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In the latest episode of The Jess Cagle Interview, Daniel Radcliffe talks about working with hugely successful actors such as Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith and Ralph Fiennes in his role as Harry Potter, and reveals a few stories about the late Richard Harris, and comments on being intimidated by Ralph Fiennes!
Dan is told to describe the actors he worked with. He calls Emma Watson ‘smart‘, Rupert Grint ‘funny‘, Maggie Smith ‘sharp as a knife, in a wonderful way … tough and quick witted’, Alan Rickman ‘generous‘ and Michael Gambon ‘out of control, funny, just mad in a great way, again’.
Richard Harris he says ‘The first thing that comes to mind is phoenix, I suppose – there was this one moment where Fawkes, the animatronic phoenix in the second film … Richard thought it was a real bird’
Dan says of Richard Harris’ death:
‘I remember it was devastating, it was so sad … I’d never known a person who had died before so it was crazy. I feel like looking back it’s just one of those things where you just have to go “I am so lucky to have worked with him” – it’s an amazing thing to be able to say now … the films he made are going to be true parts of history, a lot of them, it’s going to be an incredible thing to be able to say that I worked with him.
I’ve spent some time with his granddaughter, Ella, who’s also a wonderful person- his whole family was incredibly sweet to me … I was involved a little bit in a memorial service for him and they were just incredibly kind and warm”
Dan describes Helena Bonham-Carter as ‘nuts, and fabulous … I love her‘
He then calls Ralph Fiennes ‘genuinely intimidating’:
‘I remember when I was 15 doing scenes with Ralph for the first time. He was even scarier than Alan was at first … Alan was super intimidating to start off with as well, but then you get into it, but Ralph genuinely scared me for a few years.’
Dan then imagines working with Ralph on a comedy in the future, and says it was ‘a hell of a learning experience’ to have worked with him.
Late last week, Dame Maggie Smith was awarded the Critics’ Circle Award for Services to the Arts. Dame Maggie Smith now joins other legendary actors and actresses such as Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen.
What’s On Stage reported on the private ceremony and event, posting pictures and a video. The website reported:
Accepting the award, Smith said she felt “very, very honoured”.
“I know people say and I’ve certainly said I don’t read the critics, which a lot of actors say very airily, but believe me, you get to know what’s there.”
She spoke about one particular occasion when she picked up a newspaper whilst filming Othello, a film which led to her first Oscar nomination.
“There was a review in there and it was absolutely lethal and truly frightening,” she said. “It was for The Master Builder at the National, and I remember bursting into tears.”
The video may be seen below, and the original article may be read here.
Silverstone Auctioneers in Warwickshire will be selling one of two rare, fully-restored yellow Bedford CA van (hand-painted by Dame Maggie herself!). from Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning film The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith as Mary Shepherd, who lived in a van on a man’s driveway for over 10 years.
The van is estimated to sell for between £9,000 and £12,000.
“Speaking before the sale, Nick Whale, managing director of Silverstone Auctions, based in Gaydon, said: “We’re excited to be offering a piece of British cinema history at our sale which, paired with the appeal of the Bedford van to classic collectors, makes for a very exciting and unique opportunity for our customers.”
… Anyone interested in buying the van or finding out more about its history should visit Silverstone Auctions website“
The 2016 BAFTA Film awards took place in the U.K. last night, at London’s Royal Opera House. Stephen Fry hosted the event, and Eddie Redmayne, Dame Maggie Smith, Julie Walters were also in attendance, with nominations in the Leading Actor, Leading Actress and Supporting Actress categories respectively.
Dame Maggie Smith also got caught on the kiss cam (see below), with none other than Leo DiCaprio! After the initial shock she pulled him in for a lovely hug – probably the most adorable kiss-cam we’ve seen (Stephen Fry called it “a marriage made in heaven”:
Giving a shout-out to Dame Smith in his opening speech, Stephen Fry joked “If she were any more of an institution, she’d have railings around her!” – we can’t help but agree!
Eddie Redmayne also presented the award for Best Supporting Actress (which went to Kate Winslet). Radio Times caught him on the red carpet, where he spoke about the event’s hype:
“There’s still an adrenaline buzz and an excitement that comes. You give your everything and hope people enjoy it so when you get to these things you hope people have seen the films.”
They also reported on the winner’s press conference, in which Julie Walters admitted to losing her (expensive) earring:
“Julie Walters has been backstage in the winners press conference, discussing her role in the Brooklyn TV spin-off and the worrying misplacement of her earring on the way up to the stage. Apparently it’s borrowed and worth more than her house!”
