2007

HIS DARK MATERIALS: THE GOLDEN COMPASS Character: Serafina Pekkala Director: Chris Weitz Co-Stars: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards, Sam Elliott, and Ian McShane Release Date: The world premiere will take place in London on Nov 26 2007 followed by the first territorial openings in France and Spain on Wed Dec 5 and in Germany and Holland on Thursday Dec 6. The rest of the world, including North America, opens on Dec 7, except Italy which goes one week later on Dec 14 and Australia on Dec 26. Japan will open three months later on March 1. Synopsis: Based on author Philip Pullman’s bestselling and award-winning novel, The Golden Compass tells the first story in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The Golden Compass is an exciting fantasy adventure, set in an alternative world where people’s souls manifest themselves as animals, talking bears fight wars, and Gyptians and witches co-exist. At the center of the story is Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), a 12-year-old girl who starts out trying to rescue a friend who’s been kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as the Gobblers – and winds up on an epic quest to save not only her world, but ours as well. Character Profile: Serafina Pekkala is the Queen of the witches of Lake Enara. More than three hundred years old, she has the longevity and vigor of her kind, with the appearance and energy of a woman in her twenties. Like all witches, she has the power of flight and is privy to arcane knowledge that comes by way of the signs of the forest and tundra she inhabits and its proximity to the far North, where the barrier between worlds is thin. Quotes: "I'm playing Serafina Pekkala, a good witch, a very wise character. I hope the studio will be brave enough to bring the darkness and not make it a new Harry Potter. It questions religion and God, so we'll see what they do with it. But the first script is really good." "She's not a traditional witch. She's very maternal, very nurturing towards Lyra. It is quite a mysterious role, which I found very attractive." On what attracted her to playing Serafina: "I read the Philip Pullman trilogy and really liked the role - she's strong and hundreds of years old. She is a witch who is a guide, philosopher and friend to Lyra. It is quite a mysterious role which I found attractive." About her witch training: "Serafina has to just drop [to land], and I always have problems, even on swings and rollercoasters. So this is the most challenging thing. It's very fast." About some of the choices she's made in bringing the character to life: "I wanted to make her sound quite other worldly and yet from another age. I worked with my voice coach, Roisin Carty to create a sort of medieval Scandinavian drawl."

2006

CASINO ROYALE Character: Vesper Lynd Director: Martin Campbell Co-Stars: Daniel Craig, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, Caterina Murino, Ivana Milicevic Summary: Based on the 1953 novel by Ian Fleming. James Bond (Daniel Craig) works with a British Treasury agent, the beautiful but emotionally turbulent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), to defeat the suicide bomber financier Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in a game of Texas Hold Em with a $10 million dollar buy-in. Vesper becomes Bond's lover but she is hiding a terrible secret. Character Profile: Vesper Lynd works for the Treasury Department and is sent to assist 007 on the “Casino Royale” mission. Intelligent, beautiful, but with many dark secrets, Vesper is the ultimate Bond girl. It is Vesper's job to control the purse strings of the mission, and to decide how much of the Treasury's money Bond can risk in his poker game with Le Chiffre. Having to share a long train ride with Agent 007, Vesper soon sums up Bond and puts him “in his place”. As with Fleming's character, Vesper is business-orientated and does no take to Bond's attitude. But, Bond and Vesper eventually warm to each other as they spend more time together, with 007 ultimately naming his new vodka martini recipe after her. Eva's mom, former actress Marlène Jobert talks about her daughter getting the role of Vesper Lynd in "Casino Royale": "Last fall, when the casting started all over Europe, my daughter had refused to go to the tests. She didn't want to make this film because she thought that a Bond girl was a character that's too soft, and for which looks are very important. Since she was little, Eva hear people say she's very pretty. It's been worse since she followed that career. It really irritates her that people only talk about her looks. She spent three years at drama school, she was in two professional plays, and she would like to be chosen because of her acting skills. Thanks to her British manager, she ended up reading the script and realized that the role of Vesper Lynd was very important, difficult, subtle, enigmatic. Then she went to Prague, where she made two tests with Daniel Craig, whom she found very nice. Martin Campbell, Barbara Broccoli and Michael J. Wilson didn't hide from her that after months looking for the right actress, they had chosen her." Vesper Lynd, according to Eva: "She's the first Bond girl. She's the root of all the Bond girls, and she is quite complex and she's the one that gets Bond's heart, which is quite unusual. You will see a very human side of Bond in this movie." "She's an enigma. She's very mysterious. You can't really see through her. She's also the first Bond girl ever written by Ian Fleming, and she's quite different. She doesn't really play on her sexuality. She's very sensual, but they have this relationship which is verbal, they are like boxing partners. It's quite an unusual relationship." "A lot of Bond girls are sexy and unreal, but Vesper is more realistic and more human. I had a chance to read the script before the screen test and I really fell in love with the character." "She's the only woman that Bond falls in love with, and she shapes him and she's going to have a great impact on his life. He's going to become the Bond that we know, and that makes it interesting. In this movie, I think he maybe will be more human, you will see his flaws, and he's a bit more rugged, and Daniel Craig looks a bit rugged." The plot, according to Eva: "In the end, it is one of the best scripts I have ever read. And what has definitively convinced me is the love story between Bond and Vesper Lynd." "I think this is one of the best scripts I've read for a long time, and it's not like a cliché movie or anything like that. It's a very deep, profound movie with a lot of twists and turns. The love story moved me, and it's not like an action movie. That's why I'm doing this movie, and this character is a gift for an actor, so you can't say no. You'd be quite a moron." How did she prepare to play her role: "I'm quite cerebral, so I'm imagining each scene and working on the character. I haven't read the novel and I'm reading it at the moment. I'm a bad student, but I'm about to read it. In a way, I just imagined this movie as an old-fashioned movie in a very good way, because [Vesper] is quite sassy and sharp, and the relationship is kind of unusual and very funny, but you'll just have to wait and see. I'm working at the moment." "Action? No, I'm an office person. But I don't have to fight anybody."

