Clive Owen - Interview with Alex Kingston

10/8/00 - From the London Sunday Times

A film gamble that finally paid off

It was only when she was congratulated on her cleavage that Alex Kingston, who spends her public life hidden behind green scrubs and face mask in the television medical drama ER, realised that a low-budget almost-forgotten British film in which she briefly disrobes was returning to haunt her.

A close friend, Toni Basil, who drove the world mad with a 1982 pop hit called Mickey, phoned Kingston at her Los Angeles home to congratulate her on her appearance in Croupier, a four-year-old crime thriller that cast her as a mysterious gambler alongside moody casino-dealer Clive Owen. This British film, made for Channel 4, has been a surprising hit in America, despite not getting a proper release there.

"Toni said it was the first time she has seen real breasts on the screen for a decade. No surgery, no silicone. For me, following Moll Flanders [the erotically charged television series that established the actress in 1996], it was not a big deal. But out here, I suppose, my body is unusual because it has not been altered or chopped about," said the Rada-trained actress.

Kingston, confusingly familiar in scrubs and badge identifying her as ER's Dr Elizabeth Corday as she snatches a lunchbreak between shooting at the Warner studio commissary in Burbank, Los Angeles, admits she has been taken aback by the return of Croupier.

"Over the last few weeks my phone has been ringing constantly with people wanting to talk about Croupier. Some seem obsessed, going to see it three times. Frankly, I do not know where it has all come from. It may be my brain," said the 37-year-old actress, slapping her forehead, "but it was made four years ago last spring and I have forgotten so much about it."

Not the plot, though: Clive Owen, who made his reputation on television in Chancer, plays an author searching for inspiration as a dealer in a casino before being seduced into a robbery plot by Kingston, playing a South African femme fatale. Mayhem follows, with a final twist to rival that of The Crying Game. Yet the actress, who is married to a German journalist, cannot remember where in Germany the casino scenes were shot.

"I know it was somewhere there, because there was German production money involved. And the catering was better than back in England, which later embarrassed the director, Mike Hodges. But was it Berlin, or was it Hamburg? All I remember is the bar after shooting," she says and laughs.

And where did Kingston sign up to shoot Croupier with Hodges, the veteran film maker who has been confined to hack work such as Flash Gordon and Morons from Outer Space since his 1970s heyday of Get Carter and The Terminal Man. "He lives somewhere - is it in Suffolk? No, it's down near Bath, somewhere."

There are reasons why the details have faded for Kingston. She had just gone through a traumatic divorce from her first husband, Ralph Fiennes, who while playing Hamlet had fallen in love with his stage-mother Gertrude played by Francesca Annis. Also, the day after she was offered the role of Jani di Villiers in Croupier, she got a call from the United States - a gamble to reject a one-off appearance in ER in hopes of getting a more substantial role had paid off.

Days after she completed Croupier, she was on her way to Burbank.

She is currently applying for permanent residence in the United States. "I love England, but it can feel insular compared to the opportunities available here. I am in the process of moving house in LA. Once you have learnt to laugh at its absurdities, which took me about eight months, LA is a wonderful place to live. Although ER cannot go on for much longer, I am not ready to go back to England."

However, Kingston enjoyed Croupier. She speaks warmly about Hodges. "There are rumours about Oscar nominations for Clive Owen and Mike Hodges. Well, I hope they get them. Channel 4 slipped up. Maybe the complex plot, or a lack of background music, which is usually used to signal mood to the audience, made them think it would be too difficult for Americans. That is wrong. It's not all special-effect blockbusters: American adults go to cinemas, too."

Or maybe Channel 4 was tripped up by something even more unpredictable: London weather. The film's first international showcase, after a two-week run in a single London cinema, was at a trade-only film festival in London in October 1997. One American film-buyer recalled that there was a buzz about Croupier, but everyone was "just too pissed off with London" to give it a fair hearing. The American producer said last week:

"The tearoom in La Meridien hotel in Piccadilly, for years our deal-making base, had been turned into a restaurant, which made us homeless. There were a lot of overhyped films. It was raining all the time. The buyers were in a bad mood and wanting to get on to the next trade show in Italy. So we missed a hit - shoot me. Happens all the time. Usually, though, once buried, a film stays buried. But not this one."

The difference, according to Alex Kingston, was a freelance film producer called Michael Kaplan from Venice in Los Angeles, who was an old friend of Hodges and was hooked on Croupier's stylish mixture of irony, eroticism and action. "Mike would not let Croupier go: he kept knocking on doors and showing it to anyone who would sit down for 90 minutes. He was relentless."

Kaplan spent two years and thousands of his own dollars plugging away for his old friend. It paid off. A New York film-distribution house, the Shooting Gallery, included it in an unprecedented package of six low-budget films that it was selling to arthouse cinemas at a bulk discount, underwritten by sponsors such as Heineken and Ralph Lauren Polo.

Despite its curt dismissal by the influential Hollywood Reporter as a "French import", presumably because of its title, Croupier immediately attracted champions in the media. The tensely cool Owen was compared to a young Sean Connery, the sultry Kingston to Kathleen Turner, the script compared to thrillers such as The Usual Suspects. And, in a summer of blockbusters predictable even by Hollywood standards, "old" audiences made up of anyone aged over 25 were seeking something fresher. Croupier hit the spot.

The film, which cost £2m to make, has gone on to become one of the longest-running hits of the year. It is not, however, and contrary to recent reports, a blockbuster. It is currently being shown at 130 American cinemas, out of 20,000 screens, and, by the end of last month, 161 days after its American release, had earned $5.9m. That is pocket money compared with the $300m earned by Mission Impossible:2, but it marks a respected hit.

Even before its release in Australia and New Zealand and its video debut, Croupier has covered its costs, which is achieved by fewer than a quarter of American films. Perhaps even more importantly, it has given three Britons clout in Hollywood. Hodges, who has suffered years of underemployment, is busy drawing up plans for a hatful of new films. Owen, still smarting from his treatment by Channel 4, is busy promoting Greenfingers, an Ealing Comedy-style prison caper, but finds himself answering more questions about Croupier. He is the hottest Brit in Los Angeles since Jude Law.

And, for Kingston, it opens other doors. She may be working 10-hour days on ER, but she fears unemployment next April, when shooting of the current 22-episode series of ER ends and Hollywood is reduced to silence as its scriptwriters go on strike. "I think it could be serious, yes. Certainly ER will not be produced, and if it goes on for six or nine months I may have to look for a job. Something in England would be ideal, but if I have my green card I would also be looking for stage work, maybe in New York."

There is also the small matter of her first child, due early next year. She has been offered enough film work, but not always the most suitable. "There was the possibility of a role in Sunshine [the Oscar-winning Istvan Szabo family saga starring her former husband Ralph Fiennes]. I was quite interested, if I was not in scenes with, well, you know, but I looked at the script and it was all sex, sex, sex with, you know . . . obviously, someone did not know our history."

Or maybe they did. Five years after they separated, deep into a second, happier marriage, Kingston smiles ruefully when she admits she still cannot bring herself to watch anything with Fiennes in it. "It would just be too much."

Nor has she watched Croupier since its trade screening. "I can never watch my own films. I want to change things. My husband has threatened to ban ER from the house because watching it makes me tense. I have just been sent a tape of Croupier to watch again, but I would prefer to see it in the cinema. Maybe I shall straighten my hair, go in disguise. It's a smart film but I am not sure whether I could sit through it without squirming." Thanks, Gill