THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409240033
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
JULIE WALTERS' SMILE won over half the world when she played the irrepressible hairdresser in ``Educating Rita'' in 1983. She and co-star Michael Caine were nominated for Oscars and she became everyone's favorite working-class Cinderella, the uneducated girl whose common-sense logic wows and wins a college professor.
The smile is still there - and so is Julie Walters.
Her new role, debuting today at the Naro Expanded Cinema, is as another underdog who is determined to have life, and death, on her own terms. The film is ``The Wedding Gift'' and Walters, feisty and flamboyant all the way, plays the real-life Diana Longden, a woman who suffered from an incurable disease for 15 years prior to her death in 1984. The case became famous in England when her husband, Deric Longden, wrote a book about it and read it on the radio in installments. Although death was certain, Diana kept her nails manicured at all times and was determined to carry on a lively existence. She even chose her husband's next wife, Aileen Armitage, a blind novelist who possessed the same fighting streak and sense of humor as she.
Fresh from a long flight from England to Los Angeles, Julie Walters admits that it was not an easy role. Sitting in the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, she said ``I rang up Deric and talked to him about his former wife before filming began. People in England feel as if they know her and I knew it was a real risk to play. For one thing, Diana is trying to suppress her emotions, and that's very hard to keep on the boil in acting. It was very important that I get across the sense of humor. This is no sob story.''
Jim Broadbent, who plays her husband Deric in the film, perhaps puts Julie Walters' appeal most succinctly: ``She is something really exceptional - possessed of extraordinary observation from which comes humor. Julie has a complete openness to her feelings. She lays herself quite bare. She is the rare actress who can be funny and raw at the same time. That is a very winning combination.''
``He said that?'' Julie exclaims as she laughs heartily. ``Well, bless his heart and pass me crown. Sounds like I should be crowned or something.''
Actually, Julie Walters, like Rita, came from the working class.
``My parents were not educated,'' she said. ``Me mother kept telling me, over and over, `Julie, don't ever depend on any man.' She may be right in that you shouldn't depend on anyone, but I quite like men, actually. Coming from a working-class background, I had quite a chip on my shoulder. It somewhat paralleled Rita, you know?''
She originally trained to be a nurse, but, according to her, she was thrown out of the school.
``I was in the Queen Elizabeth School of Nursing when, in 1968, this quite mad Irish woman took over and took a dislike to me. She got me expelled, claiming I was `subversive.' I didn't even know what that meant. Anyway, I enrolled in a three-year drama course at Manchester Polytechnic and before long got a role on the West End (London's equivalent to Broadway). It all worked out very well. I suppose I should thank that old biddy for sacking me.''
On stage, she has appeared in ``Fool for Love,'' ``Frankie and Johnny at the Claire de Lune'' and Tennessee Williams' ``The Rose Tattoo.''
Her dream role came in Lewis Gilbert's comedy ``Educating Rita'' on stage. Rita is a girl who is determined to improve her knowledge of literature and hires a drunken tutor to instruct her.
For the film version, Hollywood initially wanted Dolly Parton and Paul Newman.
``Finally, they went with me, but only because Michael Caine had the other role. No one in America had ever heard of me and it was hard to raise the money,'' she remembered. Walters and Caine both won Golden Globe Awards, British Academy Awards and Oscar nominations.
The Americanization of Julie, though, didn't quite take.
``Columbia Pictures flew me over for the Academy Awards,'' she said. ``It was culture shock. A limousine met me at the airport. It was bigger than the flat in which I live in London. They gave me a list of things I couldn't wear to the Polo Lounge. I met Burt Reynolds, and I thought he was Burt Lancaster. I met Michael Jackson and Liza Minnelli.''
``I knew it was pretty unlikely that I would win, even though I did win the Golden Globe and the people at Columbia kept telling me `Smile, Julie. There's going to be an upset.' On Oscar night, I didn't have any speech prepared. Sure enough, Shirley MacLaine won (for `Terms of Endearment').''
Broadbent, who was in ``Enchanted April,'' was the bartender in ``The Crying Game'' and will be in Woody Allen's upcoming film ``Bullets Over Broadway,'' feels that he and Walters have another underground hit in ``The Wedding Gift.'' ``Americans love to discover these `little' films,'' he said. ``They are hungry for plots, for human plots, and they love Julie already.''
``The thing about this role,'' Julie said, ``was that I'd get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work and go back to bed. The worst thing was having to spend all that time in a hospital bed. It reminded me of my days as a nurse.''
She resents any interpretation that her character, Diana, might have tried suicide.
``Some people get that idea from the film, but it's wrong,'' she said. ``Diana never would have done that. She would fight. The scene in the movie, in which she almost drowns in the bathtub, was because she had a stroke. I suppose that isn't clear, maybe.''
As for the question of whether any woman would arrange a romance between her husband and another woman, Julie feels playing it didn't require a stretch of logic.
``This woman would have done that. Maybe I wouldn't have done it, but she would. She had to be in some kind of control and she knew she was going to die. Those nails were a symbolic thing for her. If you notice, she always has her nails perfectly manicured. Now, that's a woman who is a fighter.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Miramax Films
Julie Walters portrays a woman determined to have life, and death,
on her own terms.
by CNB