Stars turn out for Woody Allen premiere
Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell were in Venice today for the premiere of their new Woody Allen film Cassandra’s Dream.
They play Cockney brothers who are drawn into a life of crime by a beautiful young woman.
While they are the two big names in the movie, all eyes at the Venice Film Festival were on their co-star, actress Hayley Atwell.
Cassandra’s Dream marks her big screen debut but she is already tipped for a bright future, having impressed in TV dramas In The Line Of Beauty and Mansfield Park.
She also has roles lined up as Julia Flyte in the remake of Brideshead Revisited and opposite Keira Knightley in period drama The Duchess.
But Cassandra’s Dream was her first movie role and Atwell, 25, said: “I’m very new and was working with Woody about a year after leaving drama school, so it was an incredible honour to have that role so early. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but it was a fantastic introduction for me into the world of film-making.”
This is Allen’s third London-set film after Scoop and Match Point, and he plans more.
“I’d certainly love to make another film in London. It’s an extremely seductive place to work because it’s a very nice place to live while making a movie,” he said.
“Also, the conditions for film-making are ideal. The weather is cool, the skies are grey and that’s very good for the kind of photography I want to do. And there’s an extremely high level of professional people there in all the departments of film-making. So I’d love to do another one there.”
Farrell, 31, said he was happy to play an ordinary Joe after so many roles in which he is cast as the action hero.
“It’s very liberating to not be playing the hero, someone who is tough talking and takes each situation on the chin, and instead to concern yourself with the common man, which personally I consider myself to be,” he said.
McGregor, 36, said working with Allen had fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition.
“We had all wanted to work with Woody for a long, long time, and it’s not really like working for anybody else. It’s electric, it’s wonderful,” he said.
Despite an Oscar-winning career stretching back 30 years, Allen claimed his work had failed to inspire later generations of film-makers.
“Oddly enough, over the years I’ve never felt that I have influenced anyone. I don’t mean that to sound like false modesty, but I could always feel the influence of my contemporaries – Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg – but I have never seen my influence on anyone,” he said.
Cassandra’s Dream is set for UK release in the coming months. It also features a cameo from former EastEnder Tamzin Outhwaite.
