This is just a small aside, but the royal rota was pissed last week when Prince William gave an exclusive interview to Sky News when he was in South Africa. They had been diligently embiggening him and he gave a self-pitying exclusive to their rival! So, obviously, Roya Nikkhah at the Times yanked on William’s chain and wouldn’t you know, she got an exclusive too. This is literally the most we’ve heard from Prince William directly in years. Hilariously, these interviews and public comments should have been William platforming Earthshot and, you know, the work itself. Instead, William makes it all about himself, as always. Some highlights from the Times’ interview with Huevo:

William on how he sees his royal role: “I’m trying to do it differently and I’m trying to do it for my generation. And to give you more of an understanding around it, I’m doing it with maybe a smaller ‘r’ in the royal, if you like. So it’s more about impact, philanthropy, collaboration, convening and helping people.”

He spoke with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about Israel & Palestine: Sources close to William say he continues to “follow the conflict closely” but it is understood the issue is deemed too sensitive for further public interventions.

His public work with focus on projects on the environment, homelessness and mental health: “I’m also going to throw empathy in there as well because I really care about what I do. It helps impact people’s lives and I think we could do with some more empathetic leadership around the world. So that’s what I’m trying to bring, that’s what Catherine is trying to bring as well. I sit here right now doing Earthshot and projects like Homewards [his homelessness project] as well — and who knows what’s going to come next — but it all centres around those values of trying to help deliver change and make those lives better.”

On Kate’s recovery: “I think hopefully Catherine will be doing a bit more next year, so we’ll have some more trips maybe lined up,” he said. It is understood the couple plan to visit several European destinations in 2025, but without Prince George, 11, Charlotte, 9 and Prince Louis, 6. William said: “Family-wise, you’ll have to wait a little bit longer because obviously they’re at school and I think that takes priority over everything else.”

The toll on William: A close friend of William’s said coping with his father and wife’s illness had “taken a huge toll” on the prince, adding: “He’ll be OK if Catherine is OK.”

The Cop29 conference next year: His attendance at next year’s Cop alongside world leaders is part of William’s developing statesman role, which aides say is now a “golden thread” running through his work.

[From The Times]

As a long-time reader of British royal reporting, you have no idea how much I laugh whenever William’s people start yammering about “the golden thread.” It is the most idiotic expression I’ve ever heard to describe William and Kate’s abject laziness and aimlessness. William wanders around, doing f–k all and then he says, no, all of that was part of the golden thread of my work. Kate does it too – circa 2018, suddenly Kate’s work had a “golden thread” AND a five-question survey!

“I’m doing it with maybe a smaller ‘r’ in the royal, if you like. So it’s more about impact, philanthropy, collaboration, convening and helping people.” It’s almost like he sees himself as a self-styled, independent philanthropist and activist like… Prince Harry. I thought the whole point of William’s existence is that HE is better than Harry because William has the platform, the palaces, the attention, the media and the slumlord money. William has been screaming “AREN’T YOU JEALOUS OF ME, HARRY?” for years. William’s people even told reporters that Harry would never be able to survive without the monarchy’s golden thread. Turns out, the monarchy’s golden thread isn’t worth much.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Introduction: Minutes 0 to 5:00
I’ve been dealing with chronic pain. Here’s a link to the tweet I mentioned about that. I watched Agatha All Along and loved it. Chandra doesn’t like Kathryn Hahn, which I understand. Chandra highly recommends the movie Conclave. You can listen below!

Poltics: Minutes 5:00 to 15:00
Trump won the election and it was a shock to put it lightly. We both believed that Kamala Harris was going to win. She ran an impeccable campaign. She was so on message, she was clear about her objectives, she had a literal to-do list and she emphasized inclusion and moving forward together. We’re so disappointed in people. Here’s the tweet from Baltimore’s mayor that I mentioned. We don’t think there’s a way that Kamala could have run a better campaign, she was so disciplined. Here’s a link to Dustin’s article on Pajiba that I mentioned. We’re happy that Kamala won in our state of Virginia.

Royals: Minutes 15:00 to 23:30
Since we last recorded, Charles and Camilla went on an anemic tour of Australia. Prince William went to South Africa for his Earthshot ceremony, tried to look statesman-like and failed. He got booed there. We remember how Camilla spread covid. Chandra mentions that Queen Elizabeth caught covid right after Charles and Camilla did.

