Keeley Hawes ITV Entertainment Interview on "Best Man" (2006)

 

Keeley Hawes

The Best Man has a bit of everything: love, murder, and a heck of a lot of intrigue. It also has the gorgeous Keeley Hawes who becomes unwittingly trapped in a rather bizarre ménage-a-trois.

Michael and Peter have a very odd relationship…

They do. Usually you try to second guess things when you read a script – it’s like trying to read a novel – and you try to be cleverer than the writer. But I didn’t know what the hell was going on with this. I just thought the two boys would get together or they had been together - that there was some homosexual undertone - but I was as surprised as hopefully anybody will be.

Kate goes on one heck of a journey in this programme. Is that what attracted you to her?

Well, she’s a survivor which is attractive. But I think the journey is a little to do with the editing. Sometimes scenes are cut so you lose a little bit of the journey. But she does get very strong very quickly from having been hospitalised.

But she knows that she loves Michael, and his friend is obviously very, very strange. Her problems aren’t with people as much as living with her self.

Do you ever think that maybe they’ve over-edited something?

Oh yeah. You can drive yourself insane with it, watching something and thinking ‘why did they use that?’ and things like that. I’m sure there’s always a good reason for these things.

There are some pretty scary moments in The Best Man…

Well, it’s more of a psychological thriller, but it was fun to play all of that.

 

Are there any roles you’ve seen and thought ‘I would have loved to have played that’?

It’s quite funny when you’re down to the last two and you see the person that you’ve learnt most of the lines for and you think ‘I wouldn’t have done it like that!'

Quite often it’s a relief. There’s one role that springs to mind where I sat there, and I had nearly gone off to the arse-end of nowhere for a couple of months then I saw it and sat back and just laughed and thought ‘thank God!’

You met your husband [Matthew MacFadyen] on the set of Spooks. Was it difficult combining work and relationship?

Well, we met and then we got together and then we had to go back and do another series while we were together. I thought it was going to be more difficult than it actually was. I made provisions for it. One very environmentally unfriendly one was us both having separate cars to go to work in because I knew that they’d try and get us both in one car.

It worked really well because I’m a girl and I need longer in make-up, whereas Matthew doesn’t have to leave at the same time. If they had got him in an hour earlier for that, it would have started to p*ss him off a bit.

Do you ever look at each others parts and feel a bit jealous?

Before I got together with Matthew I had never been out with an actor. I often wondered what people meant when they talked about competitiveness or jealousy or rivalry. Now I understand it only in so much as it is other people who put it on to you.

I have people say to me ‘how do you feel with Matthew doing a film? Are you going to do a film?’ and I think f**k me, I couldn’t have played Mr. Darcy. I could have tried but I wouldn’t have done a very good job.

How can I be anything but thrilled that he’s in an Oscar-nominated film?

Is it difficult being a model-turned-actress?.

The difficult thing now is that there is a crossing over of models and actresses, with actresses having to look a certain way and be as thin as models because they’re now cover girls and contracts with make-up companies. And I’m not sure that that is quite right. It shouldn’t be about that and it is more and more.

I think there’s a lot of unnecessary pressure for people.

People like Kate Winslet who did so much for normal looking women – she was always thinner than most people anyway! But now suddenly she’s gone and lost six stone and kind of given into it. And you think ‘you were just about the last hope for normality’ and I really admired the whole package because she played fantastic parts and looked fabulous. Now she’s apparently lost weight due to the pressure.

Is that the fault of the glossy magazines?

I think it’s appalling. I think it’s absolutely appalling. Someone like Helena Bonham-Carter is such a brilliant English eccentric that should be celebrated for her individuality and she is absolutely ripped to pieces every time she steps out of the front door. We should celebrate her like we do Vivien Westwood. But we don’t.

When you go to the doctors and flip through a magazine and there’s just a big cross through whatever she’s doing. You know, with this awful ticks and crosses thing. And I think ‘how dare you!’ She’s done so much for the British film industry and she’s so fantastic, why not celebrate her instead of ripping her to pieces?

I’d like all these magazines to have to have a page at the front of all the people who write this sh*t so we can say ‘look at yourselves’.