Actor and screenwriter Julian Fellowes, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for Gosford Park, is back at the Hall Barn Estate in Buckinghamshire where the opening scenes of the film were shot.
“It’s very nostalgic for me,” says Fellowes, who has written the screenplay for Vanity Fair, the classic William Makepeace Thackeray novel currently being filmed at Hall Barn and other country houses in England.
Reese Witherspoon stars as Becky Sharp, the penniless but manipulative girl who battles her way through the jungle of British society in the early 1800s. “Reese is fantastic,” he says.
”She looks clever and she has that minx-ish adventuress quality which is so wonderful.”
The film also stars Ireland’s Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Romula Garai and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Coincidentally, the part of Lady Jane Crawley is being played by Natasha Little, who portrayed Becky Sharp in the BBC production of Vanity Fair.
As soon as filming finishes – the production is three weeks into its 12 weeks schedule – Fellowes will make his directing debut on A Way Through The Woods, for which he also wrote the script.