Halfway through the evening marked the time for a tribute to huge contributors to the film industry who have sadly passed away, which included a touching tribute to Alan Rickman, featuring clips from Harry Potter, Robin Hood and Truly Madly Deeply.
The award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema went to Angels Costumes, who provided costumes for Harry Potter, along with James Bond, Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars.
Domhnall Gleeson presented the Best Film In a Foreign Language award, alongside Star Wars co–star, Carrie Fisher.
Leonardo DiCaprio gave a shout-out to Gary Oldman in his acceptance speech for Best Actor.
Though Maggie Smith and Eddie Redmayne may not have won Best Actress / Actor (losing out to Brie Larson of Room and Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant), Brooklyn – starring Julie Walters and Domhnall Gleeson – won the Outstanding British Film Award, whilst Star Wars: The Force Awakens (also featuring Domhnall Gleeson) won Best Visual Effects – congratulations!
Next up, the Oscars (28th February)! Eddie Redmayne is nominated for Best Actor, his film The Danish Girl is upfor Costume Design and Production Design, whilst Julie Walters and Domhnall Gleeson’s Brooklyn is nominated for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay.
On her latest win, Smith remained modest as ever, highlighting the brilliance of the actresses she was up against:
“Quite honestly, the things one was up against, it doesn’t seem fair,” she says. “Brooklyn [starring Saoirse Ronan], and 45 Years in which Charlotte [Rampling] was so terrific, and Sicario [with Emily Blunt], although I didn’t really get that…”
She puts on a Uriah Heep voice: “I just feel ever so ‘umble. It does seem awfully unfair and I can’t help feeling it’s because I am so old.”
The interview developed more on recent interviews about Smith’s early career conducted by LA Times (read here) and CBS News (here). Smith tells more about her portrayal of The Lady in the Van‘s Mary Shepherd in Nicholas Hytner’s West End production in 1999, alongside writer Alan Bennett:
“I was fascinated by the mystery of her,” says Smith. “And of Alan, the way he coped with it and put up with her. I don’t know who was the oddest. You just wonder where her head was. You think ‘confused’ but she was very clear in what she thought, trying to form these political parties and writing letters to [Seventies TV personality] Eamonn Andrews and all that.
“As I have got older I wonder how the hell she did it. Honest to God, the filming finished me off and that was sort of deluxe. The van was… cleansed from time to time.” She couldn’t have been the Good Samaritan Bennett was, she says.
A film was immediately mooted in 1999 — “the material is actually more filmic” — but for some reason was only made 15 years later. “Whether it was just that Alan decided he wanted to do it, or Nick nagged him, I don’t know,” says Smith. “It certainly wasn’t me! I didn’t go on about it at all. But I was very pleased to sort of finish her off in a way.”
The loss of Alan Rickman is also mentioned in the interview, along with the recent passing of Frank Finlay – another member of the first National Theatre company in 1962. Smith starred as Desdemona alongside Finlay (who portrayed Iago) in Laurence Oliver’s Othello:
“One night dear Frank came off stage and he flew to the prompt corner and started tearing at his eyes, like Oedipus,” she recalls. “I got very worried, and went over, and said ‘Are you all right?’. He had terribly bad sight, Frank, and was wearing contact lenses, which he never normally wore, and he said: ‘I’ve just seen Sir Laurence for the first time! And I never want to do it again.’”
She gives a husky laugh, then says: “You get a bit wobbly, you know, when you get to a certain age. It [mortality] seems to be too near.”
For the first time in her career, Maggie Smith has found herself a lot less busy, and whilst TheEvening Standard picks up on the fact that she hasn’t much relished the fame brought on by her roles in Potter and Downton, Smith still finds the quietness ‘weird':
Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Romford but moved to Oxford aged four, her father a pathologist and her mother a secretary who thought young Maggie would never work on stage “with a face like that”. Actually, Smith says, she benefited from not being a “juve”, or ingénue, and has worked constantly, though latterly she’s been stuck playing “’orrible old women”. This is the first time in her career that she hasn’t had a job to go to, “and it’s weird, because suddenly there is no shape to anything”.
On the prospect of taking up future work, Smith says ‘big TV shows’ are out of the option, but on a role in film, she retains her sense of humour and answers:
“I can’t think what the part would be, can you?” she says. “It’ll be another old bag won’t it, hurr-hurr-hurr.”
Smith tends to keep her personal life away from the press, but her spoke briefly about her marriages:
Smith was married to the fiery but rackety actor Robert Stephens for seven years and they had two sons, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, both actors “and both out in South Africa at the moment, can you believe, doing this thing called Black Sails, being piratical”.
