Showing posts tagged stuart a life backwards

An old review (from the New Statesman, Oct, 2007) of Stuart a Life Backwards which I think captures some of what is so great about this extraordinary film:

Benedict Cumberbatch as the posh, slightly nerdy Masters and Tom Hardy as the slurring, staggering (he had muscular dystrophy, on top of everything else) Stuart. Cumberbatch is a scene stealer of such prowess that he can nick an entire movie from its star with a handful of lines (if you don’t believe me, see Starter for Ten, whose lead, supposedly, is James McAvoy). Here, however, his performance was deliberately tamped down. He brought Masters alive with the smallest of tics - slow-blinking myopic eyes , the odd wry look - and managed to avoid making him seem like a patronising prig, a serious danger, given how little time he had to establish his character.

It was Hardy, though, who broke your heart. I can’t remember the last time I saw a performance as convincing as this. Usually, when actors take on “extreme” roles - think Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot- you can see the hard labour that has gone into the acting, and it’s exhausting; part of you just wants to shout: “Oh, speak properly, for God’s sake!” Not here. Hardy was Stuart, and every time he was on screen - which was most of the time - 1 was mesmerised. The clumpy feet, the low-slung trousers, the way his expression changed in a moment, like the sun going behind the clouds: it was all there, almost as if the real Stuart had come back to remind us all what middle-class “scum ponces” we are, with our futile liberal guilt and our lazy assumptions and our need to have a good cry in front of the television on a Sunday night.

Tom Hardy talks about getting into character for Oliver Twist (he just grew a beard!). From The Independent, Dec 16 2007:
For any discerning TV enthusiast, 2007 will be remembered as the year when Tom Hardy revealed himself to be a stratospheric talent. Think I’m exaggerating? Then you must have missed the 30-year-old actor’s extraordinary, virtuosic and, above all, charming turn as the homeless protagonist of the BBC drama Stuart: a Life Backwards, which was based on Alexander Masters’s book. For Hardy, Stuart was an “opportunity to show what I could do. It was complete disguise work, basically, which I love doing”.For his next role, he’s disguised himself as a totally different kind of sociopath, one with a bit more vintage, playing Bill Sikes, the villain of Oliver Twist, in a bold new five-part adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel. The familiar tale of the orphan who joins a band of thieves is given a new lease of life by the EastEnders writer Sarah Phelps, aided by a stellar cast: Timothy Spall as Fagin, Sophie Okonedo as Nancy and the pleasingly bolshy William Miller as Oliver.Even so, the ghost of Oliver Reed - the quintessential Bill Sikes in 1968’s Oliver! - was hovering over Hardy’s every move. “I could never go up against a performance as classic as that. Oliver Reed played Bill as this horrible, booming, alcoholic brawler… I play him softer, a bit sensual and maybe a bit more pathetic.” What Hardy lacks in physical bulk, he more than makes up for in his psychotic stare.What did he do to get into the role? “Nothing!” he laughs. “I put a hat on and grew a beard.” That’s not strictly true. Hardy has spent two years researching the life of Michael Peterson, the armed robber who changed his name in prison to Charles Bronson, whom he’s playing in a forthcoming biopic. “Because the Bronson film didn’t happen last year, I put a lot of the work I did on him into Bill. Now it’s going to happen in February, so I’m going to have to carve out a new character.” It’s a challenge, but one that he evidently relishes. “I’m staying with Bronson’s mum next week,” he reveals. “It’s cool. I like investigating things and meeting real people. It’s exciting.”

Tom Hardy talks about getting into character for Oliver Twist (he just grew a beard!). From The Independent, Dec 16 2007:

For any discerning TV enthusiast, 2007 will be remembered as the year when Tom Hardy revealed himself to be a stratospheric talent. Think I’m exaggerating? Then you must have missed the 30-year-old actor’s extraordinary, virtuosic and, above all, charming turn as the homeless protagonist of the BBC drama Stuart: a Life Backwards, which was based on Alexander Masters’s book. For Hardy, Stuart was an “opportunity to show what I could do. It was complete disguise work, basically, which I love doing”.

For his next role, he’s disguised himself as a totally different kind of sociopath, one with a bit more vintage, playing Bill Sikes, the villain of Oliver Twist, in a bold new five-part adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel. The familiar tale of the orphan who joins a band of thieves is given a new lease of life by the EastEnders writer Sarah Phelps, aided by a stellar cast: Timothy Spall as Fagin, Sophie Okonedo as Nancy and the pleasingly bolshy William Miller as Oliver.

