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She’s the British queen of Hollywood, but will America love or hate Thandie Newton’s portrayal of Condoleezza Rice? By Nicola Graydon. Photographs by Brian Bowen Smith Thandie Newton famously turned down a starring role in Charlie’s Angels to focus on her marriage. By repute, she’s generous, frank and swears like a soldier. But I’m wondering what I’ll find: our meeting has been pushed back several times, and Newton herself seems controlling, dictating the clothes, location, look and feel of the photoshoot. Her stylist was summoned from Los Angeles. The photographer was vetted. Had our girl from Cornwall turned a bit Hollywood? I needn’t have worried. Dressed in flip-flops, a mid-calf sequined skirt and a powder-blue cardigan, she’s candid and personable, although she confesses to feeling “twitchy” about interviews. “It’s an odd thing,” she says, “I’m learning that they are usually more about you than me – you’re the filter. I’m a bit wary.” Then she relaxes, takes a gulp of tea and shoos away her assistant. We’re in Vancouver on the set of her latest project, a disaster movie, 2012 Thandie Newton is that rare thing, an actress who can glide between Hollywood blockbusters like Mission: Impossible to edgy indies like Gridlock’d with Tupac Shakur. A Cambridge graduate who can do a glam turn on the red carpet and remain firmly rooted to her family life in west London. Now 35, she’s happily married to the British writer and director Ol Parker and is the mother of two girls, Ripley, 7, and Nico, 3. She’s one of Britain’s most successful actresses, scooping a Bafta in 2006 for her star turn in Crash, which became the definitive performance of that Oscar-winning movie – but she’s been flying under the radar of late, “sleepwalking” in “creative middle-aged spread”, playing, typically, the arm-candy wife or girlfriend. “I’ve let it happen because my work serves my life,” she says, emphatically. “And that’s how it should be.”  Two new films are about to return her to centre stage. The first is RocknRolla, where she plays a crooked accountant in a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants production directed by Guy Ritchie. “That perked up my appetite. Guy creates fantastic excitement on set and there’s an equality that allows you to do your best work.” Thandie plays it posh and sexy: all sharp bob, slim cigarettes and ruthless heels, holding her own amid a sea of gangster testosterone. “Guy goes with accidents, he surrenders to the chaos. The ending changed on a dime. I’m in this scene with another actor who said something as a joke and Guy says, ‘Let’s go with it.’ It was fun, fun, fun. Throw the camera around. Just do it.” Then along came Oliver Stone asking her to play Condoleezza Rice in W, his forthcoming biopic of George W Bush that promises to be the most controversial movie of the year. “Oliver woke me up,” she says. Stone had an “absolute belief that I could play this character who was absolutely nothing like me. She didn’t look like me; she’s a couple of decades older than me. And I’m English, for goodness’ sake”.  When she first went to see Stone to discuss the role, she confesses that she didn’t even know how to spell Rice’s name. “I knew she was secretary of state and that was about it.” But the script was exciting, and at her next meeting with Stone she accepted the offer. “I decided to close my eyes and leap. I wanted to take the risk.” So she took herself back to London and began working. “That was when it got really f***ing fun,” she says, rubbing her hands with glee. “It was like doing a really involved paper back at Cambridge and my paper was Condoleezza Rice.” She read biographies, articles, books on the Bush administration, on Cheney, on torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo. “You name it, I read it,” she says. “I had two things going on: reading about this young woman, and the incredible story of the Bush administration. This gigantic beast, this machine and how it was cranking toward war. I wanted to become drunk with knowledge.” Some weeks later, in rehearsals in Louisiana, it started to feel like a very bad idea. “I was thinking, ‘F***, have I made a mistake?’ The make-up team told her that prosthetics were out of the question because they would melt in the heat. “That was a bit of a blow,” she says, grimacing. “They told me they would do a ‘feel-alike’ rather than a lookalike, and I knew that was going to be a real problem for me.” They were six weeks away from filming and she still had no idea how she was going to play this enigmatic figure. “I was only just feeling my way in.” She was convinced that Stone would lose faith, but he didn’t. “I was waiting for him to say, ‘Look, babe, this isn’t working.’ But instead, he said, ‘You’re a plodder, aren’t you?’ And I am like that. I am that kind of tortoise that just needs to take my time. He gave me permission to do that. I loved his relaxed belief that whatever I did, it was going to be good.”  