Manchester Evening News - Saturday 26 November 1988
James Wilby loves to play life dangerously. Never an actor to take the easy option, he didn’t work for five months after the award winning title role in Maurice.
It wasn't the film’s homosexual love scenes that kept him on the dole however. James's own lust for the right project to advance his career made him reject all the offers that poured in. “It just takes one bad film and it can put you back miles,’’ he says.
Now following the major success in the starring role of the classic story of A Handful of Dust, blond, handsome James Wilby is taking chances again.
Not content with dominating all the dashing British screen roles in the Jeremy Irons mould, he's starring in A Summer Story, a distinctly unfashionable love story in an age when violent cop thrillers and special effects films top the box office.
“The challenge -- and it is quite a challenge-- is to get the mood absolutely right,’’ he says of the turn-of-the-century West Country story.
“What’s interesting about a love story is not two people falling in love it’s two people falling in love, in a particular way. And it's getting that right.”
No time was it harder than in nude scenes played between James and his pretty co-star Imogen Stubbs in a freezing West Country river and a hay loft at dead of night with temperatures plummeting.
“You have to be relaxed because the camera picks everything, every tensing muscle. It’s not easy to be totally relaxed and gaze lovingly into somebody’s eyes with technicians standing around watching!
Born in Rangoon and after an itinerate early life in Burma Ceylon and Jamaica James eventually took up acting as a hobby while studying maths at Durham University.
His hobby turned into an obsession and he ended up being accepted by RADA, which in turn led him straight into the West End cast of Another Country, the story of spy Guy Burgess, which also launched the careers of Rupert Graves (Dance With A Stranger) and Colin Firth (Tumbledown), and a vital Equity’ card.
Following that run the die was cast and Wilby started getting calls for roles that demanded his fresh-faced public schoolboy look.
“Am I worried about being typecast in classical roles? Yes, but all my parts so far have been very different, it’s only journalists who want to lump them all together.”
After a day spent as an extra on the worldwide Merchant/Ivory hit A Room With View-- “I was furious, my agent was promised it was a speaking part,” -- he was offered the lead in E M Forster’s autobiographical Maurice.
“I’ve no regrets at all about doing Maurice,” says James, who despite not having a holiday in four years managed to take one day off from work marry his long-time girlfriend.
“I don’t think I’ll play such a fascinating role for years. You get one those that fits you like glove every years or once in a lifetime.”
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Helena Bonham Carter & Imogen Stubbs in Twelfth Night (1996), directed by Trevor Nunn and based on the Shakespeare comedy.
Second photo is of the costumes worn above, which were designed by John Bright.
Images borrowed from The Corseted Beauty
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Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996)
The 1996 BBC Films production of Twelfth Night: Or What You Will is a mostly faithful staging of the classic Shakespeare comedy, directed by The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Trevor Nunn. It’s not the kind of MTV-era update to Shakespeare’s text that you’ll find in fellow 90s titles like 10 Things I Hate About You or My Own Private Idaho, which tried to Make the Bard Cool Again for a generation who…
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Anna Lee: Requiem (1994)
Appreciation post for Imogen Stubbs as Anna Lee! I love her as this character. 💛 Got to re-watch this tonight after a lot years and it was a treat!
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