THANDIE Newton knew she would be facing challenges when she signed up to be part of the epic end-of-the-world adventure 2012 but never thought she would long for a new set of clothes and a good night’s sleep.

“I spent a lot of time incredibly wet, absolutely soaking wet – trousers, sweater, my shoes, everything. It was miserable and I’m such a little girl about that sort of thing. I didn’t complain about it but inside I was thinking ‘oh no, not again!’” revealed Newton in an interview recently.

One of the hardest sequences for her in Roland Emmerich’s disaster epic involved the aftermath of heavy flooding, which in the film, has left much of the world submerged under water. For Newton and some of her co-stars, it meant several days filming in deep water.

“There’s one sequence where the waves are coming in and I have to scoop up this little girl and save her. Which is all great, but inside I was thinking ‘****** hell. I hoped that this would be it!” she revealed. “And the little girl was having a great time. In between scenes I’d wrap myself in a towel and she was swimming around and loving it.

“Bless the crew, because they’d even made the water warm for us, which is amazing, but after a long day doing that you really look forward to some dry clothes and a good night’s sleep.”

The 37-year-old actress plays Laura Wilson, the First Daughter in 2012. The movie is an epic adventure
about global cataclysm that brings the end to the world and the heroic struggles endured by its survivors.

The film is based on the Mayan calendar that is set to reach the end of its 13th cycle on Dec 21, 2012 and nothing after that. This “action movie role” follows her portrayal of Condoleeza Rice in Oliver Stone’s W. It a bit of a jump. W was a bio-pic (a Stone specialty) of sorts, while 2012 is a full-blown action blockbuster.

(more…)

We’ve already explored the history of 2012 here on Cinematical and what you need to know to see the movie (hint: the world might blow up!), but here’s what 2012 stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson and director Roland Emmerich have to say about the end of the world. Do they believe the world will end with a whimper or a bang, T. S. Eliot-style? Will we go out in fire or in ice? Do they even believe the world will end in 2012? Let’s find out.

Thandie Newton: You know, I think that there are dire ecological problems that we are more aware of than we’ve ever been through the media and so on, but there are also problems of a more profound nature – human rights issues, which for me, signify the end of the world. What’s going on in the Congo, what’s happening in the Middle East, where… the law of human rights just don’t seem to exist. And I feel like, in a way, that’s more complex and more painful and more destructive than a tidal wave… I think that at some time it was believed that 2012 was the year that things were going to happen, but the prediction has been disproved. I mean, I don’t know the details of it, I’m afraid. I’m sure it’s in your press pack. [laughs] But that’s my personal opinion. I want to focus more on the things that can be dealt with, the disasters that human beings are responsible for… It’s more problematic and more complex and terrifying the way people treat people.

From Cinematical

The film has quite a lot of action. What sort of things did you have to do?
I spent a lot of time incredibly wet (laughs). Absolutely soaking wet through – trousers, sweater, my shoes, everything. It was miserable and I’m such a little girl about that sort of thing. I didn’t complain about it, but inside I was thinking ‘oh no, not again’! There’s one sequence where the waves are coming in and I have to scoop up this little girl and save her, which is all great, but inside I was thinking ****** hell! Can this please just be it’! And the little girl was having a great time. In between scenes I’d wrap myself in a towel and she was swimming around and loving it.

What sort of preparation did you do for the film?
I just read the script and made sure my accent was in good shape, because really, no matter who I was playing, the story is about a world in disarray. When something like this happens – and hopefully it never will – when everything is about to be destroyed, you can’t hold on to any idea of who you are or worry about your worldly goods, because it’s all going to be swept away. It’s very fundamental and you end up as a human being – skin, flesh and bones – fighting for your life. So what research can you do to play a character caught up in that? It was more about asking yourself, ‘hell, what would I do in that position?’

Did you pause for thought when you first heard about the Mayan prophecies?
I was a bit nervous to be honest when I first heard about the Mayan prophecies. I’m a bit of an old hippie and I feel like anything’s possible at any time. Reality can be shocking enough and things happen all the time. I think the film is about appreciating the moment and the challenges we face – like, for instance the economic crisis we’ve been going through – hopefully it will make us appreciate the simple things and the value of relationships and the value of the people that we love.

You went straight from filming W, where you played former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, into filming 2012. Did you ever have any feedback from Condoleezza Rice after W came out?
No. But she’s joined my agency, I hear. William Morris.

So who had the best Oval Office? Was it on W or was it on the set for 2012?
That was so funny. I literally finished my last scene in W, which was with Josh Brolin in the Oval Office, and two weeks later I was on a different set for 2012, in Vancouver, on another set for the Oval Office, playing a president’s daughter.

How do you decide what roles to take?
I wouldn’t ever just want to do one kind of thing. When I was starting out, if I did a movie about say, slavery (Jefferson in Paris), I’d then get sent every slavery script going. But that doesn’t happen so much anymore. The way I work and when I work is actually more to do with being a mum than ‘what do I want to do next’? If I’ve worked on a big film, I don’t then want to go and do another big film because of the kids and school. It’s a bit boring, but that determines the job more than anything else.

Do you like watching your own movies?
If they’re good. (laughs)

And so which ones are good?
Oh, I’m not going to answer that (laughs). I mean, there are lots that I really, really like, there are some I feel didn’t work in ways that I’d hoped, but then, you never really know, you have very little control as an actor really. But there are definitely some that I prefer to others – but there are some films I like more than others in general, just not ones I’ve been in.

2012 is out November 12.