In her early twenties she had played another iconic American character: the ghost-child in the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Beloved, by Toni Morrison. It was the role that thrust her onto the world stage – “astonishing”, according to The New York Times. She appears possessed throughout the movie. “I was,” she says. “There were moments when I was utterly transported. It was a gift to feel that so early in my career.” In Beloved she found her solution in her voice. “I suddenly realised that I had this weird, very deep voice that I could use.” At a casting at Oprah Winfrey’s house, when they came to her lines she used that voice. “I remember Jonathan [Demme, the director]’s face when I started speaking. It was priceless. We didn’t need the voiceover.” Finding Condoleezza was a similar process. She took herself back to London and started playing with the character in her mind. “I need to case the joint, check it all out and at some point, I never know when it’s going to happen, it all falls into place. I knew I was going to have to do this from the outside in. Usually, you look for those emotional beats that you connect to, but that wasn’t going to happen with her.” She called a friend, Kay, a make-up artist from fashion, not film, and they sat around her kitchen table. “I thought we could create something with some clever make-up and shading. We just hadn’t got close to her in rehearsals and they were trusting me to come up with a character under my skin, but the truth is that I needed a lot on my skin. We spent the afternoon experimenting. By the time the kids came home from school I was all Condi’d up, complete with some fantastic false teeth. She nailed it for me. I was still terrified, but now I had the equipment.” Then she began working on her mannerisms, the quirks and ticks that an impressionist might exaggerate to tell you as much about a person as the “inner truth”. She won’t tell me what they are. “Look, I do have a kind of reverence for who I am playing. This is a human being, and whatever you think, as an example of discipline, she’s unbelievable.” But did she ever catch a glimpse of weakness, of humanity? “That was another thing. After watching all her official material – interviews, speeches and presentations – I started delving around in YouTube and finding this other stuff: Condi taken on someone’s mobile phone dancing to Shaggy, or Condi running from a building to her car. Seeing her in more undone situations, there was this difference in her. You can see her posture change at certain times. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there. I got a sense of the human being behind the construct. And I did feel compassion for her.”  It seems extraordinary that Oliver Stone should choose her, a British mixed-race actress, above hundreds of African-American actresses with a similar background and age to Rice. “You’ll have to ask Oliver about that,” she says. “But he was informed in his decision. He’d seen Crash and The Pursuit of Happyness and he liked the fact that the woman sitting in front of him was nothing like those characters. I’m a bit of a blank slate, and I think that helps. I’m not one thing or the other. People still don’t know where I’m from. Is she English, African, Asian? I still get asked and I really don’t mind. I’m like, phew, I got away without everyone knowing the width of my vaginal wall in a time when everyone knows everything about everyone.” Newton is actually half British and half Zimbabwean. Her parents met in Zambia at a hospital in Lusaka where they’d both been posted. Her father, Nick, was a lab technician at a London hospital, but he wanted to go to the roots of the blues, so he asked for a posting somewhere in Africa and got Zambia. “I think that’s rocking,” Thandie says. “I’m pretty proud of him for having done that.” Her parents fell in love, her mum got pregnant with Thandie, and they married and came to England two weeks before she was born. “My mum’s very organised and she wanted to me to have my British passport quickly.” Then her parents went back to Lusaka and had her younger brother, Jamie, and lived there until Thandie was three years old. “In some ways I think my parents are still living off their time in Africa. For a moment it was the future. There were all these different people from around the world – India, Hungary, Britain – working there, but gradually it all started falling apart. It was incredibly upsetting for them.” Meanwhile back in Cornwall, her grandfather needed help with his antiques business, so the family returned and that’s where Newton and her brother grew up. She says she never felt any racism but might have asserted her Africanness as protection when boys didn’t seem to want to go out with her. Her most shocking moment race-wise was back in Zimbabwe at 17 when she was going out with a boy who accused her of being white. “I don’t think my brother or I felt like we really belonged anywhere. But that’s probably been helpful, in a way, with my career. Always looking for a place to find yourself.” In the flesh, Thandie Newton is an absolute beauty. Yet she aspires to be a character actress. “It’s what acting is really about – finding those roles where you can disappear. It’s not about the celeb thing. There are those like