Jeremy Northam: No More Mr. Knightly

"In England, public schools are private, right? So what you mean is that you went to a regular public school, and you're not some snob who went to expensive private schools."

Northam tries to think this out. "Yes, I guess that's what I mean. I went to work backstage in the theaters in Bristol and had a really good time. I'd just hold the ropes and move scenery and I saw how all the shows came together. We would put on a few different plays a week, so it was quite an education. And I worked at another theater, a touring theater, and that was great, too. Oh fuck, it was absolutely unbelievable."

"I think I was kidding when I said you should tell us your whole life story."

Northam turns red. "OK, I'll make it up quick. My first proper job wasn't until 1986 when I left drama school. I was 24. Do you think I should lie about my age?"

"Nah, we'll find out anyway, and it'll be so embarrassing."

"How do you find out? Do you lop off an arm and count rings? Well, OK. Fair enough. I left school and began singing in restaurants to get my equity card and earn a bit of money just crooning, lots of the old standards. I think I emptied some of the best restaurants in Bristol. And then I went to Salisbury and worked in theater as an actor, doing everything from Chekhov to Pride and Prejudice to pantomime to Arbuzov and Rattigan. I worked with great actors who had been doing it for donkey's years. Then I did a few small movies, some telly, and lots of theater--"

"Didn't you once stand in for Daniel Day-Lewis when he had, like, a nervous breakdown onstage? He was playing Hamlet and thought he saw his dead father or something?"

Northam looks decidedly uncomfortable. "I don't know if I can actually shed any light on that," he says.

"Light, schmight--just tell the story."

Northam laughs. "OK. I went to the Royal National Theatre to do some work. It's the kind of place where you'd do a part in a play, understudy someone else in another play, and rehearse a third play. It was exhilarating. I was playing Osric in Hamlet, but I was also an understudy for Hamlet. Osric is a crazy part because you stand around a lot, wave your hat in the air, act a storm. I'd been doing it for six months and was dead tired. I remember thinking that I had the next day off, and how much that meant to me at the time.

"So I come off the stage and I'm walking to my dressing room when I hear this grumbling over the speaker. I thought it must have been tuned into another one of the theaters there, because they're about an hour or so into Hamlet and there's no way anyone should be talking during [this part of the play]. And then someone said, 'Dan's not going to carry on.' I said, 'You're kidding-- what's going on?' All anyone knew was that he had walked offstage. Then the guy playing Horatio said to me, 'How are you on the lines?' Lines? Fuck, I hadn't rehearsed Hamlet's part in months. I went to my dressing room to see if I could find my copy of Hamlet, which had all my annotations, all the things that I needed to look at and go, I know this. I couldn't find it.

"Then Dan's dresser walks in with all his costumes, and flings them on my bed without saying a word. I couldn't get a drop of saliva to form in my mouth. Then an announcement was made to the I audience that the part of Hamlet would be played by Jeremy Northam. You could hear seats popping up because people were leaving. I got out there and started the play where Dan had left it. It was horrifying, because the audience knows this play very, very well--you expect them to start shouting lines out. The other actors were looking at me like I was a caged animal. Believe me, it was the most horrifying night of my life.

"I have no idea if Dan saw his dead father," Northam finishes. "He never told me that part. But if he did I would understand, because Hamlet is a part that forces you to really dig deep into your soul."

"I saw my dead father once," I say, "but I was tripping my brains out." Northam has no idea if I'm kidding or not.

Two girls walk by, look at him, and I hear one of them say, "It's Mr. Knightley." He doesn't notice.

"OK, I think we can all agree you did your share of theater. How did you get to Hollywood?"

"After I made the film Voices From a Locked Room in Canada, I went to L.A. to meet with a guy who is [now] my agent. He had contacted me when he saw the screen test for Voices. I meet him, then the next day I have a meeting with Irwin Winkler [for The Net]. I read for him the next day, two days later I meet with him and Sandy [Bullock], I audition, and have the job that afternoon."

"So you were thinking this Hollywood stuff is pretty easy, huh?"

"No. I just remember feeling completely bemused, and that they had made some awful mistake, that it was all gonna go wrong. The whole experience was a dream come true, and then I thought I'd be right back in London, back to doing three shows a week. But on my way back to London, I stopped off in New York, and the next morning I met with [Emma director] Doug McGrath. He's a brilliant man and we had a hilarious breakfast, where we talked about everything but the script. We met again and I auditioned for it, and I think he was extremely brave, because he had to persuade Miramax that I was the person who could play the part. Nobody knew who I was, so it was a bit of a risk."

"Did you read Jane Austen as a kid? Because I know I tried to and couldn't get through it."

"I tried to read Emma when I was 14 or so, and I couldn't get through it either. I thought it was about some uptight, rigid morality, about people trying desperately to do the right thing. I read it for the film, though, because I wanted to know what the tone of the dialogue was. It's very easy to go very wrong with it. After I read the book I realized these people are not as wealthy as you think they are. They're not free to make any choices at all. Their lives are all circumscribed by duty and responsibility. I appreciated Austen's sense, for want of a better word, of morality. And I don't mean she was a prude. I just realized that at the heart of Emma is a character who is at times distinctly unlovable. And Austen's sense of mischief in writing that and sustaining that for a 400-page novel is absolutely brilliant. Because, of course, you love Emma, but she'd drive you fucking mad, and you suffer with her mistakes as you go along. And that's something that I hadn't appreciated when I was younger."

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