From Alive Sydney

She’s the Cambridge graduate who studied for her finals during the Cannes Film Festival, believes she was exploited on her first film and has no time for Gordon Ramsay

Thandie Newton is small boned, beautiful and looks as fragile as a bird of paradise but she’s certainly no pushover. For her role in disaster blockbuster 2012 – whose central premise is that the end of the world starts on December 21 2012, as predicted by the ancient Mayan civilisation – she had to spend days submerged in a water tank ‘the size of a swimming pool’, filming scenes of floods that follow devastating earthquakes when the planet’s tectonic plates shift.

She grew up in Penzance, the daughter of a Zimbabwean mother and an English father, and started acting at 16, keeping her career on track while attending Downing College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a 2.1 in anthropology. She won a Bafta for best supporting actress in Crash and has also starred in Mission: Impossible II, The Pursuit of Happyness and RocknRolla. She has two daughters, Ripley, nine, and Nico, five, is married to director Ol Parker and turns 37 on Friday.

I was studying for my finals at Cambridge during the Cannes Film Festival.

I went to a party on the beach for the film I was in, Jefferson In Paris, but I didn’t get drunk because I knew I had to revise. I wasn’t going to the college bar and having fun, so I probably ended up working more than most people. I carried on making films while I was at Cambridge. I don’t regret it because if I hadn’t, maybe I wouldn’t be an actress.

They paid me just $5,000 for my first film, Flirting.

It should have been a lot more, but how was I to know? It was major exploitation. These days you get a first-class ticket if you are working on a movie but I flew economy all the way to Australia and back. I was hanging out after doing my GCSEs and it came totally out of the blue. After it finished I went back to school.

The Mayan calendar finishes its 13th cycle in 2012 and after that there’s nothing.

I was a bit nervous when I heard about the Mayan prophecies for my new film. And then someone reassured me that it’s all been disproved. I think 2012 is about appreciating the moment and the simple things, the value of relationships and the value of the people that we love. It’s also a great adventure.

Guy Ritchie is an acquired taste.

But I like him. He is a no-messing-about kind of director (she worked with him on RocknRolla). I love how straight-talking he is and sometimes it’s confrontational, but what he does say is on the money every time.

I am terrible for swearing.

There’s always a lot of swearing on film sets and I’m so bad that my kids say ‘Stop it Mummy!’ They’re always telling me off. I love hanging out with the boys on a set – it’s almost more relaxing than hanging out with the girls.

I’ve experienced racism in Hollywood but not as conflict or in a threatening way, just the ignorance of people.

There was one time I went for a meeting for this big movie and I was up for a character who wasn’t written as black. The character was a college graduate and the studio head, a woman, said, ‘How can we make this role more black if we are going to have you in the film?’ And I said, ‘Well, I think as it’s written it’s fine…’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I know, but she is a graduate, she has been to university.’ So I said, ‘I’ve been to university.’ And then it was, ‘Yeah, but you’re different.’ I wasn’t offended. It’s just nonsense. But no, I didn’t do the film.

My attitude towards Hollywood can be summed up as ‘smash and grab’.

I go into a meeting with a director as an equal, thinking that what I have to offer is of great value. It also makes me appreciate how much I have changed. Twenty years ago I wasn’t so well-equipped to deal with Hollywood.

I thought Oliver Stone was crazy when he told me he wanted me to play Condoleezza Rice.

I remember preparing for the film (W) and the make-up artist saying, ‘We’re going for feel-alike rather than lookalike.’ But I wanted to look like her. So I had false teeth and a completely different hairstyle. I hear she’s joined my agency, William Morris, so maybe I’ll run into her in the corridor – that would be funny.

I was shocked when two BNP candidates were elected to the European parliament.

We need an Obama in Britain. You want someone to rise up from somewhere and take everyone by surprise. I think the BNP picking up votes stems from disenchantment.

I was the only black girl and only non-Catholic at St Mary’s Roman Catholic School in Penzance.

Whenever they were all at prayers I had free time. I got into a lot of trouble – they made me sit on a baby chair. It was supposed to shame you, but it didn’t break me. There was a footballing nun who used to play on the pitch with the boys. She’d even wear a wimple.

I hate it when Gordon Ramsay abuses people on TV.

Those people come from goodness knows where to be in the kitchen with him and he’s swearing at them, shaming them, mocking them, abusing them, and they just take it. That’s got nothing to do with being a chef.

I can’t stand reality TV.

Apparently, some people even watch Big Brother when all of the contestants are asleep in the house. Can you believe that?

You go into newsagents now and the top shelf is all the way down to the bottom.

My kids are getting comics next to the cover of a men’s mag with a girl who’s topless. The boundaries have gone.

From the Daily Mail

Stella Baxter is a ball buster, but sly about the way she does it. In slinky linen cocktail dresses and four-inch Jimmy Choos, she combines sex appeal and smarts; she’ll two-time and double-cross anyone to get what she wants (and maybe a little more). She’s far shrewder than the underworld characters she beds and empties of cash, and as elusive as the smoke from her omnipresent cigarette. Femme fatales don’t get much more freaky-deaky than this. Guy Ritchie, the man who first imagined Stella Baxter, contends, “she’s a bit fuckin’ rock and roll.”

Thandie Newton is Stella Baxter, and Stella Baxter is maybe just a little bit Thandie Newton. An acclaimed actor best known for prestige roles in films like Crash and Beloved, Newton’s hardcore metamorphosis in Guy Ritchie’s new film RocknRolla—a glorious gangster clusterfuck on par with Ritchie’s breakthrough flicks Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch—provides a real kick in the arse. For Ritchie, the casting succeeded because it tweaked expectations wrought by Newton’s upscale image. “Thandie’s very easy to love, and she usually plays the girl everyone does love,” Ritchie explains. “I liked the idea that this wasn’t the case here. Stella was based on the female half of an actual power couple that went over to the dark side—this lawyer who liked cocaine and boys and his accountant missus who was pretty wild herself.”

(more…)