Please don’t compare me to Gwyneth Paltrow, says stage star Lucy Briggs-Owen

 
Inspired: Lucy Briggs-Owen and co-star Tom Bateman in Shakespeare in Love (Picture: Dave Benett)
Dave Benett
Anna Dubuis24 July 2014
The Weekender

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The leading actress in the stage adaptation of Shakespeare In Love said she tried not to compare herself with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscar-winning performance in the film.

Lucy Briggs-Owen, 28, said she fell in love with the 1998 film starring Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes when she was a teenager, but after being offered the role of Viola de Lesseps, Shakespeare’s love interest, she decided not to watch it again.

She said: “Paltrow is so wonderful and completely gorgeous and I don’t think anything can touch that. One shouldn’t compare and I have really tried not to and just be inspired and seduced by what she did. I was intimidated at the thought of doing this, but I feel we have managed to make it our own.

“Just as if you were playing any of the great Shakespearean roles, like Lady Macbeth or Othello, you need to forget who has done what in the past and realise it for yourself.

Screen sensation: Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in the film version of Shakespeare in Love (Picture: Allstar/Cinetext/Universal)
Allstar/Cinetext/Universal

“Never in rehearsals were the words ‘but in the movie…’ uttered, despite the fact that the template of the film is inspiring and beautiful. You have to coin it afresh.”

However, her co-star Tom Bateman, 25, admitted that he took the opposite strategy after he was offered the role.

“I did something very stupid when I first got this part, which was to watch the film again — and Joseph Fiennes is absolutely brilliant,” he said.

“It’s an amazing story. The huge thing that kept ringing through to me was Shakespeare’s energy. He wrote 36 plays in 12 years, no one does that.”

The screen-to-stage version has been adapted by Lee Hall with guidance from the film’s writer Tom Stoppard, which Hall said was both “fantastic and nerve-racking” in equal measure.

He said: “I was absolutely terrified. I had take my first draft as if it was homework for Tom to look at. He opened it and said, ‘Let’s start at line one’ and we went through the whole thing together.

“He was brilliant. It has been a dream come true to work with Tom, who is a great hero of mine.”

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