News

Hallmark Co. Busy on New Projects
February 07, 2006
By Nellie Andreeva

Just weeks after buying back their company Hallmark Entertainment, Robert Halmi Sr. and son Robert Halmi Jr. already are busy working on an ambitious slate of longform projects.

The company, which has reverted to its original name, RHI Entertainment, is prepping two four-hour miniseries to be filmed back-to-back in Asia in the spring and summer: "Marco Polo," about the famous Venetian traveler, eyed by ABC, and "Son of the Dragon" for the Hallmark Channel, with David Carradine and Rufus Sewell attached to star.

"Amazing Grace", a film about the English abolitionist, William Wilberforce (played by Ioan Gruffudd), with Rufus in the role of Thomas Clarkson, began production on October 29, 2005. It also stars Albert Finney and Michael Gambon.

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Premiere photos
London
December 7, 2005

Rufus and his niece, Zakia

Rufus, Zakia, and brother, Caspar

Sundance line-up announced
Time Out London
http://www.timeout.com/film/news/785.html
December 2, 2005

'The Illusionist' – Edward Norton stars opposite Paul Giamatti, Rufus Sewell and Jessica Biel in this period piece about a magician in turn-of-the-century Vienna.

Sundance maps out premieres
The Hollywood Reporter
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=
Dec. 01, 2005

.....Neil Burger's "The Illusionist," starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Sundance favorite Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell, explores fin de siecle Vienna and magicians who can conjure up the spirit world.

Shrew be do be do
Digital Spy
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds26626.html
Friday, December 9, 2005

If only are real politicians were as entertaining as Shirley Henderson’s marvellously vile Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.
Vile and venomous and almost chewing the furniture , Henderson was superb and Rufus Sewell was marvellously off the wall as the eccentric aristocrat tasked with doing the taming.
This was cracking tongue-in cheek adaptation and it was marvellous that Henderson’s Kate remain spiky to the last. Great telly.

Gambon and Sewell join 'Amazing Grace'
Two fine British thesps join the cast of Michael Apted's anti-slavery drama.
Time Out London
http://www.timeout.com/film/news/770.html
November 24 2005

Michael Gambon and Rufus Sewell have joined the cast of 'Amazing Grace', which began principal photography in the UK this week.
Directed by Michael Apted ('The World is Not Enough') and written by Steven Knight ('Dirty Pretty Things'), the film tells the tale of William Wilberforce, an 18th century MP who navigated the complicated world of backroom politics to end slavery in the British Empire.
Ioan Gruffudd ('Fantastic Four') plays Wilberforce, while Romola Garai ('Vanity Fair') has been cast as his wife Barbara Spooner and Albert Finney ('Big Fish') will play his friend, confidant and the inspiration for his actions, John Newton.

'Amazing Grace' also features musician Youssou N’Dour in his acting debut, playing Olaudah Equiano, an African slave who bought his own freedom, moved to London and went on to became a leading anti-slavery figure.

Gambon and Sewell Have Such "Grace"
Dark Horizons
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/051123c.php
Posted: Wednesday November 23rd, 2005 11:55pm
Source: Reuters
Author: Garth Franklin

Michael Gambon, Romola Garai ("Vanity Fair") and Rufus Sewell have joined the cast of Michael Apted's "Amazing Grace" reports Reuters.
The trio joins a burgeoning cast for the Walden Media movie that is toplined by Ioan Gruffudd as British anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce and Albert Finney as Wilberforce's confidante John Newton. Shooting began this week.
The story follows Wilberforce's 18th century political career, which placed him at odds with some of the most powerful men of the time, including the king.

"Dark City" by Alex Proyas resembles its great silent predecessor "Metropolis" in asking what it is that makes us human, and why it cannot be changed by decree. Both films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled. Both are parables in which a dangerous weapon attacks the order of things: a free human who can see what really is, and question it. "Dark City" contains a threat more terrible than any of the horrors in "Metropolis," because the rulers of the city can control the memories of its citizens; if we are the sum of all that has happened to us, then what are we when nothing has happened to us?

In "Dark City" (1998), all of the human memories are newly fabricated when the hands of the clock reach 12. This is defined as "midnight," but the term is deceptive, because there is no noon. "First came darkness, then came the Strangers," we are told in theng narration. In the beginning, there was no light. John Murdoch, the hero, asks Bumstead, the police detective: "When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?" Bumstead is surprised by the question. "You know something?" Murdoch asks him. "I don't think the sun even exists in this place. I've been up for hours and hours, and the night never ends here."

