![]() ![]() The Notting Hill script, he says, 'plopped through my letterbox in Tufnell Park in the most extraordinary way just over two years ago one rainy February morning. Nights in the theatre with Reg led directly to days on location with Julia. In fact, he is married to actress Kate Buffery, and they have two young children, and he laughs and says, 'That's the greatest compliment anyone has ever paid me.' This was so authentically gay that I was convinced Michell must be, too. His sublimely funny BBC2 dramatisation of The Buddha Of Suburbia in 1992, which he co-adapted with its author Hanif Kureishi, was followed by another Royal Court hit, the tragi-comedy My Night With Reg in the West End and on BBC2. There was also a lurking humour too, I hope.' I used to think that everything I did was about post-colonial problems. Mega-success has come relatively late to Michell, who has paid his dues in the subsidised theatre with Samuel Beckett ('enormously benign, quite frail and self-mocking'), John Osborne ('disappointing, a bit drunk, a rather sad figure'), Pinter and Trainspotting director Danny Boyle, stage manager on one of his early Royal Court productions.Ī diplomat's son who spent his early childhood in Beirut, Damascus and Prague, he sees directing as 'a kind of cultural tourism. He even recast the part of Hugh Grant's Notting Hill flatmate as a Welshman rather than a Scotsman to accommodate the scene-stealing Rhys Ifans from Michell's 1995 Under Milk Wood production at the National Theatre. To theatre and television audiences this Cambridge contemporary of Jimmy Mulville and Griff Rhys Jones has shown an uncanny empathy with different cultures throughout his career. While Michell is unknown to mass movie-goers who may not have caught his ultra-naturalistic, award-winning dramatisation of Jane Austen's Persuasion for BBC TV or the low-budget film Titanic Town, with Julie Walters. Part of my job is to give the impression of enormous calm it's not necessarily how I feel.' But like any other performers, they thrive on a good environment. 'As a species, stars are pretty frightening: they're iconic and you're not. She comes alive in a heightened way - a very remarkable gift. ![]() You say 'Action!' and she goes off like a firework. And she taught me things about screen acting: she can fake spontaneity better than anyone I've ever come across. You have to be a pretty good listener and then you get your way. 'So that everybody is in the same film,' he says gently. ![]() So why insist on it? Michell, sweat-shirted and sockless, looks calmly at me. Some people actively discourage rehearsing because they feel it can prevent spontaneity on the day.' To begin with, she was slightly suspicious of it and didn't quite get it, but I think after the first day she enjoyed it enormously and realised how helpful it was. ![]() I thought, 'My God, this is going to be a fight,' but once she got the idea, she was absolutely full-on for it. With so many women, there's a real childlike vulnerability when they take their make-up off. 'I wanted the full panoply of her as a goddess and her as a mortal. 'There were some scenes where I didn't want her to wear any make-up at all,' says Michell, a mild-mannered 42-year-old who looks rather like a younger, less alarming version of Harold Pinter. For many observers who have seen the film in advance of its release on Friday, Roberts' performance is a revelation. Even more shockingly to those with delicate sensibilities, he insisted that his £8.4m star rehearse for her art-imitating-life role as the world's most famous movie actress, Anna Scott. He is also the film director who made Julia Roberts scrub her face before appearing in Notting Hill. Roger Michell is Mr X, the unknown quantity in the Notting Hill team that reunites the Four Weddings And A Funeral gang of writer Richard Curtis, leading man Hugh Grant and producer Duncan Kenworthy for another Working Title project. ![]()
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