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Article : Jude Law : Not my own
Feature: The talented Mr Law
Jude Law’s private life made all the headlines this year. He talks to Maria Russo about divorce, children — and playing the lothario
Jude Law is in his pyjama bottoms. They’re striped blue and white, and riding low on his hips. Unfortunately, Law is not at his north London home, but at Pinewood Studios, remaking Alfie, the classic 1966 Michael Caine film about a ladies’ man who gets his comeuppance. He is working on a scene in which Alfie stands shaving at his bathroom mirror. Shirtless, Law looks directly into the camera and says: “Go on — turn around!” The camera does not oblige (who would, really?), so Law drops his chin slightly to give the camera an I-dare-you stare, then, with a defiant twist of his head, he turns his back, sheds the pyjama bottoms and steps into the shower.
Strangely for an actor who is rarely mentioned without some reference to his looks, Law has not played this kind of male-bombshell lead before. This delayed gratification was by design, he says, as he sits in his modest trailer at lunchtime, Alfie’s pyjamas back on. The 30-year-old is reflecting on the years he spent, if not exactly outside the spotlight, then at least in sideways relation to it. “It wasn’t a conscious choice not to be a movie star,” he says. “It’s just that I wanted to play as many parts as I could before I was 30, working with directors whom I would be learning from. I also took time off because of the children.” He nods toward the pictures of his three kids and stepson propped up at the end of the table.
Even while building that well-rounded resumé of supporting roles, Law drew the line at ladykillers. “Until now, I never wanted to play a lothario,” he says. “There’s a danger in your twenties that you’ll be labelled a heart-throb rather than an actor.” In an industry that feeds on a constant supply of fresh heart-throb material, you can see what the Alfie casting director was thinking: here was a swoonier Michael Caine, a Michael Caine for the metrosexual era.
There’s only so far you can play against looks like Law’s. But what makes it hard to take your eyes off him is the way he seems to embody interesting contradictions — he is composed and emotionally reckless; transparent yet harbours depths. Not that he is asking for your attention, exactly. Take Alfie’s brief shower scene. With its teasing look-don’t-look vibe, it manages to catch something essential about Law’s reluctant sex appeal: when his physical attributes become the centre of attention, there is clearly a mini-conflict going on inside him, and that conflict is part of the fascination he projects. It’s as if he wants you to check him out, but he is not sure he wants to submit to the superficial nature of the exchange.
In the end you look at Jude Law, and he lets you look at him, and all parties seem to come out of the transaction happy and energised, in the great tradition of cinematic male beauty. Still, Law’s is a singular brand. If he is a sex symbol, he is one who conveys that what goes on between men and women is not a game at all.
This is a guy, after all, who spent his twenties with one woman (Sadie Frost, whom he met when he was 21), raising their three children and a stepson. Perhaps more than anything, the air he projects — that sex is serious, powerful stuff — will define him as a leading man.
The past year seems to have marked a turning point for Law personally. The man who appeared to be bathed in a golden glow in countless glossy magazine profiles is coming face to face with life’s more brutal realities. As he was filming the part of Inman in Cold Mountain, his marriage to Frost was falling apart, “for all the usual reasons”, Law says. “You find yourself going in different directions, and you put a brave face on it for a while, until you can’t any more.” For someone who has not yet officially been crowned a movie star, he has been living the downside of stardom, namely the not-so-tender ministrations of the tabloid press, sent into a frenzy by the break-up. “I feel oppressed here,” he says of London. “You don’t expect sympathy, of course, but it’s embarrassing and intrusive, how people have treated this. I mean, it’s still a family.”
The making of Cold Mountain was by all accounts physically gruelling, filmed in isolated areas of Romania during a summer of record heat and torrential rain. “You walked around and you’d see these people who live with utter deprivation,” Law says, as a lunch of lamb arrives in his trailer. (A longtime vegetarian, he started eating meat to bulk up for Cold Mountain, and hasn’t stopped.) The filming sent Law on what he describes as a kind of “spiritual journey ”. “It was biblical, really — the heart of it was trying to depict the human soul on a journey back from hell.” He leans back and pauses, a forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth. “At what point does this person, who has lost his soul, really, at what point does he say, ‘I want to be loved’?”
It would be tidy to see the despair in Law’s personal life over the past year as the route to reaching the depths of Inman, his Cold Mountain character, but he rejects that. “What I was finding was something that’s been in me since I became a parent. You carry these deep emotions — you walk around with this atomic love for your children ...” He trails off. “Their vulnerability — it completely reshapes your heart.”
Law is worried, he says, that the spiritual-journey stuff sounds pretentious. “I don’t know how else to say it, though. Inman has such a moral centre. He’s the first character I’ve really learned from.”
Which doesn’t mean he is now seeking characters as role models. He is happy to take on the Alfies of the world and taste bigger commercial success. “You get to the point where you think, ‘Hmm, someone else is going to be paid all that money,’” he says, laughing. Why shouldn’t he be that leading man?