The narration explains that the Strangers came from another galaxy and collected a group of humans to study them. Their civilization is dying. They seek to find the secret of the human heart, or soul, or whatever it is that falls outside their compass. They create a vast artificial city, which can be fabricated, or "tuned," whenever they want to run another experiment.

We see the tuning taking place. All humans lose consciousness. All machinery stops. Changes are made in the city. Skyscrapers are extruded from the primordial materials of the underworld, architecture is devised, rooms are prepared for their inhabitants, props are set in place. Aided by a human scientist, the Strangers inject memories into the foreheads of their test subjects. When humans awaken, they have no memory of the day before; everything they remember has been injected from a communal memory bank. If a man commits murder one day and then is given a new identity, is he still capable of committing murder? Are men inherently good or evil, or is it a matter of how they think of themselves? The Strangers need to know.

Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) has developed an immunity to the devices of the Strangers. His latest memory injection was incomplete. It was administered by Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), a scientist who works for the Strangers but has no love for them. Murdoch wakes in a hotel room with the corpse of a dead woman; the script for the day has made him a serial killer of prostitutes. Schreber warns him he is the subject of an experiment but has proven resistant to it. The Strangers are coming for him, and he must flee.

That sets the story into motion: Murdoch wanders through the city, trying to discover its underlying nature; Detective Bumstead (William Hurt) tries to capture him, but will gradually be won over by Murdoch's questions (he is programmed as a cop, but not a very good one; he keeps complaining, "no one ever listens to me"). Then there is the torch singer, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), who remembers that she is John's wife and loves him, and that they met at Shell Beach. Everyone says they know how to go to Shell Beach. But no one seems able to say exactly where it is.

The Strangers occupy the bodies of human cadavers. Most of them are tall; one is in a child's body but is no child. The alien beings themselves, living inside the corpses, look like spiders made of frightened noodles. They can levitate, they can change the matter of the city at will, they have a hive insect organization, they gather in a subterranean cavern to collectively retune the city. This cavern has visuals reminding us of two Fritz Lang films: the underworld mechanisms in "Metropolis" (1927) and his "M" (1931), with the pale faces of criminals rising row above row into the gloom.

In October, I went through "Dark City" a shot at a time for four days at the Hawaii Film festival, with moviegoers who were as curious as I was. We froze frames, we dissected special effects, we debated the meaning of the film, and our numbers even included a psychiatrist who told us of the original Daniel Schreber, a schizophrenic whose book on his condition influenced Freud and Jung.

Sometimes during the shot-by-shot analysis, we simply froze a frame and regarded it. Some of the street scenes echo paintings by Edward Hopper or Jack Vettriano. This is not only a beautiful film but a generous one, which supplies rich depth and imagination and many more details than are really necessary to tell the story. Small wonder that the name Bumstead appears, perhaps in honor of Henry Bumstead, one of the greatest Hollywood art directors. The world created by the Strangers seems borrowed from 1940s film noir; we see fedoras, cigarettes, neon signs, automats, older cars (and some newer ones -- the world is not consistent). Proyas wrote the screenplay with David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs; the screenplays Dobbs wrote for "Kafka" and Goyer wrote for "Batman Begins" contain some of the same notes sounded here.

Proyas likes deep-focus compositions. Many interior spaces are long and narrow. Exteriors look down one street to the vanishing point, and then the camera pans to look down another street, equally long. The lighting is low-key and moody. The color scheme depends on blacks, browns, shadows and the pallor of the Strangers; warmer colors exist in human faces, in neon signs and on the billboard for Shell Beach. "I am simply grateful for this shot," I said in Hawaii more than once. "It is as well-done as it can possibly be." Many other great films give you the same feeling -- that their makers were carried far beyond the actual requirements of their work into the passion of creating something wonderful.

I believe more than ever that "Dark City" is one of the great modern films. It preceded "The Matrix" by a year (both films used a few of the same sets in Australia), and on a smaller budget, with special effects that owe as much to imagination as to technology, did what "The Matrix" wanted to do, earlier and with more feeling.

The poignancy of "Dark City" emerges in its love stories. At a crucial point, John Murdoch tells Emma, "Everything you remember, and everything I'm supposed to remember, never really happened." Emma doesn't think that can be true. "I so vividly remember meeting you," she says. "I remember falling in love with you." Yes, she remembers. But this is the first time they have met. "I love you, John," she says. "You can't fake something like that." And Murdoch says, "No, you can't." You can inform someone who they love, and that is what the Strangers have done with their memory injection. But what she feels cannot be injected. That is the part the strangers do not understand. Emma has a small role but it is at the heart of the movie, because she truly knows love; John has still to discover it -- to learn about it from her.

