Pride & Prejudice
Lisa Hope King
Issue date: 12/7/05 Section: Inside Beat
Dirty Dames and Mr. Darcy for X-mas
Thursday, December 8, 2005
Having a significant other meet the parents during the holidays is a benchmark for any couple. Take this: cut to class-conscious England near the close of the 18th century, and you've got Jane Austen's Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Darcy from her novel, Pride And Prejudice.
Mrs. Bennet, played by Brenda Bleythn (Secrets And Lies) is the eager parent of five daughters waiting to meet the eligible and rich bachelor Mr. Darcy, (Matthew MacFayden, MI-5).
Though the movie boasts an esteemed cast consisting of Donald Sutherland, an Officer of the Order of Canada, Dame Judi Dench, Keira Knightley, Hollywood Film Award for Best Breakthrough Actress in 2005 and Brenda Blyethn, two time Academy Award nominee and an Officer of the Order of Britain, inside beat picked up on some surprising facts from MacFayden and Blyethn about the actors - especially of the Dame.
Matthew MacFayden is no stranger to strong romantic roles. In 1998, he played Hareton Earnshaw in the UK television version of Wuthering Heights. Having never read Pride And Prejudice or seen the BBC movie version, MacFayden had a clean slate to work with in his role as Mr. Darcy.
"I think there's a little bit of Darcy in everyone," he admitted. "I find him very sympathetic and I find it kind of heartbreaking at times. Nobody's just arrogant and cold without reason. He was a young man who had to grow up to find out who he was."
MacFayden's Darcy had a love-hate relationship with Bleythn's on-screen daughter, Lizzie, played by Keira Knightley.
"It's terribly attractive when your pomposity is noticed and then punctured in public," he says. "It's infuriating and embarrassing and you hate that person [but Darcy] found it incredibly funny. It's one of those things where he goes home afterwards, locks all the doors and laughs hysterically into the pillows."
When asked if there were any women in his life who tortured him like Lizzie, he laughed and replied, "my wife."