two sexually adventurous couples, with director Mike Nichols and costars Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts. Later this year, he will narrate “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”, starring Jim Carrey. And as a producer, he’s developing a remake of “Sleuth”, the twisty 1972 heist picture that starred Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. Harold Pinter is writing the new screenplay, Caine will take on Olivier’s role, and Law will play Caine’s. They hope to shoot it later this year.

“I’ve liked [the new pace]. I’ve very much poured myself into it,” Law says. It’s like discovering a new muscle. Running on, not empty, but fumes. Trying to calculate uncharted territory with a third eye, rather than using both eyes and a well-prepared map.”

AS LAW’S PROFESSIONAL LIFE SOARED, HOWEVER, HIS PERSONAL LIFE HIT some big rocks. He became the subject of countless headlines: Oct. 7, ’02: During a children’s birthday party at London’s Soho house, Law’s daughter Iris accidentally swallows a tab of ecstasy she found on the floor. (Frost rushed her to the hospital; she was fine.) Jan. 9, ’03: Law and Frost pull out of their production company, Natural Nylon. Jan. 28: Law and Frost to work together to save marriage. Jan. 3: Frost in hospital suffering postnatal depression. Feb. 11: Law and Frost call in divorce lawyers. March 5: So-called “intimate” pictures of Law and Kidman dancing at a “Cold Mountain” cast party are published, prompting the two to deny a sexual relationship. (Kidman sues two tabloids and wins.) Aug. 15: Frost files for divorce, citing Law’s “unreasonable behavior.” Aug. 18: Frost calls police after row with Law outside their home. No charges are filed. Sept. 10: Law to remove Sadie tattoo (lyrics from the Beatles’ “Sexy Sadie”) from his left forearm. Oct. 29: Law and Frost granted a divorce, to be finalized six weeks later.

“It’s remarkable how much has changed in such a short period of time,” Law says. “I love the resonance of the phrase, ‘The best of times and the worst of times.’ That’s been my year.” His gaze wanders out the window but snaps back when it hits the photographers outside. “I still consider myself a part of a very loving family. No one will ever take that away from Sadie and me and our four children, no matter what gossip is thrown at us. It’s just sad that relationships go through changes. Couples end up having to go on separate paths. But that’s also positive, if on that path you discover a new place of happiness.”

“We’re very quick to say nowadays, ‘That’s a failure’ or ‘That’s broken up,’” he continues. “It’s the wrong kind of terminology. I don’t think we’re going to learn anything till we stop reading tabloid bullshit. Seriously. I think that’s going to kill us. But in a funny way, if there ever was a [tabloid] motive to hurt us, it failed so badly, because if anything it made us stronger, made is clearer to us that we are what we know we are as a family unit.”

As if to prove his point, Law’s parents, former teachers now retired, materialize at the table holding Law’s daughter, Iris, fresh from the carousel in Central Park. (With the help of nannies, his parents, and his assistants, Law keeps his children with him as much as possible when he’s working.) A tiny beauty in a fur-trimming coat and pink boots, nose and pink as a puff of cotton candy, Iris tries to snuggle into Law’s lap and squeaks when his parents urge her away. “Go find Raf,” Law says. “Will you tell him something for me? Come here, I’m going to whisper it.” Whatever he murmurs into her ear makes her grin. “Give us a kiss,” he says, passing her back to his mom. “No!” she says, delighted. “Come on, give us a kiss,” he mock-whines. She does, then happily scoots off. “They look alike, don’t they, my mother and daughter?” Law asks. “Being a parent is your chance at immortality, to have resonance in the world. You could argue that it’s the only chance.”

Still, wasn’t it hard for Law to be making “Cold Mountain”, a story about the unshakable power of love, at the moment in his life when love was faltering? “I still have great faith in love,” he answers. “Life is a lesson, isn’t it? Our only test is what we choose to learn from it. In my opinion, going through hard times, dark times, especially in relationships, isn’t something to use as an excuse to block yourself up, to shy yourself away. It’s there to instruct you, guard you. One thing I’m trying to do at the moment ? because I realize I haven’t spent enough time in my life doing it ? is trying to learn to love myself. I’ve never really given that any thought until this year, and it’s really very important.”

Now it’s Raf’s turn to appear at the restaurant window, in the arms of Ben, Law’s assistant. Hair as blond as butter, bundled up like the Michelin tire man, he waves once, then toddles away. “Children get so much from your state of mind, your state of heart,” Law continues. “If you’re running around apologetically, feeling ‘Oh, God, this isn’t a proper life,’ they’re going to pick that up. Your responsibility is to yourself, to say, ‘I do what I do, I love them dearly, I’ll make sure they know that, and I’ll share my life with them.’ This is my life. My mum and dad’s life was very different. They were teachers, they were home every night at 5:30. I kidded myself for years that I should be the same. That changed only after I worked with several actors who were parents, who said, ‘What are you talking about? This is a great life. Look at where your children have already visited, look at the experiences they’ve had. Embrace it, let them embrace it.’ Who’s to say the only way to bring up children is in a nine-to-five environment? It’s not that I’ve got the answers, or have achieved some nirvana. It’s still a process. It’s just helpful to ask those questions.”

LAW IS DRAWN TO FILMS THAT ASK BIG QUESTIONS, TOO, ESPECIALLY THOSE that explore the boundaries of goodness. “On the whole, I am unable to commit to anything I don’t really believe in. I’ve not yet found the mode of being an actor who turns up to get paid. At times, I wish I did. I suppose I look for a message, for a sense of worth to commit to in the films or the part. I’m a great believer that stories with some kind of place in the moral stratosphere are the best.” He has been offered paycheck films, of course. He won’t say which, “because I think it’s distasteful to say what one didn’t do when others chose to. But there’s more than enough money to be made, making films that have some worth, something to say for themselves. I’m a snob, I guess. I can only be in films that I know I’d go see. I’m not a fan of action movies. I want to see something that has some heart, or at least brains.” Perhaps tellingly, his latest pictures – “Alfie”, “Closer”, “I Heart Huckabee’s” – zero in on how people treat one another in relationships. “Jude would always say to me, ‘This movie is really about something: How you deal with people comes back on you,’” Shyer says.

So, Jude law is ready for the world, and the world is hungry for him. What does that feel like? “Right now it feels, very simply, rewarding,” Law answers, unblinking. “Hugely rewarding. One of the strange moments for an actor is when you realize that you can get work, but it’s more about defining to yourself what kind of work you want to get. Because for so many years, you just want to get work, period. Ant [Minghella] put it beautifully; he said, ‘For so many years you’re waiting to hear yes, until you have to learn to say no.’ That’s my responsibility now.”

“Jude deserves everything that’s coming to him, and I hope he gets that and much more,” Philip Seymour Hoffman says. “But he’s an actor first. He won’t be searching out hero roles. He’ll be just as quick to take another ‘Road to Perdition’ as another ‘Cold Mountain’.”

“It’s a challenge to be true to yourself,” Law says, pulling back from the table. A car idles outside, ready to whisk him to his next appearance. “You kid yourself, you make light of it? ‘Yeah, I had a great year.’ Do I feel this is ‘my time’? Not quite yet, no. I would like to think I would know when it was. If I don’t, then I hope someone will tell me. Give me some warning.”

Dear Mr. Law, consider yourself warned.