The Strangers are not evil. They simply proceed from alien assumptions. They are not even omnipotent, which is why Murdoch, Bumstead and Schreber have relative freedom to move about the city. At the end, we feel a little sorry for them. They will die surrounded by happy beings whose secrets they could not discover.

Notice anng shot that approaches the hotel window behind which we meet Murdoch. The window is a circular dome in a rectangular frame. As clearly as possible, it looks like the "face" of Hal 9000 in "2001." Hal was a computer that understood everything, except what it was to be human and have emotions. "Dark City" considers the same theme in a film that creates a completely artificial world in which humans teach themselves to be themselves.

Note: Ebert did commentary tracks for the original DVD of "Dark City" and the forthcoming 2006 Director's Cut. There are Great Movies essays on "Metropolis," "M" and "2001" online at rogerebert.com.

A friend and I saw a cut of DARK CITY almost a year before it came out at one of those test screenings. When I saw it, I RAVED to everyone I knew that it was hand down the best film of the year and perhaps one of my favorites of all time.

When the film finally came out, I excitedly brought my girlfriend to the movie, and watched in horror as the film that I saw and loved had been completely re-cut!

Now I know you love this film, and I know people who love the film, but honestly, you don't know how wonderful this movie was before it got butchered.

I can't say for sure what cut of DARK CITY will be released in this new special DVD, but the version I saw was far superior to what actually came out. It's been awhile, but I'll attempt to elaborate what made the film different.

1. There was nong scroll with Kiefer Sutherland's VO telling you about the aliens and how they had been watching us. The film just put you into the environment. We had no idea of time and place or that any "alien" was watching the human characters. We discovered these things slowly as the film developed. This change had a major impact on the whole film, because without that lame VO and scroll, you have no idea what kind of world the story is taking place in. Is this a comic book world? A period piece? A fantasy? Then when you discovered the answers, it packed a powerful punch. It was hands down one of the biggest Wow's I had at the movies ever.

2. The editing style had completely changed! The film originally played out it's scenes in a more Kubrick like fashion. The version I saw a year later was cut like a Michael Bay movie. I distinctly remember a scene where Jennifer Connelly and Rufus Sewell are having a conversation in a room. Originally, it was a wide master shot and two close ups. The pace was slow, methodical, but never boring. The tone was mysterious and engrossing. Suddenly, in the new version, this scene was harshly edited with 1 - 2 second cuts between the actors. THEY WERE JUST TALKING FOR GOD'S SAKES. Clearly, someone felt the pace was too slow, so they had to SPEED UP the tempo of the scenes. I found it intrusive.

3. The music, like the editing had changed. Now the cut I saw might have had a temp track, but the style was mysterious and outer worldly. The new cut was more pulsating, loud and clangy. Again, it seemed like they were trying to speed things up. Never mind that this loud clangy soundtrack was pounding during mere conversations.

4. In the first cut, the aliens themselves were like little scorpions when they left the humanoid shells. They were a more physical effect. Either stop motion, or puppets. Perhaps they were temporary effects, but they looked much better than the glowy MORTAL KOMBAT video game things that flew out of their bodies in the current version. The original creatures were goopy and real. The later ones were as you remember, a computery looking effect.

There were more changes including more or less of the guy writing all over the walls of his apartment. I can't remember if that was new to the later cut or if there was more in the original. The fact is, I haven't watched DARK CITY in awhile, but that first cut was a great experience which I cannot wait to re-explore on DVD. To all of you who love DARK CITY, you don't know what you missed. Hopefully this will be the cut that gets released.

Thanks, Rai!

He plays the charismatic French aristocrat Armand in Zorro 2, who apart from wooing Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) after her recent separation from Don Alejandro (Antonio Banderas), is attending to his clandestine duties as the head of an ancient fraternity.

Rufus Sewell, who turned 35 on Oct 29, feels that the good thing about being involved in a sequel is that everyone knows what they are doing. “It’s not a new director, it’s not a new Zorro...you know they’ve got that bit sorted out. You know what you’re slotting into so I quite liked it,” he says during an interview in Los Angeles. As the relative newcomer to the cast, Sewell did feel a little like the outsider when working on the sequel, but he still enjoyed his stint opposite Banderas and Zeta-Jones.

Rufus Sewell. “It was great, very nice. He was very warm and very welcoming,” he says about working with Banderas.
Playing an old acquaintance of Zeta-Jones’ character was easy since the situation actually mirrors reality. “I knew her from years ago – we have mutual friends – and I’ve seen her like 10 years before. It was nice seeing Catherine again and doing the scenes with her was fun.”

One of the things he likes about his scenes with the Welsh beauty is that he gets to show a more charming side to his character. “I was playing the guy as what he wants to present himself to the world. So it wasn’t just being evil from Day One but he was evil when provoked. If you didn’t provoke him, you’d think him a very charming, magnanimous entrepreneur,” he says.

