<
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/13/cary-grants-hollywoods-archibald-leach-mother-archie>
"Freezing rain is lashing the roof of the movie-set trailer. Even with the
heating on full, the conditions are still shivery. But Jason Isaacs is sporting
the sort of deep tan that suggests months spent under fierce sun.
Appropriately, given the role he’s playing, it’s fake. “They spray-paint me
every single day,” the actor explains. “At the place I’m staying, I don’t know
what the laundry thinks has been going on, with these dark brown sheets every
morning.”
These intensive cosmetics reproduce the Los Angeles-broiled face of the movie
star Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock’s favourite leading man, the star of
North
By Northwest,
Charade,
Notorious and
To Catch a Thief, and the No 1 box
office superstar smoothie of the mid-20th century. For Isaacs to play him in
ITV’s forthcoming four-part bio-drama Archie, a fake tan was only part of the
transformation. “When the makeup comes off at the end of the day,” he says,
“there’s almost nothing that’s me. The chin and nose come off. The eyes aren’t
my eyes.”
The extent of disguise required to become Grant is appropriate because the
elegant movie persona – look, voice, manner – was carefully constructed by a
man born Archibald Leach into a poor working-class family in Bristol. Archie’s
writer and executive producer Jeff Pope hopes the strangeness of Grant’s story
will engage even viewers who don’t know who he was. “I’ve always said this
could be a story about Grant Cary – ie someone we’ve never heard of – rather
than Cary Grant. The pitch would be: a child is told his mother is dead; 25
years later, when he’s the biggest movie star in the world, he learns she’s
still alive in a psychiatric hospital.”"
Via Esther Schindler, who wrote "Wow, this sounds like a movie I want to watch.
And Jason Isaacs has been amazing in other roles."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
