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Knightley Our Fair Lady?

Posted by Vogt
at June 7, 2008

Keira Knightley

Who wants to Bend It Like Beckham when you can become a Lady?

Keira Knightley is reportedly in negotiations to pull an Audrey Hepburn and star in a contemporary update of Lerner and Loewe’s classic musical My Fair Lady.

The new version was announced this morning, but there was no confirmation of a Variety report that the 23-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean star and Atonement Oscar nominee would be playing the role of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who is transformed into a lady under the tutelage of Professor Henry Higgins, who in turn falls in love with her.

The redo will be a coproduction of Broadway legend Cameron Mackintosh (Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera), Duncan Kenworthy (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually) and CBS Films, which owns the rights to the musical. Columbia Pictures will distribute the movie.

The 21st century Lady will retain the 1912 setting, but Kenworthy and Mackintosh plan to shoot in real London locations as opposed to Warner Bros. soundstages, where George Cukor filmed his beloved 1964 Oscar-winning production that costarred Rex Harrison as Higgins.

The new film will also draw additional source material from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, which served as inspiration for Lerner’s book for the musical.

“People everywhere will fall in love again with Lerner and Loewe’s miraculous songs set in a big, gorgeous film with contemporary stars, a more realistically achieved vision of Edwardian London, and a touch more Pygmalion at the heart of this powerful story of a girl’s transformation,” promised Mackintosh. “The classic story of a flower girl transformed into an instant sensation couldn’t be more timely in a contemporary world obsessed with overnight celebrity.”

Next up for Knightley is another costume drama, The Duchess, costarring Ralph Fiennes and due out later this year.

Mackintosh previously produced two stage revivals of My Fair Lady, the first in 1979 with Lerner himself directing, and a second adaptation that opened to acclaim in London’s West End and is currently touring the U.S.

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Amy Irving Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Amy Irving.jpg

A dark-haired beauty with striking eyes and an intelligent air, Amy Irving seemingly came by her talent genetically: Her father Jules was an accomplished stage director and her mother Priscilla Pointer is a fine character actress. (Pointer has often been teamed onscreen with her offspring, playing either the mother or a motherly figure to characters essayed by Irving.) Although she actually began her career as a guest performer in episodic television and on stage, Irving shot to attention as Sue Snell, the sole teen survivor of Brian De Palma’s splashy “Carrie” (1976). Irving lent her astringent good looks and spunk to De Palma’s “The Fury” (1978), playing a woman with psychokinetic powers, and to her portrayal of an Indian princess in love with a British cavalryman (Ben Cross) in the HBO miniseries “The Far Pavilions” (1984). She also triumphed on Broadway, first as Constanza Weber, the wife of Mozart, in “Amadeus” (1980) and again as Ellie to Rex Harrison’s Shotover in a 1983 revival of Shaw’s “Heartbreak House”. Despite having some misgivings over the role, Irving accepted the part of Hadass, the bride of “Yentl” (1983), a woman masquerading as a man, in Barbra Streisand’s directorial debut. Despite the inherent pitfalls, she imbued the role with a delicacy and intelligence that was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

Despite her strong performances, for much of the late 1970s and into the 80s, Irving was better known for her on-again, off-again relationship with rising director Steven Spielberg. Their 1985 marriage overshadowed her career. With the perspective of hindsight, the actress told THE LOS ANGELES TIMES (April 17, 1994): “During my marriage to Steven, I felt like a politician’s wife. There were certain things expected of me that definitely weren’t me. One of my problems is that I’m very honest and direct. You pay a price for that. But then I behaved myself and I paid a price too.” Despite putting these pressures on herself, she continued with her career, turning in well-rounded portrayals of a woman who may or may not be the Czar’s daughter in “Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna” (NBC, 1986) and a sophisticated New Yorker who is romanced by a pickle seller in “Crossing Delancey” (1988). Irving also displayed her sultry vocal abilities providing the singing voice of the animated Jessica Rabbit in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (also 1988; Kathleen Turner provided the speaking voice). During the filming of “A Show of Force” (1990), the actress, cast as Puerto Rican TV journalist, fell in love with the film’s Brazilian director Bruno Barreto.

After an amicable split from Spielberg in 1989, she and Barreto moved in together and gave birth to their son in 1990. After playing a brassy blonde cocktail waitress in “Benefit of the Doubt” (1993), her husband gave her a fine role as a middle-aged schoolteacher finding romance in “Carried Away” (1996). Irving continued to return to the stage as well, headlining the West Coast production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” (1990), playing a Brooklyn woman who suffers paralysis from her over-identification with German Jews in Arthur Miller’s Broadway play “Broken Glass” (1995), and teaming with Lili Taylor and Jeanne Tripplehorn as Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (1997). Irving again teamed with Barreto to play an acerbic, overly-ambitious FBI agent in “One Tough Cop” (1998), based on the life of NYC policeman Bo Dietl, and as an American teacher in Brazil who finds unexpected romance in “Bossa Nova” (2000). The actress also revisited the role of Sue Snell in the sequel “The Rage: Carrie II” (1999).

Irving appeared as part of director Steven Soderberg’s high-powered acting ensemble in 2000’s traffic, playing the wife of Michael Douglas’ drug czar and mother to their troubled drug addict daughter, and the critically acclaimed indie “13 Conversations about One Thing.” In 2002 she reunited with Spacek in another feature film, this time a family-oriented flip side to their “Carrie” collaboration, Disney’s adaptation of author Natalie Babbitt’s children’s classic “Tuck Everlasting.” She also was featured in a recurring role on the ABC spy series “Alias.”