But a question begs to be asked. Why is a Brit playing a Frenchman? “When someone says to me: ‘Do you want to play a French guy?’ I say ‘yes’. I don’t say ‘Why don’t you get a French person?’ In case they go ‘Oh, good idea!’ “I’m not going to be the one who suggests they do something else. (I guess) what they wanted is some kind of suggestion, they want someone pretending to be a charming Frenchman but who in fact is someone else. So that’s what I did, I hope it turned out.”

Prior to filming, Sewell spent two months in Mexico in preparation for his role. He held to a routine of two hours of horseback riding in the mornings and two to three hours of sword fighting after lunch break. He did this everyday for two months, six days a week. Even with intense training, the sword fighting scenes were the most challenging to shoot. “There was always something that they didn't quite count even though it’s been worked out within an inch of its life. There’s always some logistical problem, which means you had to change it. And when you’ve learnt something with body memory – that it just happens automatically – it’s very difficult to adjust. It was tricky,” he explains.

Sewell, who has played villains in A Knight’s Tale and Bless the Child is aware that his portrayal of Armand may leave him typecast as the baddie. So why does he keep accepting such roles? “Because I’ve played one and that’s the way it is. It seems to be that way with the big Hollywood films – that’s if they come my way – because it’s a proven commodity,” he says. “It’s going to look the same on the back of a DVD sleeve; it’ll look on the trailer like I’m just playing another baddie, but as long as it’s sufficiently a different character – it’s not the same guy – I don’t care.”

(transcript of the above interview)
Playing the Sewell

FATHERLESS AT TEN, A HOMELESS TEARAWAY AT 20, DIVORCED AT 33 – NO WONDER RUFUS SEWELL WAS TYPECAST AS DANGEROUS A BROODING. BUT NOW THE ROLES ARE MATURING WITH THE MAN, SAYS MARIANNE MACDONALD.

The Evening Standard Magazine
November 4, 2005
Photographs by Derrick Santini
Styled by Nicky Yates