Prince Harry and Meghan purchased a villa in Portugal, where Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank live. It turned out that this was a very smart decision, since Trump has threatened to deport Harry. We talk about RFK Jr potentially removing flouride from the drinking water. Trump is credited with helping fund the vaccination rollout, but he can’t take credit for it because his base is antivax. We remember when Trump talked about getting vaccinated and got booed.

Comments on the Week: Minutes 22:30 to end
Chandra’s comment of the week is from Whyforthelove on the post about Kamala Harris losing the election.

My comment of the week is from pottymouth pup on that same post.

Thanks for listening bitches.

The Princess of Wales has these moments where she looks like a Disney villainess. Remembrance Sunday was one of those moments. The Princess of Wales made her second appearance of the weekend at the Cenotaph on Sunday, where she and Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, watched the Remembrance wreath-laying from a balcony overlooking the Cenotaph. While I actually think high-neck, Victorian, “prim” looks generally suit Kate, I find this coat just a tad too fussy. I think it’s the combination of velvet trim AND the neck bow? She does love a military-style coat though, even if this is less “Sgt. Pepper” than she usually wears.

Kate once again chose “meaningful” jewelry as the highlight of her look. At the Festival of Remembrance on Saturday, Kate wore a pair of pearl earrings which belonged to Princess Diana. For Sunday’s Remembrance service, Kate wore a pair of earrings which were among Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite pieces. They’re the Bahrain pearl-and-diamond drop earrings, which apparently cost £30,000. They’re lovely. I assume that Kate got to wear something major from the Royal Collection because Queen Camilla skipped the service. Camilla, it seems, is still sick.

In yesterday’s post, there was a lot of conversation about whether Kate’s photos are airbrushed by photographers and photo agencies. It definitely happens at some of the most stage-managed events, but I also want to make another suggestion – the extreme discrepancies in how Kate looks in her few public appearances are an issue of lighting more than anything else. In softer, interior lighting, you can see the “adjustments” she’s had done but it looks more polished. In harsher, bleak daylight, you can also see the work but you can also see that she looks exhausted.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

It feels like we haven’t heard much about Brad Pitt in a month or two. He did a big blitz of promotion in September for Wolfs, which was shoved onto AppleTV streaming and promptly forgotten. Which was hilarious, because Wolfs was supposed to be a big comeback film for both Brad and George Clooney, and the studio was so nervous about it bombing, they didn’t even give it a wide release. Around the promotion, Brad’s relationship with Ines de Ramon was suddenly much more visible. She went to Venice with him and they walked the carpet together. Then they went to New York and LA, where they were papped a lot over the course of several weeks. Then nothing. Well, now that Angelina Jolie’s Maria promotion is ramping up – that’s as good a reason as anything??? – Brad is screaming “don’t forget about meeeeee” to People Mag. Here’s the update on his relationship with Ines:

Brad Pitt and Ines de Ramon remain “incredibly happy” in their relationship. A source close to the actor tells PEOPLE the couple are “each other’s biggest cheerleaders.” The source adds of the Academy Award winner, 60, and de Ramon, 34, “It’s clear they’re in it for the long haul.”

“They are incredibly happy together,” the source says of the couple, who have been dating since 2022. In February, the actor and Anita Ko jewelry designer moved in together.

And as Pitt continues to film the Formula 1 film F1 in Mexico, they have found a dynamic that works for them. “She’s fully supportive and knows how important this project is to him,” the source says.

“Ines has a strong sense of independence and enjoys catching up with her L.A. friends. She’s using this time to recharge,” the source says, adding that Pitt “likes her independence.” Meanwhile, “she loves how driven he is. They value the balance they’ve found,” the insider tells PEOPLE.

While Pitt films all over the world, the source notes that “they love traveling together and supporting each other’s careers.”

In late September, a source told PEOPLE that Pitt is “grateful that Ines loves traveling too and is able to join him on location for work.”

[From People]

No one:….
Not a soul:….
Brad Pitt: Ines and I are FINE and WE ARE SOULMATES and we are not joined at the hip, she spends plenty of time in LA, and seems to only pop up every now and then but don’t you dare call her a beck-and-call-girl, she’s just independent! Why are you making me loudly defend my situationship?!?!?