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Julie Andrews Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

julie_andrews.jpg

Julie Andrews joined her mom Barbara and stepfather Ted Andrews’ touring vaudeville act at the age of 12 and in her first major appearance (and London debut, “Starlight Waltz” 1947) brought the house down at the Hippodrome with a bastardized version of the polonaise from “Mignon”. Quickly graduating to top billing, she became the family’s primary breadwinner on the strength of her several octave range soprano and continued to tour after Barbara and Ted retired, traveling with a tutor until age 15 when her mother decided that her education was adequate. Title roles in pantomime productions of “Humpty Dumpty” (1948), “Red Riding Hood” (1950) and “Cinderella” (1953) preceded her Broadway debut as Polly in Sandy Wilson’s 1920s pastiche “The Boyfriend” (1954). Two years later, she was starring on the Great White Way as Eliza Doolittle the Cockney girl Rex Harrison’s Professor Henry Higgins was “making over”, in Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady”, for which she earned a Tony nomination. After a four-year run in that role, Andrews landed another plum, Guinevere to Richard Burton’s King Arthur, in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot”, garnering a second Tony nomination.

Though her lilting, sweet soprano and prim British charm had earned her kudos as a Broadway musical star, Andrews was slow to win Hollywood over and would lose all three roles she had created on Broadway to non-singers in their film incarnations. She did impress Walt Disney enough, however, to be offered the title role of “Mary Poppins” (1964), although she kept him waiting until it was definite that Eliza Doolittle would be played by Audrey Hepburn. A truly wonderful amalgam of live-action, animation and Oscar-winning music, “Mary Poppins” rocketed her to international stardom and earned her a Best Actress Oscar. That same year, she displayed her non-musical abilities opposite James Garner in “The Americanization of Emily” before reaching greater heights as Maria in the blockbuster film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” (1965), which became the highest-grossing movie of all time until “Jaws” knocked it from its lofty perch a decade later. The incredible success of that film chiseled her wholesomeness in granite, and the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967) reinforced her as a sweet thing with its terminal cuteness. Hoping to repeat the success of their initial teaming on “The Sound of Music”, director Robert Wise cast Andrews as stage legend Gertrude Lawrence in “Star!” (1968), but the actress failed to come across in that razzle-dazzle biopic-cum-musical. Nevertheless, Andrews acquitted herself in the production numbers but was hampered by the script’s take on Lawrence.

Attempts to break away from her goody-goody stereotyping by appearing in less wholesome, non-musical fare (e.g., Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain” 1966) were ineffectual, and it would take frequent collaborations with second husband Blake Edwards (i.e., “The Tamarind Seed” 1974; “10″ 1979; “That’s Life” 1986) for her to finally prove herself a deft comedienne and a warm dramatic actress. In his glib Movieland satire “S.O.B” (1981), Andrews played an actress baring her breasts for financial reasons, and since she was still trying to shed her virginal image at the time, her going buff made the film, in a twisted way, a parody of itself. Her last big screen success (to date), Edwards’ gender-bending, often hilarious “Victor/Victoria” (1982), earned her a third Best Actress Oscar nomination, and over a decade later in 1995 she reprised its woman playing a man playing a woman for the Broadway version. Andrews created a flap when she declined her Tony nomination in protest because no one else associated with the production received a nod. A televised version of the 1995 production was aired as part of the Bravo cable series “Broadway on Bravo.”

In 1998 Andrews underwent throat surgery that went horribly awry and subsequently robbed her of her crystaline, perfectly pitched singing voice (In 2000 her malpractice suit against the doctors who allegedly botched her surgery was settled for an undisclosed sum, estimated at $30 million). After some counseling to help her deal with the trauma of the loss of her most treasured asset, Andrews also engaged in therapy that helped her regain some of her vocal range. In the meantime, she stayed busy as an actress, appearing as the awkward fledgling royal Anne Hathaway’s oh-so-regal grandmother in Garry Marshall’s surprise hit film “The Princess Diaries” (2001), a role she repeised for the sequel “The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement” (2004). She also provided the voice of Queen Lillian, mother of Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) in the CGI sequel “Shrek 2″ (2004).

Among Andrews’ numerous TV appearances have been three specials with friend Carol Burnett (”Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall”, CBS 1962; “Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center”, CBS 1971; and “Julie and Carol: Together Again”, ABC 1989). Other highlights include two variety programs directed by Gower Champion, “The Julie Andrews Special” and “An Evening with Julie Andrews and Harry Belafonte” (both for CBS in 1969); “Julie Andrews in Concert” (PBS, 1990) and “The Sound of Julie Andrews” (Disney Channel, 1995). She headlined the Emmy-winning series “The Julie Andrews Hour” (ABC, 1972-73), starred in the short-lived ABC sitcom “Julie” in 1992 and more recently hosted several gala tributes like “The American Film Institute Salute to Robert Wise” (NBC, 1998) and “Hey, Mr. Producer!” (PBS, 1998), celebrating the stage productions of Cameron Mackintosh. In 1999 she teamed with James Garner for the amusingly screwball telepic “One Special Night” and starred opposite her classic co-star Christopher Plummer in a televised adaptation of “On Golden Pond” directed by the film’s screenwriter, Ernest Thompson. In addition she appeared as The Nanny in a pair of TV movies adapting the adventures of the popular children’s book character Eloise, “Eloise at the Plaza” (and “Eloise at Christmastime” (both 2003).

As ‘Julie Edwards’, the multi-talented artist has also written two of her own highly-regarded children’s books.

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