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photo: Ivan Kyncl
Luther
Contacting Rufus
Rufus Sewell
% Julian Belfrage Associates
46 Albemarle Street
London WIX4PP
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many admirers who have contributed to these pages.
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created October 2000
last updated November 26, 2001
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RUFUS SEWELL is one of Britain's most charismatic and versatile actors.
His combination of talent, good looks, self-deprecating wit, and courage
in taking unexpected roles, makes him unique among his peers. These pages will
attempt to pay tribute to him, particularly through quotes from film, television, and
theatre.
LUTHER*
"LUTHER" by John Osborne, at London's Royal National Theatre
previews begiinning September 29, final
performance, November 14.
LUTHER Press
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The London Sunday Times 14 October
Rufus Sewell is the ideal actor to play him. Tense and controlled, the big, dark
eyes both watchful and inward-looking, he turns before you into a public solitary......
Sewell does not overplay the physical aspect: he is portraying the burden and the torment
of a deeply personal faith that has to pay a physical price as well. As the play goes on,
his face looks more and more like Cranach's famous paintings and engravings of Luther:
bleak and bony, intense but vulnerable. Theatre
World
It relies heavily upon an excellent performance by Rufus
Sewell in the title role. Rufus Sewell, in the guise of
the scathingly satirical Luther, then ascends the pulpit and gives a memorable, perfectly
acted sermon attacking religious dishonesty based on his fundamentalist reading of the
Gospels.
Morning Star 18 October
....As the flawed anti-hero, pitted against his world, Rufus Sewell
brings a quiet, austere dignity and power to the role, with his eyes darting around the
audience as if seeking out approval - and complicity - for his actions.
The Guardian 8 October
.....revelatory performance from Rufus Sewell.
......... The real surprise, however, is Sewell, who not only conveys
Luther's mixture of spiritual truculence and hollow-eyed physical fallibility but, in the
great set pieces, shows a fire and venom, and an ability to snap out the hard consonants,
that evokes this theatre's eponymous patron. |
What's On Stage 8 October
Sewell lives and breathes the role for
every second. Whether scrubbing floors with a zealous vigour, or in the grip of palsied
torment, his performance keeps you riveted ............Sewell is
awesome throughout. How does his voice stand up to it, you ask yourself? 'To go against
one's conscience is neither safe nor honest,' pleads Luther, with Osborne's wrathful face
swimming into view. |
The Evening Standard 8 October
It's Rufus Sewell alone, except when Malcolm Sinclair's
Cardinal wheedles and needles, who excites. His Luther develops and matures. At first
appearance, this scowling, black-cowled monk is all awkward humility and submission. But
his eyes have pent-up anger about them. He has all the supple tension of a cat about
to spring. His voice, when he confesses, has the throttled, fearful vehemence of a man
teetering on the verge of breakdown. By the time he has developed into a fully-fledged
rebel, and before the domestic finale with its hopes of heavenly after-life, Sewell
pitches heart, soul and voice into thrilling tirades of defiance.
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The London Times 8 October
Sewell’s face is gaunt, haunted by a religious panic that believably grabs hold of
itself to become fundamentalist frenzy. His performance is at its most powerful when in
the pulpit, shovelling scorn on the craze for relics, but elsewhere too, when brought
before superiors, his self-defences have a mellifluous and attractive cogency.
The Independent 10 October
Rufus Sewell's charismatically haunted, hollow-cheeked Luther spits out his set-piece
sermons like someone vomiting red-hot tin tacks.The
Daily Mail 12 October
Rufus Sewell, dark and raffish, plays the Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, with
a rasping passion and a permanent scowl.............
He commands the stage with a fine, natural gusto in Peter Gill's elegant production of
processions and Latin chants among the drapes and pillars of Alison Chitty's beautiful,
spacious design.
A Curtain Up
Rufus Sewell again handles a heavyweight part
with seeming ease. He is rarely off the stage in three and a half hours as he plays Luther
troubled by his constipation and his conscience. Sewell brings a likeable humanity to the
most intelligent monk of his generation.
*thank you Nadine and Marina for this photo, from the LUTHER
program.
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"SHE CREATURE"
directed by Sebastian Gutierrez
("Judas Kiss"), and starring Rufus
Sewell ("A Knight's Tale"), Carla Gugino
("Spy Kids") and Gil Bellows ("Ally McBeal")
on US television movie channels Cinemax and HBO,
beginning 4 October, 10:00pm EST.
Final
showing Friday, November 30 on HBO
http://www.cinemax.com/creaturefeatures/films.html
from Dark Horizons |
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Excerpts from "My Cultural Life" |
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"We filmed A Knight’s Tale in the Czech Republic, mostly because it is
five times cheaper than filming anywhere else. I had a lovely apartment in Prague, which
is a stunningly beautiful city. It is the most architecturally complete place in the sense
that, unlike Paris or London, or anywhere else for that matter, there are no modern
monstrosities that get in the way — until you get to the outskirts, where the Eastern
bloc buildings are really grey and depressing".
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"Some of the best travelling I have done is when I have been to a place
to work rather than as a tourist. One of the most beautiful times I have had was in Rome
when I was filming The Honest Courtesan with Catherine McCormack at the Cinecittà
Studios. I had a beautiful 14th-century apartment just off the Piazza Navona and, because
I had so much time off, my best memories are of walking around the streets, taking
photographs and sitting in cafés, being in this idyllic place and thinking: “God,
sometimes I am so lucky.” Consequently, when I think of Rome I don’t think of
the work but of the time I spent not working."
The London Times
September 8, 2001
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Count Adhemar
"A Knight's Tale"
"A Knight's Tale"
It's the kind of wine that steps up behind you,
taps you on
the shoulder and says, "I knew
your
grandfather".
Rufus, on
the set of A Knight's Tale.
West End Best
LUTHER (Royal National Theatre)
Rufus Sewell leads a stirring John
Osborne revival.
The Daily Mail 2 November 2001
Daily Mail - 12 October**
**thanks Marina and Helen,
for the picture |