It’s definitely weird, but who knows what’s really going on. I would love it if Ines dumped his toxic ass, but I really think they have some kind of arrangement, and the arrangement doesn’t seem to be over.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Backgrid.

Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge saga has finally been put to bed. I won’t go into the whole tortured history of it, but last year, King Charles decided that it would be a good use of his time to play musical chairs with various royal homes in Windsor. Charles evicted the Sussexes from Frogmore Cottage and demanded that Andrew give up his valid lease on Royal Lodge, all so Andrew could move into Frogmore. Andrew refused to budge, even as Charles waged a very public pressure campaign. Then, in Robert Hardman’s new book chapters, he revealed that Charles had finally cut off Andrew’s £1 million annual allowance. This came after Charles apparently cut off Andrew’s £3 million annual security several months ago too. Even without Charles’s largesse, there was nothing to be done about Andrew’s valid lease. And now Andrew has informed the Crown Estate that he has the money to support himself at Royal Lodge and that’s just what he plans to do:

The Duke of York has raised the funds to be allowed to stay at Royal Lodge. It is understood that Prince Andrew’s money has been approved by Sir Michael Stevens, the keeper of the privy purse, as coming from legitimate sources.

Andrew, 64, received written notice earlier this year that King Charles, his older brother, would cut him off financially if he refused to move out of the estate in Windsor and into more modest accommodation. The duke lives in the 30-room estate in Windsor Great Park with his former wife Sarah Ferguson under a lease agreement with the Crown Estate which is valid until 2078.

In an unexpected twist, Andrew has now convinced Palace authorities that he has sufficient funds from legitimate sources to support himself. He no longer receives public money and with no discernible income beyond a Royal Navy pension there have long been questions over the source of the duke’s wealth. A source said: “If Andrew can pay for his own upkeep with legitimate means, then it is not an issue. But the King’s patience has run out when it comes to funding his brother’s lifestyle in a way that does not fit his status.”

[From The Times]

Sources close to Andrew have maintained for years that he has plenty of money squirreled away, and no one really knows where it came from or what Andrew did to get it. There was the Swiss chalet he bought out of nowhere, then sold and pocketed what he could from the sale. There were other real estate ventures. There was Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell too. So who knows. In any case, sources close to Andrew are now emphasizing that this whole ordeal blew up in Charles’s face.

Friends of Prince Andrew were jubilant Friday night after the disgraced duke won the so-called ‘Siege of Royal Lodge,’ successfully defying his brother King Charles’ long-running efforts to kick him out of the extravagant 90-acre property. In a bitter humiliation for the king, who has spent much of the past year scheming to get Andrew out of the ten-bedroomed mansion—which he was rumored to be eying as a potential dowager house for his wife Camilla—the palace has thrown in the towel and accepted that Andrew can stay there after all.

Charles’ last maneuver was to cut his brother’s annual allowance of £1 million (roughly $1.3 million) and his private security detail. But to no avail—the king has now accepted that he has lost in what many will see as a devastating blow to his authority as he struggles with the familiar challenge of an ailing monarch; maintaining discipline and obedience.

“We are thrilled for Andrew. Andrew has a cast iron lease on the property so god knows why Charles chose to pick this battle,” a friend of the prince told The Daily Beast. “It’s hard to imagine anyone would have any interest in where Andrew is living if Charles’ aides had not spent the past year banging on about it. He was never going to just walk away from the property; the lease is a valuable asset he intends to leave to his children, and maybe William will be glad of having Eugenie or Beatrice there in years to come.

Another friend told The Daily Beast: “Charles has everything. He is as rich as Croesus. Andrew is 64 and his house is basically all he has left and it was wicked of the king to try and take it off him. Why? Who cares?” This friend speculated that the recent publication of details of the king’s phenomenal wealth in the Sunday Times had been a factor in Charles “dropping the pretense the monarchy is run on a shoe string.”

