When a book catches readers’ imaginations as Stuart did, hearts sink slightly at the prospect of the story being made into a film, be it for television or the big screen. Readers often feel a sense of ownership towards a book they love and worry that changes might be made during dramatisation. So it would have been a relief for fans to learn that the author of the book was to turn screenwriter for the TV film – at least Stuart and Masters’ story would remain in the hands of its originator. Production company Neal Street was to make Stuart: A Life Backwards, with David Attwood directing and Pippa Harris producing. The executive producers would be Oscar-winning Sam Mendes along with Tara Cook.
While Masters was in charge of adapting his book, he was of course justified in having concerns about who would take on the two lead roles. According to Pippa Harris, when he initially went to see Neal Street, he spent a long time asking them questions about how they would approach the film and who might star in it. One actor would have to do justice to his complicated, many-faceted friend, Stuart and the other would have to, well, be an accurate representation of himself. He needn’t have worried. There were, apparently, only ever two actors on the wish list for the roles.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s reputation as a talented new face was steadily growing and he had a healthy body of work behind him. He’d not yet reached the heady heights of fame and adulation that Sherlock would bring him, but it was clear he was an intelligent, gifted man who had the potential to become a star. His turn in the film adaptation of David Nicholls’ book Starter for Ten (on which, coincidentally, he’d worked with Pippa Harris) had been one of the most memorable performances in the movie. He had also previously worked with David Attwood on another BBC drama, To The Ends of the Earth. Cumberbatch’s attachment to Stuart: A Life Backwards started with an introduction to Alexander Masters who had come to see a play he was in at the Almeida with Harris and Attwood. Cumberbatch had heard good things about the book and had listened to the Radio Four adaptation, so was familiar with the story. It was later, while he was filming Atonement, that he got the call about the part of Masters – he read the script, loved it and was on board.
The only actor ever on the cards to play Stuart was Tom. In fact, Pippa Harris has subsequently said that both she and David Attwood knew that he was born to play the part. When speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Attwood said: ‘In many ways Tom is very similar to Stuart. He is an addict. He is slightly crazy. He is damaged and wounded. But, unlike Stuart, he has come out the other side.’ Tom found it amusing that he was considered the ideal actor for this alcoholic, drug-addicted street-dweller. But he shared the opinion and made no secret of how badly he wanted the part. ‘I fell in love with the piece. I could hear the music of it,’ he later commented.
Tom is a stickler for getting his performances technically perfect so that they look and feel authentic and he had a lot of preparation to do for Stuart before he even appeared on set. He recognised that Stuart had multiple issues that he as an actor had to learn how to represent. There were certain points of reference that Tom already had, due to the life he had once lived: with alcoholism, drug addiction, brushes with the police and, to an extent street living, he had his own catalogue of experiences he could refer back to. More complex and challenging would be getting to grips with areas of Stuart’s life of which he had no personal experience, such as living in care, childhood sexual abuse and having to live with muscular dystrophy (a debilitating condition which gradually weakens muscle cells in the body). Tom felt that the key to successfully capturing Stuart would be not to focus on one element of his personality or circumstances but to portray him in a complete way. He described Stuart as ‘a very ordinary guy with an incredible amount of baggage, trying to break out of all the baggage, constantly’.
These days, Tom’s ability to physically transform for a role has become something of a trademark. As well as preparing the mental groundwork for Stuart, he also had to consider how his body would need to appear for him to look the part. Stuart was, after all, an alcoholic ex-junkie and his frame was much slighter than the average man. Prior to landing Stuart, Tom had been packing on muscle in preparation for playing Charles Bronson, which was then put on hold because of financial problems. Then Stuart came along and he needed to reverse what he’d been doing to his physique. To ensure he did this sensibly, he employed nutritionist Lisa Jeans who made him run five to seven miles a day and put him on a diet consisting of blueberries, boiled eggs, apples, salad and tuna. It worked and he shed over two stone in just five weeks. ‘Lisa was brilliant, and I need all the help I can get,’ said Tom to the Evening Standard. He didn’t fancy embarking on a Christian Bale-style starvation programme to lose his weight, noting ‘I’m not as wired as he is.’ He also recognised that he needed his brain to be working properly in order to meet the challenge of this demanding role and for that to happen, he needed to feed it the right ingredients.
Tom also had to take on board the physical effects that Stuart’s illness would have had on how he moved his body. ‘When I was filming, I attached 5kg weights to both of my ankles and an elastic band around my upper body so I couldn’t lift my arms,’ he admitted to the Daily Telegraph.
They say you reap what you sow and in this case, Tom’s detailed, exacting character preparation for Stuart paid huge dividends. Alexander Masters has recounted in a piece written for the Evening Standard how Tom had asked him if he was like Stuart, to which the writer had replied: ‘Well, you talk the ear off your listener just as much.’ He had then expressed concern as to whether Tom could have understood ‘the sheer pain in his life.’ However, he went on, ‘Later, watching rushes of Tom I had to leave the room,’ saying, ‘They were too good, too close to memory’.
