‘Closing the Ring’ - a look at Mischa Barton
There is a great article in the Globe & Mail that looks at the filming of Mischa’s new movie, ‘Closing the Ring’, which is being shot here in Canada - Toronto specifically. The article looks at the contrast between the well-experienced director and our young starlet, Mischa Barton:
Mischa Barton… plays the wide-eyed, freckled ingenue Ethel Ann, the love interest of three small-town lads, (David Alpay, Stephen Amell and Gregory Smith, all Toronto-born), all of whom can’t wait to get into the thick of war.
The £11.5-million ($23.5-million) film is an Irish/English/Canadian co-production that takes advantage of Hamilton’s relatively low-traffic airfield. It’s described by Toronto co-producer Martin Katz (Hotel Rwanda) as a multigenerational love story in which "geography, physical distance, race, religion and vanity" interfere. In the hands of the Academy Award-winning Attenborough, who turns 83 in August, is a cast that includes Shirley MacLaine (playing Ethel Ann later in life), Pete Postlethwaite, Brenda Fricker, Christopher Plummer and Neve Campbell…
But what soon becomes even more compelling to watch than the action on the landing strip is the juxtaposition of the veteran – an actor and director of films such as Gandhi, Chaplin, Cry Freedom and Shadowlands — and the ingenue [Barton] — a product of the new era of super-sized, overnight celebrity.
The two are polar opposites in age, personal style and philosophy.
Attenborough, a portly picture of quiet measured grace, puts on no airs on set. Barton, now 20, clearly works hard and is not unkind, but she is also not remotely approachable. She is precious, thin and rarely makes eye contact (unless she’s in character)…
Barton, wearing a floral dress, floppy hat and flat canvas shoes, dashes off to her trailer and emerges in the Hollywood-starlet uniform of Ugg slippers and a nude-coloured slip. One small breast keeps popping out of her dress as she saunters along the dirt road carrying Ziggy, her Pomeranian/Shih Tzu whose leg is in a bright pink cast, due to a recent tumble off Barton’s hotel-room bed…
There is also an interview with Mischa Barton:
Barton, like many stars thrust into the media circus at so young and impressionable an age, has yet to be humbled by experience.
She grants a five-minute interview. As we head off to her trailer, the leggy, 5-foot-9 beauty — hair swept back forties-style by pins at her temples — walks a good 10 paces ahead. Inside, Barton brightens immediately on seeing Ziggy, curled up on a Fred Segal fluffy pink bathrobe lining the dog crate. "She likes to sleep on it because I wear it," coos the actress, whose stockbroker father moved the family from Britain to New York when she was 5. "Oh Ziglet, this is so hard for you."
Her voice is deep, with no trace of the Lancashire accent of her family’s provenance.
She is uncomfortable in interviews and maintains her guard. But about Attenborough, Barton is effusive: "He’s incredible. He really is God’s gift to actors. . . . He likes a quiet set. His style is to take care of the bigger picture first and then leave room to just work one-on-one with the actors."
Mischa was chosen for this role because the director felt she had a "guileless innocence" that would work well on the big screen. She is admittedly shy and awkward in person, although confident on screen.
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POSTED IN: Interviews, Mischa Barton Movies
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Dec 26, 2006 at 9:46 am
[…] ‘Closing the Ring’ - a look at Mischa Barton“Mischa was chosen for this role because the director felt she had a “guileless innocence” that would work well on the big screen.” […]
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