2005

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Character: Sibylla Director: Ridley Scott Co-Stars: Orlando Bloom, Edward Norton, Marton Csokas, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, David Thewlis Summary: The story opens as Balian (Orlando Bloom), a young French blacksmith, is mourning the loss of his wife and young son. It is then that Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson), a highly regarded baron to the king of Jerusalem deeply committed to keeping peace in the Holy Land, comes in search of the grieving Balian, his illegitimate son. Balian relents against his sorrow and chooses to join Godfrey on his sacred mission. Upon his father’s untimely death, Balian inherits land and a title of his own in Jerusalem, a city in which Christians, Muslims and Jews have managed to achieve a peaceful coexistence during this brief interlude of truce between the 2nd and 3rd Crusades. The year is 1186. Sworn to uphold a noble oath and bound by unshakeable integrity, Balian finds himself in a strange new land, serving a doomed king and drawn to the king’s enigmatic sister, Princess Sibylla (Eva Green). It is in Jerusalem that he rises to become the most honorable and heroic of knights, and ultimately must protect its people from overwhelming forces. Sibylla, according to Eva: "The character of Sibylla is quite nebulous, we don't know too much about her. She was madly in love with Guy de Lusignan, the baddie in the movie, and everyone was warning her not to marry him because he was such a moron. Then she put the crown on his head, and there were disastrous consequences for the kingdom. We also know that she had a child who died at 8 years old, though we don't know how. But I didn't build my character from the history, it was more on the script." "She was a Queen and it was quite hard because she had to maintain this public mask, but she was also a woman and she found life quite difficult with this duality in her life." "Sibylla suffers from numerous frustrations. She's an heroine, not a potiche." "There's another version of the movie that will be released later, it was like three hours and a few minutes so we had to cut the movie and now it's more focused on the relationship between the Christians & the Muslims, it's more focused on the men. First of all it was a too long script so they had to make compromises, the love story might've been too long and the son story might've been too long also. It will exist though, and my character is extremely different in the other version - she's more complex. I'm happy it exists and I'm very proud that it's not going to be locked away." "Well, in the second version of the movie, I have a son who is about eight years old and that is a big thing. To me, it is the most beautiful side of the character because she is afflicted by something terrible and he is a leper like his uncle and she is very concerned about everything. It becomes like a tradegy so, therefore, I have a lot of scenes with Tiberius discussing that with him and the relationship with my husband is more complex. Of course, you can't make a four-hour movie, so we had to cut some stuff." How did this project come about: "It was a long, tough process - five or six auditions. The first was in London with a casting director and I had to learn two monologues of the character. Then I met with Ridley [Scott] in his office and I was completely paralysed because of who he was. I didn't want to sound too French and didn't know what he was looking for. Then there was no news, no news, no news. Then another screen test at Pinewood Studios where all the costumes and the actors were. Then another screen test to convince them that I could be more regal and like a queen."