The actor Rufus Sewell is famously dishy – Mr. Pouty, Mr. Broody, Mr. Achingly Handsome. One journalist said his family motto should be, ‘I smoulder, therefore I am.’ He leapt into the ‘hot new actor’ slot 11 years ago as Will Ladislaw in the BBC adaptation of Middlemarch. Madonna, pre-Ritchie, promptly took him to Le Caprice, and then he had a fling with Kate Winslet. The tabloids lapped him up. He was the ultimate beautiful bad boy, an ex-shoplifter and druggie – his late father Bill had been a roguish Soho artist, and Rufus was homeless while at drama school, Central.
Today Rufus is best known for playing evil Count Adhemar opposite Heath Ledger and Paul Bettany in the film, A Knight’s Tale, and the roistering king in the 2003 Charles II: The Power and the Passion. Married to Amy Gardner, 26, and with a three-year old son called Billy, his profile is lower than it was. But his great struggle, you soon learn, is to avoid his God-given vocation as a Byronic hero. He spent his time at the height of his success wanting comedy parts. Now at 38, he is getting his way – not only are directors casting him differently but time has waved its magic wand and the man with a cigarette staring at me has morphed from curly-haired heart-throb into a burly man with a broad face and powerful green eyes.
‘Yeah, I feel I’ve grown into myself,” he volunteers, helpfully ferrying his ashtray and Diet Coke to come and sit at the desk in a big-windowed suite at the Great Eastern Hotel. ‘When I was younger and working, I never felt quite comfortable in myself – like I was waiting for my late thirties! I had all this energy I couldn’t pour into the parts I was playing because people were asking me to sit still on a f***ing horse! I wanted to be shaving my head, or going up the Amazon. Just different things. Because I feel the one thing I have as an actor is total versatility. I was delighted by Middlemarch, don’t get me wrong – I felt I’d pulled off some trick! But I also felt I was having to impersonate an attractive person, and I just wanted to go, “Bleaugh!”
Because he minded the emphasis on his looks? ‘No, I want to be as good-looking as I can be! “Thank God I’m getting ugle!” F*** that!” He grins. ‘Course I wasn’t bothered by that! It helped me get jobs. But it didn’t get me the jobs I wanted!” He grins and takes a swig of Coke. It is ironic, really, that while making Cold Comfort Farm, Carrington, The Woodlanders, and Dangerous Beauty, he was longing for something more like his latest project, which is so much less glamorous – playing a drunken eccentric version of Petruchio in the BBC adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. ‘Well, it had me written all over it in a way I don’t think people realise,’ he points out. ‘It’s modern language and very funny. Shirley Henderson is playing Kate, who’s an opposition politian, and the Petruchio character – he’s not called Petruchio in this – is a cross-dressing, pisshead trustafarian. I’ve always enjoyed comedy more than anything else, but I find for some reason people don’t tend to see me that way, which slightly gets on my tits. And this at least was a really big, daft character who’s pissed half the time and dresses up as a woman.’
Meeting Rufus, you can see why be would like that. In the flesh he doesn’t have a scrap of broodiness. Endearingly warm and blokeish, he is transparently straightforward and occasionally oddly defensive. ‘If someone asked one of my friends, “Which one is Rufus?”, they wouldn’t say, “Oh, he’s the dishy one over there,” he remarks. ‘They’d be more likely to say, “He’s that twit in the corner making a fool of himself.” He is childlike at times in the earnest way he frets about being typecast. ‘It’s very difficult – there are always compromises. The things I’ve done in my past that I’m least proud of, I’ve ended up having to do because I held out too long for something special,’ he ponders gloomily. ‘So I’ve ended up having to accept a part of lesser quality than the things I’ve been turning down in anticipation. I mean it’s not like a big sob story. I’ve done really well in comparison with lots of people, but it’s a very difficult game to play.’
On that front, however, things are looking up. Earlier this year he co-starred with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Legend of Zorro and also made The Illusionist with Edward Norton. ‘It was fun, being in a really big-budget film,’ he says of Zorro. ‘I play the French count who’s the new man in Catherine’s character’s life and has more to him than meets the eye. And I think people might not consider it the type of part that I play, but it’s not the kind of thing I turn down either,’ So did he snog Zeta Jones, I put in hastily, before he cans hop on that hobbyhorse? ‘I did.’ He grins. Was that fun? He looks rather worried. ‘I – yeah, she’s very professional.’
The tabloids have always been keen to paint him as a lothario. But he actually seems fairly monogamous. In the early Nineties he lived with actress Helen McCrory. In 1999, he married an Australian fashion journalist named Yasmin Abdullah. That ended the flowing year. Two years later his girlfriend, Amy Gardner, got pregnant. They married last year. When I ask why his first marriage broke down, he blows out a stern plume of smoke. ‘I don’t want to talk about that. Certainly not. I understand you asking about it, but when people talk about things like that in interviews, I think, “Shut the f*** up!” Who are you telling? Shit happens.’
But the truth is that, despite being a global sex symbol, he always seems to have regarded himself as the podgy teenager he once used to be. ‘I haven’t got over my 15-year-old fat-boy suspicions of women,’ he confessed in 1994. ‘You’re talking to someone who couldn’t get girls at school because he was fat and not at all good-looking. I never liked good-looking people. I used to think they were a bunch of smarmy gits.’ Another time he admitted: ‘It’s nice that women fancy me, but I feel I can only disappoint them. I prefer it if they don’t know who I am.’
Who he actually was was the son of a boozy painter and animator called Bill, who came to

England

from

Australia

in search of his poet hero Dylan Thomas. Bill met Rufus’s Welsh mother Jo in a record shop in Soho; the couple had Rufus and his older brother Caspar before breaking up when Rufus was five. The boys then ran riot during a bohemian upbringing in Twickenham.
Bill died with Rufus was ten. He began shoplifting, dying his hair and truanting from his comprehensive, Orleans Park. ‘It seems so classic now,’ he remarks. ‘I went through a period of shoplifting, bunking off, throwing bricks, getting into fights and hanging around with a rough mob. God, I think I nearly killed my mother or at least took a couple of years off her life. She’d have the truant officer round, she tried everything.’ He was continually being taken to police stations for doing things like running out of a Wimpy without paying.
‘In