After her divorce from Stephens in 1974 she married playwright Beverley Cross in 1975. He died in 1998; Robert Stephens had died in 1995. Smith says it doesn’t get any easier being on her own, especially when fans intrude. But she doesn’t think she’ll enjoy an autumnal romance like the one her friend Judi Dench is having: “No, I don’t think I would get that lucky. I don’t think I would find anybody who would come anywhere near Bev.”
Given how rare interviews with Dame Maggie are, we’re very lucky to have had so many recently! Read the rest of the interview here, and make sure you catch her latest award-winning performance in The Lady in the Van.
Emma Thompson won the Comedy award, for her portrayal of Cemolina in The Legend of Barney Thomson. Other nominations in this category included Fantastic Beasts’ Colin Farrell (The Lobster).
“I’d like to commit this moment in time to dearest Alan Rickman, who many of us are dearly missing tonight. It’s so depressing but there it is, it does happen.
“He always predicted I would end up looking like my mother after a lifetime of Guinness, fish suppers and untipped Players. So thank you.”
The award for best film went to Brooklyn, which features Julie Walters. Walters has been nominated for the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Bafta (the awards take place 14th February).
Instead of appearing in a “Shakespearean tragedy, a George Bernard Shaw satire or a sophisticated Noel Coward comedy”, typical of early British actors, Maggie Smith actually appeared first in New Faces of 1956 – a musical comedy revue.
Dame Maggie spoke about how she ended up in musical theatre, and the difficulties of moving to New York at 21:
“In Oxford, I used to do university revues,” Smith explained in her unmistakable voice over the phone from her house in London earlier this week. “Sometimes we would do we things at the Edinburgh Festival — we were the first things on the fringe, in fact — and then we took it to London in a little, tiny theater. I suppose the [‘New Faces’] producer Leonard Sillman saw me. That’s how it happened.”
“I spent my entire time crying. We were paid so little. I didn’t know anyone then. I had been booked in a hotel I couldn’t afford! It was $60 a week.”
Sixty years on from this role, Maggie Smith has been our beloved Professor McGonagall, adored by masses in Downton Abbey, and recently appeared in The Lady In the Van – for which she has been nominated for the Best Actress BAFTA award. She now has Oscars, Emmys and a Tony to her name, however, she recalled that it took a long time to escape repetitive typecasting:
It took her forever “to get people to believe I could do something other than revues. I was sort of pigeonholed for a very long time.”
In the 1960s, Smith joined London’s Royal National Theatre and appeared opposite Laurence Olivier in Othello, both on stage and in the 1965 film, for which she won an Oscar. She told LA Times:
“It was scary,” she said. “Shakespeare and I were a long way apart because I had been doing things like ‘New Faces’ and revues. I would have been terrified anyway just leaping into Shakespeare, but that was going in at a pretty dizzying level. I should have maybe started off in a kind of quieter way. But I was so thrilled to go to the National.”
LA Times noted that Smith’s absence at the Golden Globe nominations was due to her recent hip replacement surgery, from which she is still recovering:
“I feel so much better,” she said, “but you can’t sit that long in the airplane.”
The Lady in the Van is something of a memoir of the relationship between the elderly woman Mary Shepherd (Maggie Smith) and playwright-actor Alan Bennett, the former of whom lived on the driveway of the latter in an old van for fifteen years. It started out as Bennett’s autobiographical stage play as an Ode to the last Mary Shepherd (who died in 1989) in 1999 on London’s West End, in which Smith appeared, and was then turned into a radio show – in which Dame Maggie also played Mary.
“I don’t think ‘Lady in the Van’ will travel,” she said. “One of the reviews said, ‘I don’t think it will travel outside north London.’ I think there is a bit of truth in that.”
On working with Maggie Smith, Nicholas Hytner – who directed the film The Lady in The Van and collaborated with her on various other projects, said that at first he was intimidated by her ‘extraordinary history’:
“It is a wealth of experience, extraordinary energy, imagination and experience,” he noted. “You worry in advance that you are not going to be able to measure up. But actually, what she doesn’t want at all is a voice in the rehearsal room that is unable to speak up when they need to speak up. She is harder on herself than she is on anybody else. She really needs to feel that somebody is keeping an eye out for her and on her.”
Smith said she told Hytner to “please slap me” if her performance was veering off-course. “Nick was terrific,” she said. “I want to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible. She’s mad enough.”
On having never watched Downton Abbey, Smith says:
“Why do I want to see it?” Smith said matter of factly. “I’m doing it. I know the story of it. I do have the boxed set, but you know that would take me to the end of my life to watch.”