[From The Daily Beast]

Yeah, I don’t have a solid explanation for why Charles was hellbent on publicizing this drama with Andrew, other than it was Charles’s sad attempt to look “tough” on a sexual predator or like he was pinching pennies. The thing is, Charles didn’t look tough at all – he looked like he picked a fight with brother over old family sh-t (mummy loved Andrew more!), then cozied up to that same sexual predator brother whenever it was convenient. I haven’t forgotten that Andrew was given prominent placement at the past two Christmas walks in Sandringham. Charles even gave Andrew and the Yorks use of Wood Farm. Andrew was also welcomed at Balmoral for the past two summers.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.

Good lord, I am so over the Wicked promotion. They shouldn’t have been promoting this mess for a full year. Now that Wicked (PART 1) is coming out in a few weeks, it feels like the actors are limping along because they’ve had to do so much sh-t for it for months already. Anyway, here are photos from the big, garish Los Angeles premiere on Sunday. Wicked actors Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey and Ethan Slater all came out. Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowith – who originated the Glinda and Elphaba roles on Broadway – also came out to support the film. Guess who else came out? Jennifer Lopez! What is she doing there? Is just a Wicked fan, or was she supporting Ari and Cynthia in particular?

One of the things which has grown very, very tired about the promotion is that Ari and Cynthia have theme-dressed their way through it for months. There’s only so many times I can see that acid green color combined with pale “princess” pink. For the LA premiere, Ariana wore a pink-and-cream gingham Thom Browne ensemble, and Cynthia wore a custom vinyl dress by Louis Vuitton. Cynthia also exclusively wore Roberto Coin jewelry, including “an 18K white gold diamond and emerald collar necklace from the brand’s Haute Couture Collection worth a staggering $750,000.”

Other fashion notes…if you wondered about J.Lo, she wore Zuhair Murad. In her showgirl era. Jonathan Bailey’s ensemble is hilarious to me – he looks like he’s about to head off to a tropical rave, and I f–king love that he was the one who got to wear the ruby-red slippers.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Here are photos from last night’s Festival of Remembrance concert, which is always held the night before Remembrance Sunday (today). I’ll cover the Remembrance Sunday photos tomorrow, but these concert photos deserve their own post. This is the Princess of Wales’s second public outing since the summer, and since her very strange “cancer-free” announcement video in September. The last time we saw her was when she suddenly popped up in Southport with William a month ago. Ol’ girl has been noticeably “refreshed” since then.

Kate usually chooses a conservative black dress or coatdress for this concert, and this year’s appearance was no different. A black coatdress which looks new to me, but who knows. The point wasn’t actually the coatdress, it was the jewelry She wore Princess Diana’s Collingwood pearl earrings, and paired them with a pearl necklace from Monica Vinader (which is part of Kate’s jewelry collection, she didn’t borrow it). She also got to wear her sapphire engagement ring, which has been largely missing this year in various sightings and events.

In recent weeks, there’s been a new emphasis on how Kate is feeling a lot better and she’s preparing to be keen yet again. Katie Nicholl at Vanity Fair gave an update just before Kate’s Remembrance appearances:

According to a family friend, the princess, who was photographed in Scotland in August attending a church service with Prince William and the king and queen, is “doing well” and feeling “better than ever.”

“Catherine was committed to attending two key events, Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday, because she knows how important they are both to the king and the nation. She’s doing very well and feeling very strong and positive about the future,” the source told VF.com. “In fact, she and William have enjoyed a couple of low-key visits to Scotland recently without the children, which has been very special time for them.”

Aides say it’s the princess’s intention to return to work full-time when she is ready, and that she is working on her Christmas carol service of thanksgiving, to be held at Westminster Abbey next month, which she also plans to attend with her family.

[From Vanity Fair]

Again, they’ve set it up so people only really expect to see her once a month (with summers off) for the big events. What I would love to know is if this is purely Kate’s call, or if Charles and William want Kate tamped down and largely out of sight from here. Also: Camilla begged off for this event because of her chest infection, so Princess Anne was seated with King Charles.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Taylor Swift is usually all about autumnal style, all about sweaters and cute cold-weather ensembles. But was unseasonably warm all up and down the East Coast last week, which might explain why Taylor wore this summery frock in November. Taylor was seen going into Chez Margaux in New York on Friday. According to the paparazzi, she arrived with security and met up with Zoe Kravitz and Jerrod Carmichael. Taylor, Jerrod and Zoe were at Chez Margaux for eight hours! Taylor looked a bit worse for wear as she left, so I kind of wonder if she was getting good and drunk after the election. I would not blame her at all if that’s what happened.