Australia

my dad had been an electrician and I think, at one point, a wrestler,’ he goes on. ‘I have a strong memory of waiting on corners, really pissed off, for him to stop talking to tramps about life!’ He gives a wry laugh. ‘And my mum really had to struggle to make ends meet. Even before he died, my dad was, in a loveable way, kind of useless. He was away and quite neglectful money-wise, so she had to do jobs that were – I won’t say demeaning, but not particularly high powered, or well-paid. And she was struggling with two extremely difficult, precocious kids. She’d work selling vegetables or in pubs, very hard, to keep it all together.’
Acting seems to have saved him from disaster - more crime, maybe prison. His school drama teacher, Tina Hurley, gave him the money to audition for Central. He admitted frankly that revenge was his motivation. ‘It’s to do with a bunch of six-year-olds I didn’t get on with at school, and the teachers who thought I was mentally subnormal and talked to my mum about sending me to a special school.’ Now he murmurs aloud that it could all so easily have gone another way. ‘God knows what my life would have been like.’
Did he shoplift at Central? ‘I did. I was caught with smoked mackerel and hummus. They’d assigned a store detective to me, because it was how I got my lunch every day.’ Was he that poor? ‘I was. I mean there were probably poorer people than me. I was bloody lazy! I didn’t have a job or anything. At Central I used to sleep in the loft where they stored cushions.’ He grins at the memory. ‘It had a window and, I think, a sink. And a corrugated iron door that you could lift to jump into the alley. I even had people back!’At drama school, he carried on being late and bunking off classes. ‘Then, at the end of the year, they threatened to chuck me out unless I got my act together. I think, not to get too psychological, I was like that because of my dad. He was always late and got away with it. I thought that was what cool, loveable people were like. I think that actually held me back quite a bit – childhood notions of what was loveable and cool.’
I say it must have been amazing when he started earning money. ‘It didn’t happen immediately,’ he says. ‘I got a job performing at the local prison. And I had a great agent, and I was getting really high-class auditions, and everything looked great. But then my job came to an end, and I didn’t get any of the jobs I auditioned for, and that was that. For a very long time. It was five years before I got Middlemarch. And then at the same time I got Arcadia at the National. That was fantastic. They were two very different parts for which the same floppy haircut did! Never any worries then about “I don’t want to play romantic leads’ – why the hell not?’
These days he lives with Amy and Billy in ‘the Bush,’ as he calls Shepherd’s Bush. ‘I’ve been married to Amy quite a long time,’ he observes with pride. ‘Since the January before last. I love the fact that no one knows about it. It was as far as you can get from a Hello! wedding. She and Billy travel with him to sets. ‘I love reading him stories. What does he get up to? Putting bogeys somewhere – I don’t know! Amy writes scripts, so she just brings her laptop along. She comes along for two weeks at a time, then goes back, just so we’re basically together and no one goes nuts.’
He leaps up to find me a picture of Billy. ‘Isn’t he lovely? I don’t want to give a big talk about how I’ve mellowed, because it’s not an immediate thing – you’re still quite capable of being a dickhead after having a child!’ He sits down. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit defensive as regards the presentation of myself as the new, calm Rufus Sewell. But I think a lot of things have changed, bit by bit. I’m definitely more balanced – though I still have enough neurosis to keep me going!’
I ask him what he likes doing: ‘My favourite things are just wandering from place to place, going to cafes, taking photographs. My favourite day is a happy accident. I feel I’ve grown into myself – for my benefit, and my family’s,’ he says. ‘Whether that’s reflected in my career is beside the point, really. Hopefully, it will be, because I feel I could go back to some of the parts I didn’t feel myself in then, and fill them now, much more.’

Amazing Grace

"Amazing Grace" a film about the abolutionist, William Wilberforce, with Rufus in the role of Thomas Clarkson will begin filming on October 29. Ioan Gruffudd will play Wilberforce and the cast includes Albert Finney and Michael Gambon. Some of the scenes will be filmed in Westminster Abbey.

more on "Amazing Grace"

Rufus has just finished a short subject with Emily Mortimer directed by Wes Craven - part of a series of 20 pieces
by great directors called "Paris, je t'aime".
more about "Paris, je t'aime"

thanks, Rai and Rufus!

Spotlighting News - Bucharest, Romania
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
http://www.spotlightingnews.com/article.php?news=55

... When these angry tyrants come with plans of their own, Zorro(Antonio Banderas) is called upon to save the day against his new nemesis, Armand (Rufus Sewell). ...

Antonio Banderas And Catherine Zeta-Jones Are In Paris Promoting Their Latest Film

The two celebrities could have been seen in Paris on Monday posing to promote their latest movie,"The Legend of Zorro". All this is part of the promotion tour of what is expected to be another box-office hit.

The plot starts six years after the last Zorro (starring movie legend Anthony Hopkins) film. Now, he's back with an all new installment where he has been quietly settling with his own family in San francisco.

His little boy, Jouqauin, is now 10 years old and remembers nothing of his father's secret life. When these angry tyrants come with plans of their own, Zorro(Antonio Banderas) is called upon to save the day against his new nemesis, Armand (Rufus Sewell).

Also, Elena(Catherine Zeta-Jones) will be in mask as the try aspiring wife and new partner of Zorro.

The film will be realeased in cinemas all over the world starting October the 28th.
thanks, Rai!

Broadway.com
September 8, 2005

Conor McPherson's Shining City to Play Broadway After All
by Cara Joy David

Conor McPherson's Shining City will be seen on Broadway this season after all. The play has been picked up by the Manhattan Theatre Club and willat the Biltmore Theatre on May 3. The show is taking the MTC season slot that was to go to Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie, which has now been pushed to next season.