Daniel Day- Lewis, Christian Bale, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, who transport you. They change themselves. That’s the mecca of my profession.” For a brief moment, her flirtation with Hollywood looked like it might become a full-blown affair. She’d just finished playing Tom Cruise’s sexy sidekick in Mission: Impossible II and was about to start filming Charlie’s Angels with Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. “In career terms it was a platinum opportunity,” she says, ruefully. “Or, as my agent put it, ‘a one-two punch’.” But she turned it down. “I was going to do it for about 24 hours. But then I woke up and it just didn’t feel right. It would have meant entering that virtual world of stardom, but I’d been away from home for nine months and it would have meant another six months away.” Soon afterwards, she left her agent and her manager. “They were appalled,” she recalls. “They thought I was committing career suicide.” Within a month she’d fallen pregnant with her first daughter, Ripley. “People talk about pregnant women as if they’ve gone a bit mad,” she says. “You know, ‘She’s a bit hormonal.’ But I felt as though I’d been introduced to myself for the first time. You become totally uncompromising, wild and fierce.” She gave birth to both her girls at home in a birth pool. “Birth is very challenging in the best way possible. Every fibre of your being is alive. It’s like you are conducting electricity; literally creating something. I’d like to give birth every year if I could, just for that experience.” No wonder her career has played second fiddle. She regrets that it’s she who has to work away from home, though she loves the relationship her daughters have with their father as a result. She’s looking forward to more challenging roles. “When I come away from doing something I really love, I’m more alive, more self-aware, and that’s not a bad thing as a mum. It’s got to be better than slobbing along without being excited by what you’re doing. That creates an apathy and a kind of mild depression and it makes you too needy of that mothering side of life. I’m just going to have to figure out how to work the way I want to and be with the kids.” But for now she’s having a blissful family summer in Vancouver, going with Ripley to horse camp, playing pirates on the beach, shucking oysters with Ol. “It’s been pretty idyllic,” she confesses. She’s clearly still besotted by her husband after 10 years of marriage. “We just appreciate each other. Co-dependency gets such a bad rap, but me and my husband are a glittering example of it.” If it seems like she’s got it all, then she has, but it hasn’t come as easily as it seems. Her mind can work against her, she says. “I invite confusion, worry and self-doubt. Two years after Ripley’s birth and I was back in that brainstorm.” That’s why the absorption acting requires suits her. “It’s such peace. It’s like you’ve taken some crazy elixir. Your head goes completely quiet.” Elsewhere, she’s a mass of over-thinking and second-guessing. Even as she is revelling in witnessing Ripley seeing her shadow for the first time she’s worrying about “how to introduce her to the harsher realities of life while respecting her innocence”. A trip to Mali for World Vision earlier this year brought some perspective – “Guaranteed that one day in their lives had been lived more fully than a year in mine. I felt ashamed”. She hasn’t been back to sub-Saharan Africa since she was 17, but she remembers Zimbabwe vividly: “It was so beautiful, lush, virile. And the people, the smiling and the sexiness. Bono said to me once, ‘The one thing that everyone misses is that Africa is sexy.’ And it is. It is life at its most raw.” Our interview has now stretched to three hours and her assistant pops her head around the corner tapping her watch with some urgency. We arrange for a follow-up call before she returns to London. Three days later, I ask her how the photoshoot went. “Well, I’m not sure. The photographer was great, but it could have been much more simple. I should really have just been sitting there in a T-shirt, jeans and bare feet. You know, just being myself.”
Related StoriesJagan-emulates-dad-YSR  YS Rajashekar Reddy surprised everyone by eating coarse rice the other day. The chief minister said that he was switching over to eating coarse rice as fine rice in the state has now gone beyond the reach of the common man. Fine rice is now sold for over 35 rupees a kilo and it is expected to rise even further over the coming months. YS Jagan, son of chief minister YS Rajashekar Reddy emulated his father, thereby setting an example for others to follow by eating coarse rice. YS Jagan along with his uncle V more Centre-against-Rice-scheme-  The chief minister Y D Rajashekar Reddy’s trump card – the Rs. 2 a kil0 rice scheme has met with cold reception from the congress high command. The scheme entails an additional expenditure of about 1012 crore per annum on the exchequer. YSR tried to pass on the burden to the centre. He hoped that the central government would chip in with the amount needed to launch the rice scheme. The centre is reported to