Tag Archives: Naomi Watts
Freida Pinto Cast In Woody Allen Project
Posted on 24. Feb, 2009 by CSS.
Freida Pinto has been cast in a film from a legendary Hollywood director on the heels of her breakout performance in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire.
According to Variety, the 24-year-old Indian-born beauty will join Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, and Josh Brolin in an upcoming untitled project from filmmaker Woody Allen.
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Clive Owen Talks About Sexy Spy Thrillers.
Posted on 14. Jan, 2009 by CSS.
Clive Owen could be reading the phone book and it would be sexy. But for him to actually star in a film that he calls a “sexy, savvy, banter movie” - be still, my heart. Seriously, his voice is the best part of an already perfect package. Anyway, Clive answered some questions from The Los Angeles Times via e-mail about his two upcoming spy films. First up is The International, co-starring Naomi Watts. After that is Duplicity, playing against his Closer co-star Julia Roberts.
Clive Owen, who hasn’t been seen on the big screen since his supporting turn as Sir Walter Raleigh in 2007’s “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” comes back strong with two lead roles — both in spy thrillers, though with very distinct tones — early this year.
First is “The International,” opening Feb. 13. Directed by Tom Tykwer (”Run Lola Run”) and set in various European locales, the film casts the British actor as a relentless Interpol agent who teams with a savvy Manhattan district attorney (Naomi Watts) to bring down a powerful world bank involved in illegal arms trading.
Written and directed by Tony Gilroy (”Michael Clayton), “Duplicity” arrives in theaters next — on March 20 — and finds Owen with Julia Roberts playing corporate spies with a romantic past involved in a race to corner the market on a medical discovery. Owen recently spoke about his two projects in an e-mail interview.
Q: Tom Tykwer is so adept at big action sequences. What was that like as an actor?
I’m a big fan of Tom’s work. He’s up there as one of the very best directors I have worked with. He seems to have a grasp of all aspects of filmmaking; I trust him implicitly.Q: Though it has a very contemporary story line, “The International” has that feel of those great spy thrillers of the 1960s that are set throughout Europe.
The locations play a very big part in the experience of this movie. My character literally travels the world in pursuit of bringing down one of the world’s biggest banks, and each location is hugely atmospheric.
Q: The lengthy shoot sequence set at the Guggenheim Museum in New York is absolutely dazzling but must have been extremely arduous to shoot.
It took a long time and a lot of preparation. It’s a very good example of how talented Tom is as a director. It’s an ever-developing, exquisitely realized action sequence in an iconic New York museum. I think this sequence will be talked about for many years.
Q: You and Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays a member of the powerful bank, have some crackling scenes together, especially the intense interrogation sequence. Did you rehearse?
Rehearsals were more about understanding the scenes than playing them. You have to be careful rehearsing for movies— if you over-rehearse you can kill a scene by getting overly familiar with it.
Q: How is “Duplicity” different in style and tone than “The International”?
“Duplicity” is a very different kind of movie. It’s a very sexy, savvy, banter movie with fantastic dialogue — some of the best I’ve been given on film. I thought “Michael Clayton” was an astonishing debut for Tony — so smart and assured. And “Duplicity” is one of the best scripts I’ve read in a very long time. The two films have a couple of things in common — great scripts and brilliant directors.
-From Los Angeles Times
Both films looks really good, and Clive Owen looks really good in them.
The International Trailer:
Duplicity Trailer:
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Liev Schreiber Had A Really Disfunctional Childhood!
Posted on 08. Jan, 2009 by CSS.
His acting, he says, has complicated roots and comes from a childhood that is infamously dysfunctional. A simple précis couldn’t possibly capture the texture of it (the essayist and writer John Lahr tried to do just this in a lengthy New Yorker magazine profile of Schreiber in 1999). The key points include an early divorce between Schreiber’s blueblood father Tell and his Jewish former communist mother Heather; some time in an upstate New York commune with Heather; Tell kidnapping Schreiber back from Heather; a custody battle won by Heather, followed by a childhood for Schreiber dominated by his mother’s penury (they frequently had no electricity, hot water, or even beds).
He endured her mood swings and bohemian proclivities (she made him take Hindu names, wear yoga shirts, and he was forced, briefly, to go to an Ashram school in Connecticut when he was 12). It culminated in a fractured ankle during football practice at Brooklyn Tech in 1984, when the 17-year-old Schreiber was forced to turn away from sports and eventually towards the stage.
Acting, says Schreiber, is therapy. “I may have been working out my relationship with my mother and my father all along, and I probably will be for the rest of my life. But then that’s one of the luxuries of being an actor — it’s about self-exploration.”
He is now based in Manhattan and in a long-term relationship with fellow actor Naomi Watts, and his life at the moment is defined by the couple’s two infant children, Sasha, 17 months, and four-week-old Samuel Kai. “Remember that voyage of self-exploration I was talking so fondly about just then?” he says, chuckling to himself. “Well it just ends. You go, ‘Awhh sh-t! No more me time!’” He then sighs and quietly confesses: “I am struggling, though. It’s f***ing hard. So little sleep. It’s 23 hours and 59 minutes of exhaustion. But then they do one little thing in that last minute that is just so compelling and fascinating that it makes the other 23 hours and 59 minutes worthwhile.”
