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Press Archive > Magazine Article > Vancouver Sun - January |
Charlie Hunnam stars as Nicholas Nickleby in United Artists' upcoming release of Charles Dickens' Victorian tale of decency amid abuse and connivance. NEW YORK -- Charlie Hunnam seems to be your quintessential young English actor -- handsome, his fair hair trendily long, his manner polite, and the answers to your questions thoughtful and informative. He's also about to open in a quintessentially English project -- a new film adaptation of Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, with Hunnam in the title role as one of the famed novelist's most beloved characters. Hunnam loved doing this Victorian saga about a young man's personal odyssey and his battle against the forces of evil -- as exemplified in his conniving Uncle Ralph (Christopher Plummer) and the infamous Wackford Squeers (Jim Broadbent), the sadistic headmaster of the squalid Dotheboys Hall School. He also liked the fact young Nicholas epitomized the old-fashioned virtues of goodness and decency -- as reflected in his concern for the welfare of his widowed mother and sister and his championship of a pitifully abused youngster named Smike (Billy Elliott's Jamie Bell). In brief, Nicholas Nickleby -- whether on the printed page or the screen -- is the sort of creative work which is an anglophile's delight. The only problem is that the 22-year -old Hunnam is anything but an anglophile himself. In fact, he loathes the country of his birth and now considers Los Angeles to be home. "I always dig myself into a hole answering this question, but I never really liked England," he says. "It's just the culture there -- there's so much racism, so much bigotry and resentment of anyone else's success." Hunnam dislikes the British press and the weather and the cities "and everything. I just found it claustrophobic . . . and when you get into the country it's this very slow kind of mundane lifestyle. The whole thing filled me with terror -- just the idea, the prospect of living in England, anywhere in England, for the rest of my life I found profoundly depressing from a very young age." He says in Los Angeles he can retain his anonymity whereas in London: "There's no privacy at all -- you step out the door and there's like a zillion people out there." Hunnam even has harsh words for England's fabled Lake District where he grew up. He admits it's an area of great natural beauty and says he misses the blue skies and cloud formations. But he detests the "mentality" of the people with their small-minded "racism and bigotry and disdain of anything that isn't part of that culture." He says the Lake District is for people who are interested in "sheep-shearing, cutting of crops and hunting and fighting." "Most of my friends that were growing up as farmers would work for like a buck fifty an hour, and then they'd go and spend all their money on Saturday nights and basically weren't happy unless they got into at least one fight. I used to think: 'God! You're going to live your entire life like this.' I haven't been in one fight since I moved out of England, and I would fight at least once a month while I was there through no choice of my own . . . . It was barbaric." He now seems to be leaving that past firmly behind him. Nicholas Nickleby, which opens Friday in Vancouver, certainly promises to be a breakthrough role, and he expects a further career boost with the release later in 2003 of the American Civil War drama, Cold Mountain, in which he costars with Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger. On the other hand, Hunnam admits he recently suffered a career setback with the thriller, Abandon, in which he played opposite Katie Holmes. But he shrugs off that flop: "It wasn't any big letdown. I'd seen the film before. I knew it wasn't going to do well . . . . I was probably prepared for no one to go and see it, and I was right." Meanwhile, he does want people to see Nicholas Nickleby. "I do absolutely worry about it finding an audience. And I don't know whether it will or not. I am completely baffled by the movie industry. The films that make money -- more often than not, I just cannot understand why anyone would want to go see them while so many good films slip by unseen." Hunnam has no compunction about speaking his mind. He's also candid about his involvement in Queer As Folk, the cult TV series about the gay lifestyle. Hunnam starred in the original British version, playing a 15-year-old with a yen for older men. He was apprehensive about taking on the role. "I wasn't in the position that I am now where I can afford to be pickier." But he was also impressed by the passion and dedication of the people behind the series. "I figured that if I could do a good job in this and prove myself as an actor, then there would be more work to be had." Hunnam was proved right. Queer As Folk did open new doors, including a role as a womanizing college student in the Fox TV series, Undeclared. Nicholas Nickleby is a role that almost slipped through his fingers, and he would only have had himself to blame had that happened. When he was first sent American writer-director Doug McGrath's script, he wasn't interested: "Nicholas Nickleby? Who cares?" He shoved it to the bottom of a pile of screenplays and forgot about it. "About three or four weeks after I originally received it, I finally got around to reading it and I thought: "Oh my god, I've made a terrible mistake." Struck not only by the strong narrative and characters but also by the vein of social comment, Hunnam made an urgent phone call to his agent who told him Nicholas was the only role that hadn't been cast because of McGrath's unhappiness with the actors who had so far auditioned. "Then I found out the ensemble that he'd put together and I was just blown away." Hunnam was desperate to be part of a cast that included Plummer, Broadbent, Bell, Tom Courtenay, Nathan Lane, Anne Hathaway and Juliet Stevenson. In the film, Hunnam's Nicholas is sexier than Roger Rees' portrayal in the acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company version or in the 1947 movie starring Derek Bond. "I am sure that was a conscious thing," says Hunnam who was told later he brought a sexual tension to certain scenes. However, he says for him the big attraction of playing Nicholas was the character's fundamental decency. "It could have come off rather saccharin and just too good to be true. I thought: 'If I can make this guy believable and likeable and still be as good as Charles Dickens intended him to be, that will be a real feat as an actor.' "I thought when I read the script that the world was in a rather precarious position right now in terms of humanity and what people are doing to each other." So he liked the idea of making "a nice film about virtue and honour and goodness, Today, those words are not fashionable, and I feel that young people don't aspire to them -- so I thought it would be nice to just do it." © Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun |