Post by Scully Z. on May 21, 2012 16:36:30 GMT -6
This was from his time filming 2004's 'Island at War'. From the Daily Mail....oh, and apologies for this and the next few being all text. There weren't any photos, anyway, and plus I had to rip them while I could with my free trial of High Beam. 
Anyway, enjoy!!
Byline: KAREN HOCKNEY
On a freezing cold day on the Isle of Man, James Wilby is wrapped up against the elements in a huge Puffa jacket, which looks quite incongruous over his sober grey suit. With his thick shock of blond hair - which shows no hint of grey - and a handsome, boyish face, he could easily pass for a decade younger than his 45 years. Polite, yet restrained, his natural reserve thaws the more time you spend in his company.
Over the years, he has carved out a niche as the quintessential English gentleman and the darling of film makers Merchant Ivory. It's hard to think of a period film he hasn't been in over the last 20 years. Gosford Park, Howards End, Regeneration - in which he played the tortured poet Siegfried Sassoon - and A Handful Of Dust are just a few, but his finest hour was playing the eponymous hero in Maurice, E.M. Forster's powerful tale of a young man's struggle to confront his homosexuality in Edwardian England.
The 1987 film provided James with his big break, alongside fellow unknowns Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves. While James was the lead, it was his supporting actor Grant who went on to enjoy stratospheric success both here and in the States. James was left feeling he had somehow missed the boat, but he displays no bitterness or jealousy at what might have been.
'Ah yes, my golden days,' he sighs with a smile. 'Rupert is still a very close friend of mine, but I don't see anything of Hugh. We weren't really pals. I did A Handful Of Dust with Rupert, too, and it sometimes takes a couple of things to cement a friendship. I got on very well with Hugh, he makes me laugh. You can't deny that he is very good at what he does.
I saw About A Boy the other day and he was utterly brilliant in it. I take my hat off to him.
'You've got to have the talent, but you've also got to have a bit of luck.
If you do get the big hit, you have to sustain it and not be a onehit wonder, which he has not been.' Period roles seem to seek James out and he admits there's nothing he'd like better than to play fewer posh toffs and more contemporary roles. He has proved his mettle at the latter, notably in TV's Mother Love with Diana Rigg, and Lynda La Plante's gritty crime thriller Trial & Retribution, but the label of upper-crust English gent has stuck resolutely.
'I do more period parts than not, but it's not a conscious choice,' he says.
'I did a lot when I first started out and that can often define you.
I've no idea why I've always been looked at that way, perhaps it's because if you make a splash with something, the profession wants to keep repeating it.
'I made a decision about eight years ago not to do another period role, so I turned them all down and I was out of work for a year. It was a stupid error of judgment. Then I got Crocodile Shoes, a drama with Jimmy Nail, in which I played a coked-up, boozing, womanising music industry guy. It was a fantastic part and it was very successful. I felt like I proved something with that role.
'I don't care now. I made my stand and, if the period parts come, they come.
The thing is to keep working. Vanessa Redgrave said there's a handful of actors in the world who can decide their own career and I think that's true.
I'm not one of them. I try to keep going but it is quite tough because there are a lot of very fine actors out there. I've never had an out-and-out hit.
Howards End and Gosford Park were successful, but I was in nice supporting roles, not juicy or lead roles. The great thing is to have a hit in one of the leading parts and then they can't get enough of you.' That could all change, though, with James's latest role in ITV1's ambitious six-part drama, Island At War. Set in the Channel Islands during World War II, it charts the impact of German occupation on the islands and their inhabitants. James stars as deputy governor James Dorr, who is forced into an uneasy coexistence with German commandant Von Rheingarten, masterfully played by Clocking Off's Philip Glenister. To complicate matters further, the commandant falls in love with James's wife, Felicity, played by Clare Holman.
'It's a very cleverly written script and really gets to the crux of what it was like to live with the enemy during the war,' says James. 'My character and his wife are going through a rough patch. They married very young and started a family early. When the Germans invade, two things happen - it completely rejuvenates him and his career, and it also rekindles their relationship and they fall in love again.' James's own marriage has stood the test of time, too. He met his wife, Shana, who was an environmental pressure group worker, 20 years ago at a wedding, and they have been married for 15 years. They live in rural bliss in Sussex with their four children, Barney, 15, Florence, 11, Natty, seven, and two-year-old Jesse.
What's the key to a successful marriage? I have no idea,' says James. 'For us, it's luck and the fact that we're good friends, we get on very well. The children are great company, and that keeps you together because it's not just the two of you.