Taylor’s dress and purse are Vivienne Westwood, and she wore Aquazurra Twist 95 velvet sandals. As I said, very summery. I was in t-shirts and flip-flops all of last week too. We had two consecutive 80-degree days. Now, do I like any of this on Taylor? Not really. The dress is unflattering and it makes her look knocked up (it’s the way the corset is boned in the midsection). The combination of the dress and her hairstyle is very Germanic to me, like she’s about to serve beer at Oktoberfest.

In case you’re wondering about Chez Margaux, it’s a private, members-only club in the same vein as many exclusive members-only clubs in Europe, specifically England. It’s supposed to have a real European feel and decadent vibes. Inside the club, there’s a Jean-Georges restaurant, a sushi lounge, a caviar-champagne room and nightclub. Taylor has memberships to several of these private clubs in New York. Post-election, my guess is that Chez Margaux was one of the go-to places for sad, rich Democrats to drown their sorrows and socialize with somewhat like-minded people.

Meanwhile, the Grammy nominations also came out on Friday. Taylor’s The Tortured Poets Department got six nominations, including Album of the Year, Pop Vocal Album, and Record and Song of the Year (for “Fortnight”). Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter got 11 nominations, including noms in the big three: Record, Album and Song of the Year. Y’all know what that means… Beyonce’s once again losing the big Grammys to white artists, probably Taylor.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Did you guys know that Justine Bateman was and is awful? I had no idea. Justine is Jason Bateman’s older sister, and Justine was once the more famous Bateman sibling, back in the 1980s and 1990s. She worked pretty consistently in TV through 2000-2013, then it’s like she dropped off a cliff professionally. Zero credits for eight years, up until 2021, when she premiered a film called Violet, which she wrote, directed and produced. Violet was supposed to come out one year earlier, but everything was on pause because of the pandemic. I bring this up because the pandemic seemingly broke her brain and turned her into one of the biggest Karens I’ve ever seen. Justine threw a hissy fit on Twitter after the election, I’m not embedding it, but here’s the text:

Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.

I have found the last four years to be an almost intolerable period. A very un-American period in that any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes were held up to a very limited list of “permitted positions” in order to assess acceptability.

I’ve never in my life known that to be an American environment. It’s an environment I have encountered in smaller groupings (a church, a private club,a clique), but never before as a national blanket. It has been suffocating. Common sense was discarded, intellectual discussion was demonized. Only “permitted position” behavior and speech was “allowed.”

Complete intolerance became almost a religion and one’s professional and social life was threatened almost constantly. Those that spoke otherwise were ruined as a warning to others. Their destruction was displayed in the “town square” of social media for all to see. This was the #MeMeMeMeToo moment, where every effort was made to divert attention to oneself, instead of recognizing how one contributes to the whole.This was the era of trying to exercise control over those who did not want to follow the crowd and has their own ideas about what they needed to do. This dampened our culture and innovation, bringing people to even think that generative #AI, a regurgitation of the past, was actually our cultural future.

When you starve a society of those called to be independent thinkers and cultural and intellectual innovators, you rob that society of any forward movement. Those that tried to impose that control maintained a kind of “hall monitor” position by threatening others with damning labels like “Sexist,” “racist,” “homophobic,” etc, when the free-thinking and questioning was nothing of the sort. However, the mob mentality that followed caused these social convictions when there was often no evidence to support them. (See Charles McKay’s 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds).

I am neither one extreme or the other, but am one of the millions of people who believe in common sense, and that everyone should be free to live their lives however they want, unless that freedom interferes with someone else’s freedom to live their own life.
That’s it.

[From Justine Bateman’s Twitter]

Sure, I have some time to get into this. This is all part of a larger movement among MAGA cultists and Trump supporters to position themselves as the only true advocates for “free speech” and “independent thought.” Those are coded terms for “I want to be racist/bigoted/hateful/nasty in public but people will call me out!” They think they’re being “censored” when people respond to the awful sh-t they say or write online. They think it’s a First Amendment issue and an issue of “intolerance” that their words and actions have consequences. You know how I said that the pandemic seemingly broke her brain? Check out the receipt, below. Ten bucks says that Justine Bateman is an anti-vaxxer who thought the pandemic was a “hoax.”