Even so, the ghost of Oliver Reed - the quintessential Bill Sikes in 1968’s Oliver! - was hovering over Hardy’s every move. “I could never go up against a performance as classic as that. Oliver Reed played Bill as this horrible, booming, alcoholic brawler… I play him softer, a bit sensual and maybe a bit more pathetic.” What Hardy lacks in physical bulk, he more than makes up for in his psychotic stare.

What did he do to get into the role? “Nothing!” he laughs. “I put a hat on and grew a beard.” That’s not strictly true. Hardy has spent two years researching the life of Michael Peterson, the armed robber who changed his name in prison to Charles Bronson, whom he’s playing in a forthcoming biopic. “Because the Bronson film didn’t happen last year, I put a lot of the work I did on him into Bill. Now it’s going to happen in February, so I’m going to have to carve out a new character.” It’s a challenge, but one that he evidently relishes. “I’m staying with Bronson’s mum next week,” he reveals. “It’s cool. I like investigating things and meeting real people. It’s exciting.”

‘I’ve changed my body three times in the last year,’ he told me. First, he starved himself to play the heroin-addicted Stuart, losing two stone in a month. Then he piled on five stone for a role as a heavyweight boxer in a film that was cancelled. He showed me the superfluous physique in the gallery he keeps on his mobile phone: Hardy had become a brutish pillar of brawn. ‘Steroids?’ I asked. ‘Hell no,’ he said indignantly. ‘I’m a recovering drug addict!’

- Tom Hardy in The Guardian in 2007 - for people who keep thinking he might ever be taking steroids to gain weight/muscle.

[Stuart a Life Backwards] concludes ambiguously, reporting that the body of the tottering, wasted waif has been found on a railway line; the character’s end cannot be dramatised because there were no witnesses.
This did not absolve Hardy from having to imagine how it might have happened. ‘Did Stuart off himself? I just can’t believe it, maybe because I got to love him while I was being him. I walked along that path beside the track in Cambridge; it’s very narrow and he was so frail. I think he just toppled over or got drawn in by the wind from the train. All his injuries were on one side, which suggests it was an accident. His life was such a gift, despite everything he’d suffered. I’m not comfortable believing that he threw it away. He’s an odd superhero, but that’s what he was for me. He made me grow and he made me think about what I want with my career.’
 - Tom about playing Stuart Shorter. I can’t begin to express how much I love this film. It’s a film I wish everybody would see. Both because of the story and to see the most amazing acting to ever grace a screen.

[Stuart a Life Backwards] concludes ambiguously, reporting that the body of the tottering, wasted waif has been found on a railway line; the character’s end cannot be dramatised because there were no witnesses.

This did not absolve Hardy from having to imagine how it might have happened. ‘Did Stuart off himself? I just can’t believe it, maybe because I got to love him while I was being him. I walked along that path beside the track in Cambridge; it’s very narrow and he was so frail. I think he just toppled over or got drawn in by the wind from the train. All his injuries were on one side, which suggests it was an accident. His life was such a gift, despite everything he’d suffered. I’m not comfortable believing that he threw it away. He’s an odd superhero, but that’s what he was for me. He made me grow and he made me think about what I want with my career.’

 - Tom about playing Stuart Shorter. I can’t begin to express how much I love this film. It’s a film I wish everybody would see. Both because of the story and to see the most amazing acting to ever grace a screen.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever been involved in, it is epic in its humanity and not sentimental in the least,” says Tom [Hardy]. “It was so important to do it properly - we’re deconstructing the stigma around homelessness and drug addiction. I’m lucky that I didn’t have too much of a stretch to understand Stuart’s pain as there has been drinking and drugs and violence in my own life. 

“I think it’s a story of hope - Stuart lived every second as though it was his last and his light burnt very brightly. He’s not with us any more, it’s a huge loss.”

(Source: thefreelibrary.com)

I keep coming back to this, don’t I? It’s because I mourn the fact that Benedict & Tom haven’t done interviews together for TTSS. They would have been amazing together. Obviously.

A close-up of Tom as Stuart (from a HUGE version of this still).

A HQ still from Stuart: A Life Backwards - scanned by me. :)

While rewatching (again! I love this film more every time I watch it) Stuart: A Life Backwards, I thought of all the rather subtle ways they made Tom/Stuart look small and shrunken.

And of how utterly perfect Tom is, playing Stuart. It’s the ultimate transformation, as far as I’m concerned.

Stuart cooks a delicious sandwich for Alexander - in his own, very … uhm … unique way.

Things I like