There is a widely held view that if Jude Law had been born in America rather than England, he would be where Matt Damon is now – a box office name you don’t have to fish about in your memory to recognise. He is cut, after all, in the Hitler Youth mould of the American male lead: firm tits, stone jaw and the sort of petulant screen charm that flushes away disapproval with sheer gut fascination.
It is easy to watch him in his role as Dickie Greenleaf, the arrogant playboy in The Talented Mr Ripley for which he has won an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, and imagine that it is an exaggerated version of himself – charming, beautiful, imperially conceited. But at six o’clock on a Wednesday evening, standing in a puddle two miles from Berlin, it is a vision that is hard to sustain.
“Raff, Raff, don’t get in a tizz.” He is consoling his two-year-old son Rafferty, who is screaming at the thought of travelling into town in a different car from daddy. Law has been out here, in Berlin’s abandoned Russian army barracks, filming scenes for Enemy at the Gates. “Don’t cry, bubba,” he says, picking the boy up and offering him a fistful of comics. “Daddy’s following right behind you.”
The boy, angel-haired like a fresco cherub, is momentarily distracted by a platoon of extras marching past in the direction of Red Square, a to-scale reconstruction built on waste ground. It’s here that Law and Joseph Fiennes have been playing Russian soldiers in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s new film which is set during the battle of Stalingrad in the second world war. The film, which also stars Ed Harris and Rachel Weisz, is the true story of a duel between a Russian sniper and German officer.
It is dark now, wet from the snow machine and about minus five degrees. The SS men have retired to their trailers and two German drivers, waiting to take us back to the city centre, are shooting air guns at each other and shivering at the weirdness of the scene before them. “There are black shirts – SS men – marching about,” says one. “It is very strange, very strange to see.”
It couldn’t be further from the scenes that Law, from this Friday, can be seen enjoying in The Talented Mr Ripley, the Anthony Minghella film that so meticulously recreates 1950s Italy that with every shot you expect Audrey Hepburn to come scooting round the corner, Tony Curtis in pursuit. “I was hugely seduced by the era,” says Law, when Rafferty, whose mother is the actress Sadie Frost, has agreed to go in the car with his grandparents.
Law’s voice is hoarse from shouting at SS men and he has a little moan about doing interviews after a long day’s shooting. It is only a lapse in his charm, however. He takes talking seriously. “Before the film, my image of the Fifties came out of the Levi’s ad. But it was an era of naive rebellion, when young people started expressing new found philosophies about having a good time, without using the shock tactics that came with the Sixties.”
Law’s character in the film, the son of an American shipping magnate living in louche style on the Italian coast, shocks in the same way that Gatsby did: by showing how bad behaviour is excused, and by extension enabled, by beauty. Dickie Greenleaf is loved, hated and indulged in equal measure because he is the person who everyone wants to be. “I don’t judge the characters I play,” says Law. He is interesting on Greenleaf, since his public profile shares some of his characteristics. “When I first read the part I did what I think it is natural in Britain to do: I recoiled from him as this spoilt, golden boy. But Anthony won me over. I am fascinated by the challenge of trying to make nasty characters likeable and vice versa, because everyone is made up of all those facets.”
Law’s initial dismay at the part may also have come from the fact that he dies half way through the film. “Before I went through it with Anthony, I hadn’t seen how the part of Dickie resonates throughout the whole film. But he is always there, in a sense.” This sounds a bit like the school teacher trying to persuade little Johnny that the donkey really is a pivotal part in the nativity play and every bit as important as Joseph – except that Law’s performance is dazzling enough to do just as Minghella promised, and keep the audience thinking about him throughout the film. It brings home that while his roles in the science fiction films Gattaca and eXistenZ were played with conviction, this is the first time Law has really looked like a star.
The irony is that in terms of his background, the 27-year-old really has more in common with the Matt Damon role, Tom Ripley, the ordinary Joe with the talent for mimicry. Law’s parents are both retired teachers from South London and he was educated at a comprehensive school before the bullying got too bad and he was transferred to a private one. “We have all been in positions where we’ve been Tom Ripley – where we’ve hated ourselves and wanted to be someone else. But it was more interesting for me to play Greenleaf and to assume all these airs and graces, rather than to draw on my own demons.”
Admittedly, his demons aren’t that ferocious. The tenor of his upbringing was such, says Law, that his confidence is mistaken for arrogance. He doesn’t think he is better than anyone else, he just knows who he is and what he does best.
“I remember the first school play I did when I was six. It wasn’t a case of me looking at the other kids and thinking that I was better. It was just that I immediately understood it, the concept of creating an imaginative scenario. I took it very seriously. I probably drove people mad.”
He was emboldened by the relationship he had with his parents – a very adult one that included going regularly to the theatre and talking about the plays they had seen. “Perhaps that’s what made me seem cocky at school. But I always assumed that I would get what I wanted in terms of my acting. Not that I was going to be a star or anything, but I didn’t see why I should do that British thing of playing down my ambitions. ‘You can’t be an actor,’ they said to me at school. ‘Why not?’ I said. It’s a cliché, but that’s how it was.”
Confidence is in his make-up, he says, and so is thoughtfulness. “I have always been someone who can’t do something that I know will hurt others. Whether success will breed arrogance I don’t know, but I’ll never deny what I can do and I’ll never knowingly upset someone.”
The success of his school plays encouraged him to join the National Youth Theatre where, at 13 years old, he met Jonny Lee Miller, now one of his best friends and a partner in Natural Nylon, the production company they own with Sean Pertwee and Ewan McGregor. At 16, he left school with his parents’ blessing and won a small part in the Granada soap, Families, before getting a breakthrough role in Les Parents Terribles. When it transferred from the National Theatre to New York, Law won a Tony nomination for best supporting actor and the film roles followed.
“The plan was always to go to university and train to be an actor after that,” he says. “But I didn’t enjoy the institution of school. I like the accumulated knowledge and the minds of good teachers, but I hated rules and regulations. It’s the same on set. If you’re not having a good time, why are you standing there doing it? It’s your life.”
He loves to tackle a thick reading list before starting a new project. On eXistenZ, a film about a virtual reality game, the director David Cronenberg had Law reading Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard as well as putting in some essential hours playing Tomb Raider. For Enemy at the Gates he is ploughing through Russian history books.
His parents had flown out with Rafferty to congratulate him on the Oscar nomination, something he is “thrilled” about naturally, and has been keeping his mind off as a grace too many to wish for. Harvey Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax, is thrilled also and we have to stop on the way to the set to buy Law a bottle of Dom Perignon in Weinstein’s name.
He won’t be seduced into moving to the States with the movie movers and shakers, however, and has Rafferty enrolled in a state school in north London, where he and Sadie intend to stay. He is not the kind of movie dad who disappears for nine months at a time. As on set, he knows his own value at home. “There’s no need to go to Hollywood. I have all my friends around and I know how it feels to be a kid growing up here. Besides, meetings can be held in London.” Modest, see?
The Talented Mr Ripley opens in SA on Friday March 17