We are good as a family. Shana gave up her job to be a fulltime mum and she is a wonderful mother, one of the greats. She had it really tough while I was away filming on the Isle of Man. Not only did our seven-year-old have the flu, and was vomiting in bed, but the toddler had chickenpox.
'It was terrible for her and hard for me, knowing I was so far away and unable to do anything. She was in floods of tears. I really felt I needed to be there and I was looking forward to getting back to them.' James also supported Shana through a miscarriage before their second child, Florence, was born, which prompted him to take a role in the BBC infertility drama You, Me & It, about the heartache a couple endure trying to have a baby.
'Shana lost the baby at 14 weeks - she was devastated. It is not until something like that happens that you discover how common miscarriage is. The statistic is gigantic - something like one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage.' The middle son of three children, James's childhood was spent on the move as his father, Geoffrey, was managing director for subsidiaries of British Oxygen. He was born in Burma (now Myanmar), but at the age of six he was sent to live with his grandparents in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, because his parents were worried about his health.
'I was a skinny, sickly child who was always coming down with bugs, and my parents were worried that they weren't getting enough decent food down me,' he recalls. 'Burma was a very tough place to live. There were curfews, tanks on the street because of civil unrest; and the most basic commodities, like fresh meat, butter or eggs, were hard to come by. When I came back to England, my grandparents fed me up and got me healthier.' At seven, James was sent to join his older brother, Jeremy, at Terrington Hall boarding school near York and he says, 'I remember vividly the first night I spent at school.
I was absolutely terrified. I can't imagine sending my seven-year-old off to boarding school, but my parents thought it was the best option because the schools weren't very good in Burma. I'm a survivor so I just got on with it.
In the end, I enjoyed school, but the first year was frightening. We had a really scary headmaster who'd threaten to beat us all the time. There was no bullying - he wouldn't tolerate it - but he was a bully himself. The one good thing about being away from home so young was that it made me very independent.' The family moved to Sri Lanka, and then Jamaica, when James was a teenager, where a family tragedy changed their lives forever.
James's brother, Jeremy, a keen athlete and strong swimmer, died in a freak swimming accident and, more than 30 years on, it is a subject James still finds hard to talk about.
'My brother was a very physically strong man, two years older than me and very popular with everyone,' he recalls quietly. 'He was a strong, brilliant swimmer but he was being silly, seeing how deep he could dive under water with a snorkel on. He could go down to 100ft holding his breath.
'He was one of those people who are heavy in water, negatively buoyant, and he was coming up when he got to about six feet from the surface and blacked out and sank back down again. Another boy who had been diving down with him was too exhausted to be able to rescue him.
'It was unbelievably sad and it destroyed our family. Everybody blamed themselves and wondered what they could have done to prevent it. My parents' retirement was accelerated by Jeremy's death. They just wanted to get away from Jamaica and the reminders of what had happened that day.' James found moving around so much unsettling and, from an early age, he escaped his unhappiness by acting.
One of his favourite pastimes was dressing his little sister Sally up as a princess, and himself as a prince so he could rescue her. At Durham University, where he studied maths, he formed a drama group called The Suspect Theatre Company and soon realised he had found his vocation before winning a place at RADA.
'A lot of actors have lived abroad as children,' he says. 'Acting is an itinerant lifestyle, so it figures. I didn't like the fact that we kept moving. I would have enjoyed a more stable home life, with childhood friends.
'Having been so very thin as a child I grew into an awkward teenager who always felt out of place. I didn't have many friends because we were on the move so much and I've always missed that. The sense of family wasn't very strong because my parents weren't around.' James doesn't condemn his parents for the choices they made, but he is striving to do things differently with his own children. He and Shana sold their west London home seven years ago to buy a rambling rectory with a huge garden near Lewes in Sussex, which they have lovingly restored.
'We thought it would be a better life for the kids in the countryside and we haven't regretted it for a minute,' he says. 'We were both fed up with looking after children in London, where there is no sense of them being able to go and do their own thing without parents hovering around. They all have a tremendous sense of freedom now. My kids are having a very different upbringing to mine, and that is mainly down to a wonderful wife who is very happy at home and is a real mum.' After five months working on Island At War, James is looking forward to some time at home before starting his next film, Burmese Days, based on George Orwell's novel about his early years in the Burmese police force.