Behold this unhinged tantrum from the former star of Family Ties, Justine Bateman.

For perspective, Bateman was super-duper upset that people preferring not to die of COVID got in the way of… a festival she had already picked out outfits for. https://t.co/lgjkzkUzrq pic.twitter.com/C8j317wSXo

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) November 8, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Hugh Grant is permanently grumpy, but you can always tell when he likes the project he’s promoting. When he recently promoted Wonka, he looked and acted like he was about to curl up and die, he was so miserable. Currently, he’s promoting his role in Heretic, an A24 horror film where he plays the bad guy. He’s really proud of it, you can tell. He was exceptionally chatty with Vanity Fair, as he spoke about Heretic and what happened over the course of his multi-decade career. Some highlights:

He had to play his Heretic villain as charming: He’s playing a “brilliant f–ked-up character.” But he decided to resurrect just a dash of his rom-com leading man persona. “You don’t want the audience to be sitting there saying, ‘These girls are morons, the guy is clearly a weirdo and a dick.’ I was under some pressure to use my powers of warmth and charm.”

The Wachowskis’ ‘Cloud Atlas’ changed his career after the 2009 bomb ‘Did You Hear About the Morgans?’: “I was completely marooned. The Wachowskis offered me just a few small little parts in Cloud Atlas, and to be honest, I was probably only offered that because some of their international distributors had said, ‘We need some more recognizable names. Cram someone recognizable in here.’…” He came out of ‘Cloud Atlas’ renewed. “I thought, Oh yeah, I used to really enjoy doing characters—in fact, I almost used to enjoy acting. I started out doing silly voices, odd people, making people laugh at university, and then doing this comedy show in London. It was doing characters. Then through sheer chance, maybe because of the way I looked, I got drawn into the leading romantic hero. It went fine, but it’s not what I think I’m best at—partly because it’s less fun.”

Playing swoony heartthrobs in the ‘90s: “The irony of the Richard Curtis parts I played is that they were actually character roles for me—I’m not that stutter-y, blink-ey guy. The catastrophic mistake I made was that because Four Weddings was such a gigantic success, I thought, Oh, well, this is the way of infinite wealth and success. People are eating up that person.’ So I did him in real life: I started doing interviews like him. In my Golden Globe acceptance speech from 1995, I said, ‘I love you, gosh, blah blah. Thank you so much’—what a dick. I’m playing the character because I thought everyone was eating him up. It was never me at all.” Everyone, it turns out, was not eating it up: “People quite rightly were repelled by it in the end.”

Playing Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones’s Diary: “There are people in my life who have always said, ‘Oh, that’s much more like the real Hugh,’” Grant says. He was asked to reprise the prickly role in the 2004 sequel, The Edge of Reason, which he did, and again in the next sequel, 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby, which he declined. “I really couldn’t fit my character in—he just didn’t belong, so I stepped aside,” Grant says. Cleaver is back, however, for the fourth film in the series, Mad About the Boy. “I loved the script—it made me cry, and I wanted to help with this one. But really there’s no part for Daniel Cleaver in it at all. They wanted him in it, and in the end, they’d done something I wasn’t crazy about. [So] I wrote some scenes… It’s absolutely the best [Bridget Jones book], and I think the movie is very funny and very, very moving. I’m not in a lot, I did a week’s work, that’s it…. But when you see the film, you’ll be very moved.”

He’s skeptical of big-budget studio fare. “I’ve turned down a few that I thought were insufficient in quality or independence allowed to the filmmakers—you felt like a big corporation breathing down the neck of these filmmakers, and I don’t want to make that decision,” he says. How could he tell? “I asked them bluntly. I quizzed the directors. You can tell quite early on, since you might have a few ideas about the part before you’ve signed up—you suggest things, and you can tell if there’s a lot of pushback from non-creative executives.”

[From Vanity Fair]

It’s cool that he points to Cloud Atlas as the film which renewed his interest in character-acting. He’s had such a strange career, and the “leading man” part of his career probably should have ended a lot sooner than it did. He is a great character actor, and I would even call him an underrated talent. It’s also kind of sweet that he still has so much affection for the Bridget Jones franchise and he really gives a sh-t about those characters. I would love to know what he turns down too.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.