fri 01/08/2025

Film Interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Actress Julianne Moore

Jasper Rees

Julianne Moore (b. 1960) is a true rarity. It’s not just that her hair flames like no other star since Katharine Hepburn. Or that alone of her generation she seems impervious to middle age’s indignities. There’s something else. Having worked with dinosaurs in The Lost World and a cannibal in Hannibal, she is mainstream enough to be considered a genuine leading lady.

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theartsdesk Q&A: Writer Willy Russell

Jasper Rees

No one understands escapism like Willy Russell. Either side of 1980, he wrote two plays about working-class Liverpool women in flight from a humdrum existence. In one a young hairdresser seeks fulfilment through a literary education with the Open University. In the other, a middle-aged housewife has an island-holiday romance. As films, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine earned Oscar nominations for, respectively, Julie Walters and Pauline Collins.

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Actress Carey Mulligan, Emotionally Speaking

Graham Fuller

“You’ve no idea how boring everything was before I met you.” As written by Nick Hornby and spoken by Carey Mulligan in An Education, these words of gratitude come after a moment of stillness in which Jenny, Mulligan’s character, reflects on her experience as a 16-year-old schoolgirl taken on a social joyride by a 35-ish hustler, David (Peter Sarsga

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Daryl Hannah

Elaine Lipworth


Daryl Hannah’s played sexy, sassy, funny and dangerous, from   the   naive mermaid in Splash, to the vicious one eyed assassin in director Quentin Tarantino’s ultra violent Kill Bill films. Her leading men are among the all-time greats: Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, Robert Redford in Legal Eagles, Michael Douglas in Wall St and Steve Martin in Roxanne.  And it would appear that real life has been just thrilling for the alluring actress. She started acting at 11 and was a...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Michael Caine

Elaine Lipworth

Michael Caine has made more than 100 films: from Zulu, The Ipcress File, Alfie and Get Carter to The Italian Job and Educating Rita. He won best supporting actor Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules. This interview dates from 2007 when his more recent films were the remake of Sleuth with Jude Law and The Dark Knight.

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