Feature: The talented Mr Law
Jude Law’s private life made all the headlines this year. He talks to Maria Russo about divorce, children — and playing the lothario
Jude Law is in his pyjama bottoms. They’re striped blue and white, and riding low on his hips. Unfortunately, Law is not at his north London home, but at Pinewood Studios, remaking Alfie, the classic 1966 Michael Caine film about a ladies’ man who gets his comeuppance. He is working on a scene in which Alfie stands shaving at his bathroom mirror. Shirtless, Law looks directly into the camera and says: “Go on — turn around!” The camera does not oblige (who would, really?), so Law drops his chin slightly to give the camera an I-dare-you stare, then, with a defiant twist of his head, he turns his back, sheds the pyjama bottoms and steps into the shower.
Strangely for an actor who is rarely mentioned without some reference to his looks, Law has not played this kind of male-bombshell lead before. This delayed gratification was by design, he says, as he sits in his modest trailer at lunchtime, Alfie’s pyjamas back on. The 30-year-old is reflecting on the years he spent, if not exactly outside the spotlight, then at least in sideways relation to it. “It wasn’t a conscious choice not to be a movie star,” he says. “It’s just that I wanted to play as many parts as I could before I was 30, working with directors whom I would be learning from. I also took time off because of the children.” He nods toward the pictures of his three kids and stepson propped up at the end of the table.
Even while building that well-rounded resumé of supporting roles, Law drew the line at ladykillers. “Until now, I never wanted to play a lothario,” he says. “There’s a danger in your twenties that you’ll be labelled a heart-throb rather than an actor.” In an industry that feeds on a constant supply of fresh heart-throb material, you can see what the Alfie casting director was thinking: here was a swoonier Michael Caine, a Michael Caine for the metrosexual era.
There’s only so far you can play against looks like Law’s. But what makes it hard to take your eyes off him is the way he seems to embody interesting contradictions — he is composed and emotionally reckless; transparent yet harbours depths. Not that he is asking for your attention, exactly. Take Alfie’s brief shower scene. With its teasing look-don’t-look vibe, it manages to catch something essential about Law’s reluctant sex appeal: when his physical attributes become the centre of attention, there is clearly a mini-conflict going on inside him, and that conflict is part of the fascination he projects. It’s as if he wants you to check him out, but he is not sure he wants to submit to the superficial nature of the exchange.
In the end you look at Jude Law, and he lets you look at him, and all parties seem to come out of the transaction happy and energised, in the great tradition of cinematic male beauty. Still, Law’s is a singular brand. If he is a sex symbol, he is one who conveys that what goes on between men and women is not a game at all.
This is a guy, after all, who spent his twenties with one woman (Sadie Frost, whom he met when he was 21), raising their three children and a stepson. Perhaps more than anything, the air he projects — that sex is serious, powerful stuff — will define him as a leading man.
The past year seems to have marked a turning point for Law personally. The man who appeared to be bathed in a golden glow in countless glossy magazine profiles is coming face to face with life’s more brutal realities. As he was filming the part of Inman in Cold Mountain, his marriage to Frost was falling apart, “for all the usual reasons”, Law says. “You find yourself going in different directions, and you put a brave face on it for a while, until you can’t any more.” For someone who has not yet officially been crowned a movie star, he has been living the downside of stardom, namely the not-so-tender ministrations of the tabloid press, sent into a frenzy by the break-up. “I feel oppressed here,” he says of London. “You don’t expect sympathy, of course, but it’s embarrassing and intrusive, how people have treated this. I mean, it’s still a family.”
The making of Cold Mountain was by all accounts physically gruelling, filmed in isolated areas of Romania during a summer of record heat and torrential rain. “You walked around and you’d see these people who live with utter deprivation,” Law says, as a lunch of lamb arrives in his trailer. (A longtime vegetarian, he started eating meat to bulk up for Cold Mountain, and hasn’t stopped.) The filming sent Law on what he describes as a kind of “spiritual journey ”. “It was biblical, really — the heart of it was trying to depict the human soul on a journey back from hell.” He leans back and pauses, a forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth. “At what point does this person, who has lost his soul, really, at what point does he say, ‘I want to be loved’?”
It would be tidy to see the despair in Law’s personal life over the past year as the route to reaching the depths of Inman, his Cold Mountain character, but he rejects that. “What I was finding was something that’s been in me since I became a parent. You carry these deep emotions — you walk around with this atomic love for your children ...” He trails off. “Their vulnerability — it completely reshapes your heart.”
Law is worried, he says, that the spiritual-journey stuff sounds pretentious. “I don’t know how else to say it, though. Inman has such a moral centre. He’s the first character I’ve really learned from.”
Which doesn’t mean he is now seeking characters as role models. He is happy to take on the Alfies of the world and taste bigger commercial success. “You get to the point where you think, ‘Hmm, someone else is going to be paid all that money,’” he says, laughing. Why shouldn’t he be that leading man?
lllllloooooooooove.