Well said, we think – and as LA Times notes, ‘not unlike something Lady Crawley herself might say’. Read the full interview here, and make sure to catch The Lady in the Van in cinemas!
After winning both Best Actor Oscar and Bafta in 2015 for A Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne is nominated again in 2016 for A Danish Girl, putting him in the position of potentially receiving a Bafta double. He is up against Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), Matt Damon (The Martian), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) and Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs).
Dame Maggie Smith is also nominated in the Best Actress category for The Lady in the Van. Competition includes Cate Blanchett (Carol) , Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn), Brie Larson (Room) and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl).
Julie Walters has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Brooklyn, pitting her against Kate Winslet (Steve Jobs), Rooney Mara (Carol)and Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful 8) . She says she was thrilled to be nominated and “proud to be included alongside these great women and their powerful performances”.
Brooklyn and The Danish Girl are both nominated for Most Outstanding British Film, Costume Design and Make-up and Hair. Brooklyn is also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Join us in congratulating Eddie Redmayne, Julie Walters and Dame Maggie Smith on their nominations, and make sure you see them in The Danish Girl, Brooklyn and The Lady in the Van!
Dame Maggie Smith, our dear Professor Minerva McGonagall, is celebrating her birthday on December 28. In honor of both her birthday and her amazing career, CBS News Sunday Morning broadcast an exclusive question and answer session today.
The short interview highlights the major events in Dame Maggie Smith’s life, from her first appearance on Broadway in 1956 to her current project, The Lady in the Van. In the new film, Dame Maggie portrays Miss Shepherd, a vagabond woman who spent the last fifteen years of her life in a van parked on playwright Alan Bennett’s driveway.
The interview also includes quite a few juicy tidbits about Downton Abbey, and CBS News credits the Harry Potter films with introducing this wonderful actress to a new generation.
At the end of the interview, Correspondent Mo Rocca shows Dame Maggie a clip from her appearance on the Carol Burnett Show in 1975. Dame Maggie takes a moment to reflect on the experience and the outfits designed by Bob Mackie. “Those were the days,” she says.
“Correction, these are still the days of Dame Maggie Smith,” answers Mo Rocca. We here at Leaky agree.
So, although she doesn’t want to be reminded, please join us in wishing a happy birthday to Dame Maggie Smith!
Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall) recently sat down for an extensive interview with The Star about her 60 years in show business. In the interview she talked about her time spent with the Harry Potter movies, although her main focus was on her largly successful role in Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey. The Star reports:
She also trails unassumingly behind her a train made up of 60 years in show business that has won her seven BAFTA awards, two Oscars, two Golden Globes, two Emmys, two SAG awards, an Olivier Award and a Tony.
The 77-year-old woman who’s survived everything from quidditch (thanks to her role as Professor Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter) to chemotherapy (a harrowing battle with cancer) has a wonderful serenity about her except, on this particular afternoon in London, when she worries about the scope of the upcoming Stratford gala.
...
And then she starts the wheels of comic invention turning again.
“There are advantages to cancer, you know. My chemo cheered up the makeup department on Harry Potter because the wig went on a great deal easier without a single hair on my head.”
...
“I knew it was going to be a major commitment when I started, but it turned out to be 10 years. That’s a lot of time with one character!”
If you love hand drawn typography and wacked out characters you’re going to love the work of illustrator Andy Smith. There’s so much great work to see from Andy that you should set aside a chunk of time before you sit down to it.
Talk about cool – Andy has a bunch of awesome screen prints and books for sale but you’d better jump on over real quick. From the looks of things they’re selling like hotcakes.
On this day when we in the fandom are celebrating Professor McGonagall's birthday, it is only fitting that we hear from the woman who brings this character so memorably to life on the screen: Dame Maggie Smith. The Times has released a brand new interview with this acclaimed actress, where she discusses her career, her role as the Head of Gryffindor in the Harry Potter films series (she noted s...
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She's got style she's got class, she is one of the best dressed for June 2009, or so says Teen Vogue of actress Emma Watson. The magazine owled to let us know the news, plus share with us two quizzes: one on Harry Potter, and one on Emma Watson.
Women's Wear Daily emailed us this morning as well to let us know about their new interview with the Hermione Granger actress, who spoke of her great l...
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Last night in the UK, two more behind the scenes specials on the making of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were aired. While both contained many interviews with cast and crew, of note were the new clips from HBP, and we have them both now in our video galleries. SPOILER caution: At approx 15 min here in the Sky Movies special with Alex Zane, you can now watch the intense Unbreakable Vow...
