#Bookends bookstore llc tv#

And Saltburn proved to be one of the best experiences of his working life.

However, the offer to play Duncan came with a warning from his agent that, for actors, it’s the “beginning of the end when you’re doing the old butler.” “And a week later this offer came in,” Rhys recalls. Having seen Fennell’s Oscar-winning debut Promising Young Woman while on a flight, he came off the plane wondering how he’d ever get to meet the fast-rising filmmaker, let alone work with her. And he says the part almost came to him as if it were willed by fate. for the recent, post-strike premiere of Saltburn). But you live by your choices.”īut now, more than 30 years after his unexploited break with Roth and Altman, Rhys is back in Hollywood (literally - he flew over to L.A. “And then every time there’d be a new shot, I’d be straight back to the theatre and fucking it up,” he says. “If I could go back to all that opportunity, I don’t know if it would be so wise to leave it and do theater all the time. Soon after Vincent & Theo and in another famous sibling performance, he play Sydney Chaplin to Robert Downey Jr.’s Charlie in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic Chaplin, and he’d later appear in Alan Bennett’s 102 Boulevard Haussmann and opposite Peter O’Toole in Rebecca’s Daughters.

#Bookends bookstore llc tv#

Rhys’ career on stage blossomed (highlights, alongside King Lear, include playing Hamlet at the Old Vic and winning a Critics Circle award for Measure for Measure) alongside a growing assortment of TV work (including parts in Luther, Victoria and, most recently, A Discovery of Witches). “So at the peak of film, I went back to the National Theatre for three years.” “Tim would say, ‘Bridget Fonda’s having a pool party this afternoon we’ve got to go,’ but I’d be like, ‘I haven’t finished this book yet, I’ll stay here,’” he recalls, adding that he considered himself “a theater actor who did film” and that he had to head home to continue working. But despite Roth urging Rhys, who played his on-screen brother Theo Van Gogh, to “never go back” to the U.K., Rhys says he wasn’t particularly interested in all the attention they were getting in Hollywood (there had been some early hopeful Oscar conversations) and the opportunities suddenly being thown at their feet. Roth used Robert Altman’s critically lauded Vincent Van Gogh biopic Vincent & Theo as his springboard to stardom, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction soon following. It’s an experience the 59-year-old admits could have come much sooner, had he only followed his dear friend Tim Roth’s advice after their big-screen breaks back in 1990. “Between these two, you’ve got these bookends of British brilliance.” And with Ridley, who doesn’t want that experience - he’s one of the greats,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “With Emerald, I would have done practically anything, much less than Duncan, to be in her film. 22 via Apple Original Films and Sony Pictures, Rhys plays Talleyrand, the crafty club-footed diplomat who served as the French commander’s political right-hand man as he swept across Europe (and, later, betrayed him).įor Rhys, it’s a somewhat unusual experience to have such high-profile Hollywood features back-to-back, with much of his better known work on stage (he earned an Olivier nomination in 1997 for his performance in a production in King Lear). In Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated biopic Napoleon, out Nov. Grant, however, most don’t belong to the lead cast, but to Paul Rhys.Īs Duncan, the imperious and terrifying butler, the Welsh actor silently steals scenes from under the toffee noses of both those he dutifully serves at the Saltburn mansion (including Pike, Grant, Jacob Elordi and Alison Oliver) and the lower-class interloper he’s keeping a beady eye on (Barry Keoghan) each time he appears with hilariously po-faced magnificence.įormer Mister Smith Exec Antone Saliba Launches Regional Management Company, Signs Filmmakers Abu Bakr Shawky, Bassel Ghandour, Amjad Al RasheedĪnd it’s a face that crops up again in another starry title landing late in the awards season corridor. Despite the hugely impressive efforts of Rosamund Pike and Richard E. There are numerous laugh-out-loud moments in Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s darkly comic and voyeuristic exploration of the British aristocracy being released on Friday by Amazon MGM Studios.