'It's a wonderful role and I've set up my own production company to do it because, increasingly, that is the only way to get things made,' he says brightly. 'I've had a few years where I've not been in fashion but I've kept going and I'm not about to give up now.' Island At War will be screened on ITV1 on July 11.
Anyway, enjoy!!Byline: KAREN HOCKNEY
On a freezing cold day on the Isle of Man, James Wilby is wrapped up against the elements in a huge Puffa jacket, which looks quite incongruous over his sober grey suit. With his thick shock of blond hair - which shows no hint of grey - and a handsome, boyish face, he could easily pass for a decade younger than his 45 years. Polite, yet restrained, his natural reserve thaws the more time you spend in his company.
Over the years, he has carved out a niche as the quintessential English gentleman and the darling of film makers Merchant Ivory. It's hard to think of a period film he hasn't been in over the last 20 years. Gosford Park, Howards End, Regeneration - in which he played the tortured poet Siegfried Sassoon - and A Handful Of Dust are just a few, but his finest hour was playing the eponymous hero in Maurice, E.M. Forster's powerful tale of a young man's struggle to confront his homosexuality in Edwardian England.
The 1987 film provided James with his big break, alongside fellow unknowns Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves. While James was the lead, it was his supporting actor Grant who went on to enjoy stratospheric success both here and in the States. James was left feeling he had somehow missed the boat, but he displays no bitterness or jealousy at what might have been.
'Ah yes, my golden days,' he sighs with a smile. 'Rupert is still a very close friend of mine, but I don't see anything of Hugh. We weren't really pals. I did A Handful Of Dust with Rupert, too, and it sometimes takes a couple of things to cement a friendship. I got on very well with Hugh, he makes me laugh. You can't deny that he is very good at what he does.
I saw About A Boy the other day and he was utterly brilliant in it. I take my hat off to him.
'You've got to have the talent, but you've also got to have a bit of luck.
If you do get the big hit, you have to sustain it and not be a onehit wonder, which he has not been.' Period roles seem to seek James out and he admits there's nothing he'd like better than to play fewer posh toffs and more contemporary roles. He has proved his mettle at the latter, notably in TV's Mother Love with Diana Rigg, and Lynda La Plante's gritty crime thriller Trial & Retribution, but the label of upper-crust English gent has stuck resolutely.
'I do more period parts than not, but it's not a conscious choice,' he says.
'I did a lot when I first started out and that can often define you.
I've no idea why I've always been looked at that way, perhaps it's because if you make a splash with something, the profession wants to keep repeating it.
'I made a decision about eight years ago not to do another period role, so I turned them all down and I was out of work for a year. It was a stupid error of judgment. Then I got Crocodile Shoes, a drama with Jimmy Nail, in which I played a coked-up, boozing, womanising music industry guy. It was a fantastic part and it was very successful. I felt like I proved something with that role.
'I don't care now. I made my stand and, if the period parts come, they come.
The thing is to keep working. Vanessa Redgrave said there's a handful of actors in the world who can decide their own career and I think that's true.
I'm not one of them. I try to keep going but it is quite tough because there are a lot of very fine actors out there. I've never had an out-and-out hit.
Howards End and Gosford Park were successful, but I was in nice supporting roles, not juicy or lead roles. The great thing is to have a hit in one of the leading parts and then they can't get enough of you.' That could all change, though, with James's latest role in ITV1's ambitious six-part drama, Island At War. Set in the Channel Islands during World War II, it charts the impact of German occupation on the islands and their inhabitants. James stars as deputy governor James Dorr, who is forced into an uneasy coexistence with German commandant Von Rheingarten, masterfully played by Clocking Off's Philip Glenister. To complicate matters further, the commandant falls in love with James's wife, Felicity, played by Clare Holman.
'It's a very cleverly written script and really gets to the crux of what it was like to live with the enemy during the war,' says James. 'My character and his wife are going through a rough patch. They married very young and started a family early. When the Germans invade, two things happen - it completely rejuvenates him and his career, and it also rekindles their relationship and they fall in love again.' James's own marriage has stood the test of time, too. He met his wife, Shana, who was an environmental pressure group worker, 20 years ago at a wedding, and they have been married for 15 years. They live in rural bliss in Sussex with their four children, Barney, 15, Florence, 11, Natty, seven, and two-year-old Jesse.
What's the key to a successful marriage? I have no idea,' says James. 'For us, it's luck and the fact that we're good friends, we get on very well. The children are great company, and that keeps you together because it's not just the two of you.