-From TimesOnline
Yeesh. A communist mother, a kidnapping, a commune *and* an ashram? You couldn’t write this stuff. I always wonder about people who had extremely messed-up childhoods. Do they work extra hard to give their own kids the “normal” childhood they never had? Or do they screw up their own kids in the same old ways? In the interview, Liev also takes more about X-Men Origins, and his future theatre and film roles.
Schreiber’s next role is even more action-packed — he stars as the mutant supervillain Sabretooth opposite Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in the comic blockbuster X-Men Origins this summer. The role, which required four months of bulking up and working out (transforming his already imposing 6ft 3in frame into a thing of hulking beauty), is the final step in Schreiber’s transformation from a man who’s all brains into one with muscles too.
“I like to think I’m part of the new Obama transition,” he says, tongue deeply in cheek. “Obama is hermetically intelligent, he knows what he wants and he never screws up. So maybe now there’s room for intelligent action heroes too.”
The real kick here is the sheer breadth of Schreiber’s professional evolution. A Tony award-winning stage dynamo, he has repeatedly wowed New York critics and crowds alike with his headlining Shakespearean roles (from Cymbeline to Hamlet to Henry V and beyond) since graduating from Yale School of Drama in 1992. “I do think there is some truth to the notion that you have little to fear from any role if you can comfortably break down a Shakespearean soliloquy,” he says, without false modesty.
Furthermore, he adds, children give you some much needed perspective on your work. Because despite the fact that he has a summer blockbuster on the way, and a romantic comedy with Helen Hunt called Every Day, plus a Jude Law sci-fi film, Repossession Mambo, he is still wildly unsure of his career prospects. “You can never be comfortable as an actor,” he says. “It’s like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The minute you name an event it ceases to exist. It’s like that with acting. The minute you say you’re happy with your career, it’s gone. Over.”
-From TimesOnline
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Clive Owen Film Set To Open The Berlin Film Festival.
Posted on 13. Dec, 2008 by CSS.
Clive Owen is one of those rare actors who almost always makes good, interesting films. I’m hard-pressed to think of one Clive Owen film where it seemed like he was phoning it in. So with that in mind, imagine a Clive Owen film where he runs around fighting international crime in the forms of gun-runners and *cue dramatic music* white-collar crooks. Thus, The International, a film directed by Tom Tykwer and co-starring Naomi Watts. The International will be the opening film of the Berlin Film Festival, which begins February 5.
Tom Tykwer’s “The International,” an action thriller starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, will open the 59th Berlin International Film Festival on February 5.
Screening out of competition, the feature will be Tykwer’s second Berlinale opening, following “Heaven,” which bowed at the 2002 event.
But unlike “Heaven,” which was an art-house film more along the lines of Tykwer’s “Winter Sleepers” (1997) or “The Princess and the Warrior” (2000), “The International” marks the German director’s jump into the major leagues.
The director of indie hit “Run, Lola, Run” (1998) proved he could handle a big budget with his last picture, the opulent olfactory epic “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (2006). But “The International” is Tywker’s first film with a U.S. studio. Sony co-produced with Germany’s Studio Babelsberg and will release the film in Germany February 12 and stateside, via Columbia Pictures, February 13.
“The International” is Tywker’s first film with a U.S. studio. Sony co-produced with Germany’s Studio Babelsberg and will release the film in Germany February 12 and stateside, via Columbia Pictures, February 13.
“The International” is also Tykwer’s first all-out action movie. The conspiracy thriller follows Owen as an Interpol agent who discovers that the world’s largest bank is secretly engaging in money laundering and illegal arms trading. Watts co-stars as a Manhattan assistant district attorney who joins Owen on his race around the world to bring those responsible to justice.
The film was shot largely in Berlin and Studio Babelsberg with location work in New York, Istanbul and Milan.
The 59th Berlinale runs February 5-15, 2009.
-From Reuters
Check out the trailer:
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Naomi Watts Scores A Sweet Mercedes BlueTEC For Her 40th Birthday!
Posted on 05. Nov, 2008 by CSS.
Last month, pregnant Naomi Watts sparked controversy by scootering around the mean streets of New York City on the back of a Vespa driven by baby-daddy Liev Schreiber.
But in Los Angeles, she has a shiny new car to drive around in, one that is both safer than a Vespa and has room for two car seats. The National Enquirer reports Liev bought Naomi a $50,000-plus Mercedes-Benz BlueTEC for her 40th birthday, and she’s thrilled.
The environmentally-friendly luxury SUV doesn’t hit the market until later this month, but Liev managed to score one weeks early — and had it delivered with a big red bow on the hood at a surprise bash he threw for his sweetie in L.A. Naomi, who is due to give birth to the couple’s second child in December, couldn’t contain her excitement and immediately took her new set of wheels for a spin around the block.
-From National Enquirer
According to the Mercedes Benz website, BlueTEC gets “the maximum power out of every single drop of diesel and so consumes significantly less fuel while conserving natural resources and actively preventing air pollution.”
Naomi came late to both fame and family, but now is doing great on both fronts. Her son Alexander turned one in July, her second child is due in December, and she’s said she still wants more kids.