2004

ARSÈNE LUPIN Character: Clarisse de Dreux-Soubise Director: Jean-Paul Salomé Co-Stars: Romain Duris, Kristin Scott Thomas, Pascal Greggory Summary: Freely adapted from the novel by Maurice Leblanc. A retelling of the glamorous life of Arsene Lupin, the celebrated jewel thief of belle epoque Europe. Tired of boring rural life at the family's luxurious castle in Normandy, France, Arsene's father (Nicky Naude) instructs him to steal a particularly necklace once worn by Marie Antoinette, from his unsympathetic relatives, the Dreux-Soubise. Lupin later sees his murdered father's body on the cliff-tops, setting him on a path to vengeance. His early taste for jewellery theft turns him into a career burglar. The adult Lupin (Romain Duris) carries out his crimes with debonair, impish charm, and a good deal of luck. He then meets and falls for the mysteriously youthful Countess of Cagliostro (Kristin Scott-Thomas), whose criminal tendencies stray further even than the bloodless activities of her young lover. Meanwhile, his relationship with his cousin and childhood sweetheart, the respectable and pure-hearted Clarisse (Eva Green), leads him to become embroiled in an affair which links directly to the Countess, his father's murder, and that necklace he stole as a young boy. Director Jean-Paul Salomé talks about Eva: "She was the ideal opposition to the somber character of the Countess. Her unusual beauty, but also the mystery she can emanate, avoided that the character of Clarisse would be only a pure and too smooth girl. And I can assure you that Eva is one of the most gifted actresses of her generation, in addition to her amazing beauty. She transpierces the film!"

2003

THE DREAMERS Character: Isabelle Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Co-Stars: Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel Summary: Based on a 1988 novel by Gilbert Adair. Left alone in Paris whilst their parents are on holiday, Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother Theo (Louis Garrel) invite Matthew (Michael Pitt), a young American student who share their love of cinema, to stay at their apartment. Their obsession with films is used to create their own world of role-playing, and increasingly demanding mind games, cut off from the rowdy Parisian streets and the growning anger of the crowds. Set against the turbulent political backdrop of the Paris riots in the spring of 1968 when the voice of youth was reverberating around Europe, The Dreamers is a story of self-discovery as the three students test each other to see just how far they will go. Adair writes of the film: "It is about the spring: the springtime of Paris, the springtime of its political awakening and the springtime of their bodies. What happens inside the apartment seems to reflect, in a certain way, what is happening outside." Bertolucci, who was in Paris during that frenetic spring, is even more carried away by the memory of it. "There was something quite magic in the 1960s," he says. "We were dreaming. We were fusing cinema, politics, jazz, rock'n'roll, sex, philosophy and dope. I was devouring it all. There was hope in young people that you had never seen before, and never will again. The attempt to dive into the future, and freedom, was fantastic. It is the last time something happened that was so idealistic and so utopian." The premise of the movie in Eva's words: "It's about a twin sister and brother who have a passionate, almost incestuous relationship. They meet an American student and become friends with him. The three of them start playing mind games involving sexual forfeits, based on the movies. They try to reach beyond the limits, to see how far they can go. They experiment with their emotions, their sexuality. It is very Bertolucci." Isabelle, according to Eva: "At first she’s showing off how controlled and confident she is. By the end she’s more like herself. I think she takes refuge behind all those characters because… it’s very difficult to explain the character, because I feel very close to her in some ways. In life I can keep a certain distance from people I’m rather reserved, and people might think that I’m very haughty and impassive, cold. But it’s just a mask of protection. And when she makes love with Matthew, she becomes an adult, in some way. She lets reality come into her… Theo and Isabelle, they don’t want to face the fact that they have to free themselves from each other – and they know that their ambiguous relationship cannot last forever and by remaining in childhood, they’re only “playing games”, they’re still protected."