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Over the past month or so, long time readers will know we have been experiencing some down time for our galleries. Tonight we are delighted to report our galleries are back in business and have some lovely new photos for us to enjoy. WB has officially released to all the media now a slew of new clips and high res images. Starting at this link, there many many new photos from the upcoming<> Harry ...
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There are a whole host of new reviews for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince online today before the UK premiere of the film later today in London. Most are very positive about the film, notable are comments from the Telegraph that remark on performances from both the adult actors and the Trio, especially on Dan Radcliffe as Harry Potter: "Increasingly, they give the films their backbone,...
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Variety has now posted their review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and it contains much praise for the sixth installment in the Harry Potter film series. Noting that director David Yates "displays noticeably increased confidence here, injecting more real-world grit into what began eight years ago as purest child's fantas," and has made a film that is "film is clear-headed and clean-...
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Watergate is back in the news thanks to the recent confessions of a former New York Times reporter, Robert M. Smith, and his Washington bureau editor, Robert H. Phelps, about how they failed to report a hot tip on the Nixon administration’s involvement in the cover-up. Preparing to leave the paper in August 1972, to attend law school, Smith held a farewell lunch with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, who revealed that his agents had found evidence of “dirty tricks” being employed by the Nixon reelection campaign, leading to the top levels. Smith reported this to Phelps, but he was leaving on a month-long vacation and let the story drop. The rest of the media has relished reporting on how the Times let the political story of the century slip away.
Of course, the rest of the media–with the notable exception of the Washington Post– fumbled the Watergate scandal as well. Even at the Post, the story was almost the exclusive property of two green reporters from the Metro section. Those who covered the national news dismissed the idea of presidential involvement in the Watergate burglary as being highly implausible. Washington correspondents may not have liked Richard Nixon, but they respected his intelligence and held it inconceivable that he would jeopardize his presidency by bugging his faltering opposition.
Without detracting from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s assiduous reporting, we know now that their chief inside information was coming from the FBI’s deputy director, W. Mark Felt. He systematically leaked in order to prevent the White House from derailing the FBI’s investigation. The insights Felt provided the Post kept the story alive for months.
When the Watergate burglars were arraigned, it was initially seen as a local police story. Since the New York Times’ Washington bureau only covered federal courts, the Times buried a short report deep inside the next day’s paper, while the Washington Post put it on the front page. Max Frankel, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, discouraged his correspondents from pursing Watergate. “Not even my most cynical view of Nixon had allowed for his stupid behavior,” Frankel later lamented. It went on that way for the rest of 1972, with the Post running story after story, and the rest of the media sharing the Times’ reluctance. Further clouding the Washington bureau’s judgment was its condescending attitude toward the Washington Post, which the New Yorkers regarded as little more than a provincial paper in a government town–a step or two above Albany. Despite Woodward and Bernstein’s prodigious output during the summer of 1972, Frankel insisted that their reporting failed to measure up to his standards of reporting. Small wonder, then, that Robert Smith’s tip never made it into the “paper of record.”
The New York Times finally got a handle on Watergate when it hired the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In January 1973, Hersh scooped even Woodward and Bernstein by documenting how White House hush money had gone to the Watergate burglars. Reporters for other papers were developing their own leads and the rest of the pack piled on top. Ever since then–right up to the current revelations–Washington reporters have puzzled over why they missed the Watergate story for so long. The White House press corps came in for the harshest criticism, accused by former press secretary Bill Moyers of being “sheep with short attention spans.” But White House reporters, dependent on White House sources, were no more likely to uncover White House scandals than police reporters were to expose police graft. It took a couple of young, ambitious, local news reporters to think the unthinkable.
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There is a new photo online of actress Dame Maggie Smith in her role as Professor McGonagall from the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You can see this new photo, here.
Thanks to WB for sending over these glorious high res photos from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as seen in CineLive magazine. Note the new photo of the Trio with Snape and McGonagall as they examine the poisoned opal necklace. Enjoy!
Please join everyone at TLC in sending birthday wishes to actress Dame Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall), who is today celebrating her 74th birthday. Cheers to you, Maggie!
New scans from the German edition of the 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince calendar are now online. HarryPotterXperts let us know about new scans (available here in our galleries) which include a look at Luna (Evanna Lynch) and Harry (Dan Radcliffe) in their festive holiday attire for Slughorn's party.
A new photo from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has now surfaced online. Bearing an official WB logo, this looks to be a new still of Professor McGonagall, as portrayed by actress Dame Maggie Smith. You can see this photo here.