We are good as a family. Shana gave up her job to be a fulltime mum and she is a wonderful mother, one of the greats. She had it really tough while I was away filming on the Isle of Man. Not only did our seven-year-old have the flu, and was vomiting in bed, but the toddler had chickenpox.
'It was terrible for her and hard for me, knowing I was so far away and unable to do anything. She was in floods of tears. I really felt I needed to be there and I was looking forward to getting back to them.' James also supported Shana through a miscarriage before their second child, Florence, was born, which prompted him to take a role in the BBC infertility drama You, Me & It, about the heartache a couple endure trying to have a baby.
'Shana lost the baby at 14 weeks - she was devastated. It is not until something like that happens that you discover how common miscarriage is. The statistic is gigantic - something like one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage.' The middle son of three children, James's childhood was spent on the move as his father, Geoffrey, was managing director for subsidiaries of British Oxygen. He was born in Burma (now Myanmar), but at the age of six he was sent to live with his grandparents in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, because his parents were worried about his health.
'I was a skinny, sickly child who was always coming down with bugs, and my parents were worried that they weren't getting enough decent food down me,' he recalls. 'Burma was a very tough place to live. There were curfews, tanks on the street because of civil unrest; and the most basic commodities, like fresh meat, butter or eggs, were hard to come by. When I came back to England, my grandparents fed me up and got me healthier.' At seven, James was sent to join his older brother, Jeremy, at Terrington Hall boarding school near York and he says, 'I remember vividly the first night I spent at school.
I was absolutely terrified. I can't imagine sending my seven-year-old off to boarding school, but my parents thought it was the best option because the schools weren't very good in Burma. I'm a survivor so I just got on with it.
In the end, I enjoyed school, but the first year was frightening. We had a really scary headmaster who'd threaten to beat us all the time. There was no bullying - he wouldn't tolerate it - but he was a bully himself. The one good thing about being away from home so young was that it made me very independent.' The family moved to Sri Lanka, and then Jamaica, when James was a teenager, where a family tragedy changed their lives forever.
James's brother, Jeremy, a keen athlete and strong swimmer, died in a freak swimming accident and, more than 30 years on, it is a subject James still finds hard to talk about.
'My brother was a very physically strong man, two years older than me and very popular with everyone,' he recalls quietly. 'He was a strong, brilliant swimmer but he was being silly, seeing how deep he could dive under water with a snorkel on. He could go down to 100ft holding his breath.
'He was one of those people who are heavy in water, negatively buoyant, and he was coming up when he got to about six feet from the surface and blacked out and sank back down again. Another boy who had been diving down with him was too exhausted to be able to rescue him.
'It was unbelievably sad and it destroyed our family. Everybody blamed themselves and wondered what they could have done to prevent it. My parents' retirement was accelerated by Jeremy's death. They just wanted to get away from Jamaica and the reminders of what had happened that day.' James found moving around so much unsettling and, from an early age, he escaped his unhappiness by acting.
One of his favourite pastimes was dressing his little sister Sally up as a princess, and himself as a prince so he could rescue her. At Durham University, where he studied maths, he formed a drama group called The Suspect Theatre Company and soon realised he had found his vocation before winning a place at RADA.
'A lot of actors have lived abroad as children,' he says. 'Acting is an itinerant lifestyle, so it figures. I didn't like the fact that we kept moving. I would have enjoyed a more stable home life, with childhood friends.
'Having been so very thin as a child I grew into an awkward teenager who always felt out of place. I didn't have many friends because we were on the move so much and I've always missed that. The sense of family wasn't very strong because my parents weren't around.' James doesn't condemn his parents for the choices they made, but he is striving to do things differently with his own children. He and Shana sold their west London home seven years ago to buy a rambling rectory with a huge garden near Lewes in Sussex, which they have lovingly restored.
'We thought it would be a better life for the kids in the countryside and we haven't regretted it for a minute,' he says. 'We were both fed up with looking after children in London, where there is no sense of them being able to go and do their own thing without parents hovering around. They all have a tremendous sense of freedom now. My kids are having a very different upbringing to mine, and that is mainly down to a wonderful wife who is very happy at home and is a real mum.' After five months working on Island At War, James is looking forward to some time at home before starting his next film, Burmese Days, based on George Orwell's novel about his early years in the Burmese police force.
'It's a wonderful role and I've set up my own production company to do it because, increasingly, that is the only way to get things made,' he says brightly. 'I've had a few years where I've not been in fashion but I've kept going and I'm not about to give up now.' Island At War will be screened on ITV1 on July 11.