Set in Dublin, Shining City tells the story of a man who comes to a counselor seeking help. He claims to have seen the ghost of his recently deceased wife. But what begins as an unusual encounter becomes a desperate struggle between the living and the dead--a struggle which will shape and define both men for the rest of their lives.

The show, directed by McPherson, ran last year at the Gate Theatre in Dublin and London's Royal Court. It was announced to play San Francisco's Curran Theatre from September 13 through October 9 and thenat Broadway's Schoenfeld Theatre on November 10. Rufus Sewell, Stanley Townsend, Geraldine Hughes and Keith Nobbs were to star in the U.S. mountings. However, in early August, both the tryout and New York production were indefinitely postponed. No casting has been announced for the MTC mounting of Shining City, which will begin Broadway performance on April 13.
http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=517489
thanks, Rai!

Rufus reported on September 8 that he would not be available for this production.
Ginny

The Broadway run of Conor McPherson's "Shining City" has been indefinitely postponed, according legitimate theatre news reports on August 4, 2005.
more on "Shining City"

Mel Gibson, Citizen Culture Magazine Challenge Church of Scientology
Wednesday May 18, 12:00 pm ET

The article, entitled "Scientology's Night at the Movies," was written by editor-in-chief Jonathon Scott Feit, based on earlier research published in the Journal of Media and Religion. Feit writes that Bless the Child "resembles so closely the reality of events and perceptions surrounding the Church of Scientology that it seems to have been written, in everything but name, as an expose of Scientology's seedy internal operations."

Bless the Child, which was co-produced by Paramount Pictures and starred Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell and child prodigy Holliston Coleman, performed less successfully at the box office than The Passion (re-released in March as The Passion Recut), which highlighted Gibson's fundamentalist Christian views.

Feit writes that, "Scientology is either Hollywood's latest 'dirty word' or its Holy Grail, depending on who is being asked. In the twenty-first century, to denounce it publicly or shun it is to risk being blacklisted as were celebrities and filmmakers suspected of being Communism-friendly in the 1950s.

"Gibson's professional proximity -- and perhaps friendship -- to his colleagues of high grandeur [including noted Scientologists John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and others], not to mention the Hollywood political game, may explain the film's cryptic bludgeoning rather than outright deprecation of Scientology."

In Bless the Child, "The New Dawn" -- a fictionalized religion that borrows Scientology's symbols and rhetoric -- is ultimately defeated by Catholic believers. The film differs significantly from the novel of the same name, which emphasizes the power of faith as a hopeful force, but does not side with any particular religion.

Issue #5 of Citizen Culture Magazine is on-sale now at Barnes & Noble, Hudson News, and directly from www.citizenculture.com. Other highlights include interviews with Bill Maher of HBO's Real Time and actor Steve Zahn, a special feature on independent fashion design, and articles written by two of the country's leading Jewish and Muslim scholars.

thanks, Rai!

Rufus Sewell's star rose in the mid-1990's with performances in the television costume dramas Middlemarch and Cold Comfort Farm, and as Emma Thompson's lover in Christopher Hampton's film Carrington. Since then he has striven to avoid being typecast as a Byronic hero and seized on less conventional roles. In 2001 he was praised for his revelatory performance in John Osbourne's Luther at the National Theatre, and brought dissolute magnetism to the title role in BBc's Charles II. He is back on the big screen this year in Tristan & Isolde and a spot of blade-swishing in The Legend of Zorro.

Favorite films:
A Matter of Life and Death
Being There
Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Defining moment 'My first job, with Tim Piggot-Smith's Compass theatre company. I played a Franciscan friar in one play and a midly deranged skinhead in the other at the same time. We were performing in prisons in the morning and at Theatre Royals in the evening, and luckily the same haircut did for both.

Greatest influence 'Keith Harris'

Survival kit 'An iPod loaded with a radio documentary programme called This American Life ; travel books by Norman Lewis (and omitted from the original quote) 'and me Crack-Pipe.'
thanks, Rufus and Minx!

Rufus Sewell's favourite films: A Matter of Life and Death, Being There,
Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Daily Telegraph
London, England
5/16/2005

Christie, Nicola

Barely a week after he had agreed to perform in the Old Vic's upcoming 24 Hour Plays, John Hurt has pulled out. ``It's an availability thing,'' says Old Vic New Voices producer Kate Pakenham. ``Last year we didn't know Jim Broadbent would do it until three days before.'' The good news is that Miriam Margolyes (Ladies in Lavender, Harry Potter) has joined the team of actors, which includes Rufus Sewell and Greg Wise. And what about Ray Winstone, who pulled out at short notice last year? ``I am going to call him now...'' The event on June 19 consists of six plays that will be cast, written, directed and staged in just 24 hours. Kevin Spacey will again host the event.

What's on Stage News
17th May 2005 -

Hurt & Sewell Raise Star Count for 24 Hour Plays

The star wattage for the Old Vic’s 24 Hour Plays – in which six new plays are written, rehearsed and performed in a single day - is burning bright for the event’s second year. Amongst the high-profile stage and screen actors now confirmed to take part in the event on Sunday 19 June 2005 are: John Hurt (pictured), Rufus Sewell, Saffron Burrows, Hugh Dancy, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Damian Lewis, Gina McKee, Nina Sosanya, Indira Varma, Ewen Bremner, Eva Birthistle and Greg Wise.

Proceedings for this year’s even begin on the evening of Saturday 18 June when six writers – who this year will include Roy Williams (Sing Yer Heart out for the Lads, Fallout), Rebecca Lenkiewicz (The Night Season), Enda Walsh (Disco Pigs) and Steve Waters (World Music) - six directors and up to 24 actors gather at the West End theatre, bringing no more than a prop and costume each.

After working overnight and through the next day, the event culminates on Sunday evening when the resulting six ten-minute plays will be premiered before a live, gala audience. The event will be introduced by Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey.

Last year’s inaugural event – whose participants included Penelope Wilton, Alex Jennings, Rosamund Pike, Ray Winstone, Emilia Fox, Paul Nicholls, Catherine McCormack, Meera Syal, Neil Pearson, Jared Harris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Sophie Okenodo - raised �50,000 for the theatre’s Old Vic New Voices developmental work. This year, the concept is also being extended to budding actors, directors and writers who will be able to take part in a second event, sponsored by coffee chain Starbucks, on 31 July.

Ticket prices for the 19 June gala range from �50 to �500 for a VIP package. For further information, email the organisers or call .

- by Terri Paddock
http://www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E

DAILY MAIL (London)
May 13, 2005

Baz Bamigboye

Hugh Dancy has also agreed to appear with a host of other actors, including John Hurt, Rufus Sewell, Saffron Burrows, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Gina McKee in the latest Old Vic 24 Hour Plays on June 19. The idea is for a group of playwrights and actors to write, rehearse and perform six short plays at the Old Vic in just 24 hours.

TIMES ONLINE
May 12, 2005

People with Andrew Pierce

Basking in the critics’ mild approval of The Philadelphia Story, the Old Vic has unveiled details for the 24-Hour Plays next month, which will be introduced by Kevin Spacey and a team of playwrights and stars including John Hurt and Rufus Sewell. They will attempt to write, rehearse and perform 6 plays in 24 hours.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1608180_1,00.html
thanks, Rai!

The Evening Standard
10/5/2005

KEVIN SPACEY'S Old Vic is to host a theatrical experiment that will see six new plays written, rehearsed and performed in one day. Actors Saffron Burrows, John Hurt, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Damian Lewis and Rufus Sewell will take part in The 24 Hour Plays on 19 June. Last year's inaugural 24 Hour Plays saw Oscar winner Jim Broadbent
take to the Old Vic stage, raising �50,000 for its new talent development fund.
thanks, Gillian and Rai!

Old Vic Theatre - 24 Hour Plays
Daily Telegraph

Following the phenomenal success of last year's gaga performance, The 24 Hour Plays celebrity fundraiser is back this year - on 19th June - and will once again be followed by a glamorous party at The Old Vic.
Due to last year's feverish demand, tickets for 2005 will be allocated via a ballot system. If you would like to receive further details about ticket prices and requesting your place, please email activ, putting '24Hour Gala Tickets' in the subject line.
Proceeds from the event will support the work of Old Vic New Voices.The 24 Hour Plays fund-raising event is produced in association with The 24 Hour Company and Planet Impact.
http://www.oldvictheatre.com/24hour/gala.html

Click here for more information about The 24 Hour Plays worldwide.
http://www.24hourplays.com/upcoming.html
thanks for the links, Ukelelehip!

Rufus Sewell
Born: October 29, 1967
Actor
Famous for: Being a period-drama heart-throb
The six-foot-tall Englishman got his start treading the boards in the British capital, winning the London Critics Circle Theatre Awards best newcomer gong in 1992. Since then he's made his name in a number of costume dramas, including the TV mini-series Middlemarch as well as big screen turns in Dangerous Beauty, Cold Comfort Farm, Dark City and A Knight's Tale.
http://www.hellomagazine.com/profiles/rufussewell/