have rejected his request to subsidise the rice scheme. The CM will now have to think up of some way to implement the more India-Pakistan-Hoax-war The late news of the last weekend that revealed today, is quite surprising to any one that Pakistan was alerted by a hoax call that received by the President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari himself. The call triggered tension in the Presidential Office and put the Pakistan Diplomats on run around the world leaders, knocking their doors at mid night screaming for help to stop the war as declared by India. During the last few days Pakistan was seen defending itself from the international pressures, for its involvement in terror attacks on Mumbai. Indian Government’s demarche and its ultimatum for taking serious action against Pakistan put the country on high alert. That’s the time when a hoax call received by Pak. President’s offic more 2-rupees-rice-scheme-just-a-poll-gimmick- Is the 2 Rupees a Kilo rice scheme announced by the chief minister Y S Rajashekar Reddy just a poll gimmick? Yes, say a majority of the people concerned. YS announced the scheme only to take the fizz out of TDP chief Babu’s announcement of 9 hours of free current. Finance minter Rosaiah let the cat out of the bag when he commented to media today that the scheme was just an idea mooted by YS and nothing concrete has yet been worked out. Even the central government has rejected the state’s request to increase subsidy for the scheme. The PDS price dealers are also against the idea of Rs. 2 kilo rice scheme. They fell that their margin would come down substantially as rice is now being sold at Rs. 5.40 a kg. Observers f more Congress---two-rupees-rice,-TDP-–-Free!-,-Chiru---  The two main political parties in the state, the congress and the TDP are now fighting over the two rupees a kilo rice issue. The scheme was originally conceived by NT Ram Rao in 1983. He re-introduced it in 1995. Chandra Babu Naidu slowly diluted it and finally scrapped it altogether. Now that he is in the opposition, he wanted to make it as a poll promise and announce it during the assembly elections. Chief Minister YS Rajashekar Reddy got wind of it and promptly hijacked it. Babu is now at a loss as to how t more Chiru-to-give-free-rice-  The congress and the TDP have announced that they will give rice at rupees two a kilo to people below the poverty line. NTR Rama Rao originally conceived the scheme in 1981 and he rode to power on this promise. The TDP after Chandra Babu Came to power slowly increased the price to Rs. 5 a kilo. The party lost power and is now in the opposition. The ruling congress in a bid to upstage the TDP, announced that it would give rice at 2 rupees a kilo. But Chiranjeevi seems to have more YSR-gives-knockout-punch-to-Babu Chief minister Y S Rajashekar Reddy seems to have finally sounded the bugle for taking on the TDP in the next elections. The state cabinet met today and formally approved the Rs. 2 a kilo rice scheme. With this, the suspense over the rice scheme is over. This has come as a rude shock to Babu. He is speechless and he has not reacted on the issue so far. This is a big blow to the TDP and Babu as the congress government will now go ahead and actually implement the scheme while for Babu, it will remain just a poll promise. &nb more It’s-‘Free’-for-all-in-congress!  The popular vote gathering Rs 2 a kilo rice scheme inaugurated by chief minister YS Rajashekar Reddy received tremendous response form the pole across the state. But YSR is now facing a new headache. Many party leaders are buying up the rice in advance by paying the fair price dealer at 2 rupees a kilo. They in turn are distributing it free to select people. This is taking away the sheen of the scheme. YS Rajashekar Reddy has appealed to congressmen not to resort to such activities. Even PCC chief D Srinivas convened an more Takkaris-diet  Takkari hero surprised everyone with his six-pack abs in the film. And it was no overnight miracle. Nitin had to work hard for over a year to get the look and the muscles. Apart from rigorous training and exercises, Nitin also was on a high protein diet. His diet included Fish, lots of fruits, egg white and no rice. Nitin stopped eating rice for about a year. And he also ate 15 boiled egg whites every day - five in the morning, five in the afternoon and five in the evening. more Basmathi-Pulihora-at-Tirumala! The recent announcement by the TTD board to make the ‘Annaprasadams’ at Tirumala with ‘Basmathi’ rice came in for sharp criticism from many devotes. They see this move as yet another attempt to make some money. The annaprasadams like ‘Pulihora, Chakkera pongali, Daddojanam, Katte Pongali were made form good quality sona masoori rice. The move to make prsadams with Basmati in the name of improving the quality of prsadams does not hold. Basmathi rice is traditionally used for making Biriyani and not prsadams. The quality of Laddu has come down drastically over the years. The TTD would do well to look into this aspect first. The traditional laddu prasadam in the past had a shelf life of about two months. The laddus now do not last more |