Masters was stunned by how close he came to the real Stuart. In what was unquestionably a difficult role, he had perfectly captured his character’s humour, his insight and of course his pain and anger. Speaking to The Times at the time the drama was aired, he again couldn’t speak highly enough of Tom: ‘It’s a stunning performance. Tom seems to have absorbed the character completely. On and off set, he lived the character.’
Benedict Cumberbatch was always determined that he wouldn’t deliver just an imitation of Alexander Masters. He knew he needed to capture the essence of the man and his relationship with Stuart. He was aware that Alexander needed to be presented as an everyman figure but that he must appeal to the viewer, that they had to like him enough to be taken on the journey through Stuart’s life with him. Prior to filming, he met Masters a few times and asked him questions about his parents and the kind of life he’d lived. Masters was always, according to the actor, ‘affable and supportive.’ Cumberbatch also spent a day as a volunteer at Crisis in London, to experience the atmosphere and the kind of care that the people who work there offer to the homeless.
Crucial to both actors was that, as well as doing justice to their individual characters, they established the nature of the special relationship between the two men. Cumberbatch commented on the stark contrast between them and how the friendship would work on screen: ‘What on the face of it could be a very uneasy partnership between a, sort of, nice, middle-class studentish type of guy… and this very worldly-wise, street, ex-psychopath, poly-drug-addicted, homeless fiend of a fireball of humanity. They’re quite polar opposites and that’s what’s charming about it.’
Benedict Cumberbatch was aware of the importance of the synergy between them and observed, ‘There’s a relationship that we have as actors together off camera which means there’s a real intimacy to what we do when the camera starts rolling.’ He was also fulsome in his praise of Tom’s skill as an actor, commenting that he had ‘inhabited Stuart in such a beautiful way’.
The two actors had known of each other before Stuart, but they hadn’t previously had the opportunity of working together. As their partnership developed, so did a mutual respect which, as well as allowing their individual performances to flourish, ensured the bond they formed carried through in
to their portrayal of the Stuart/Alexander friendship. Tom said of his co-star: ‘He’s a very generous, very sensitive, very thoughtful, focussed, disciplined actor… he’s got it.’
All credit to the two of them, they perfectly captured the unconventional affinity that had existed between the men. Alexander Masters had always maintained that the most important thing in dramatising his book was that this relationship was right, and the proof that they had succeeded in this was in evidence on one occasion when the author was on set. He was watching a scene being played out on one of the monitors and so moving was it that he had to step away, overcome with emotion.
As he had done in Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers, Tom was playing a real person. The responsibility of doing justice to Stuart’s character and his life was particularly relevant for Tom, as Stuart had only passed away a few years prior to the book being published and the film being made – he had to be played, as Tom put it ‘with taste and integrity’. It was also essential that Stuart’s family were happy with how the drama portrayed him. Both Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom spent time with Stuart’s family, who were incredibly helpful and answered any questions the actors had about Stuart and his life.
The drama was filmed in both Cambridge and London and homeless people from Cambridge were used as extras. Stuart: A Life Backwards was shown on BBC2 on a Sunday night in September 2007 and achieved everything it had set out to do. It remained faithful to the structure and spirit of the original book and the two lead performances were breathtaking. Stuart was a complicated character, but so much love and care had gone into Tom’s performance that it radiated out of the television to touch the viewer. The quiet assurance of Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Alexander Masters and the little quirks he brought to the character made him fascinating and sympathetic. The drama was funny, heartbreaking and poignant.
‘Tom Hardy… makes a compelling, wounded, shuffling Stuart,’ wrote the Guardian, stating that the piece was ‘a remarkable one-off film.’ Rachel Cooke, writing in the New Statesman, though, summed it up the most accurately. She said of Cumberbatch that ‘he brought Masters alive with the smallest of tics – slow-blinking myopic eyes, the odd wry look – and managed to avoid making him seem like a patronising prig’. She went on to say: ‘It was Hardy, though, who broke your heart. I can’t remember the last time I saw a performance as convincing as this. Hardy was Stuart, and every time he was on screen – which was most of the time – I was mesmerised.’
Deservedly, Tom was nominated for the 2008 Best Actor British Academy Television Award. He was up against Andrew Garfield for Boy A, Matthew Macfadyen for Secret Life and Anthony Sher for Primo. Sadly, this time, the award went not to Tom but to Andrew Garfield.
Although the recognition that came with the award would have been a positive affirmation, Tom didn’t really need it to validate the work he had done on Stuart. He recognised that he had put heart and soul into a character he had come to know, understand and love. Those who had seen the film also recognised that, surely, now Tom was going to be the actor everyone wanted to see more of. It almost seemed as if the work he had been doing had been building to this point – the timing was fortuitous and he had been at a stage in his career when he was ready to immerse himself in such a complex part. Reflecting on what he had learned from the experience, Tom stated thoughtfully: ‘He’s an odd superhero, but that’s what he was for me. He made me grow and he made me think about what I want with my career.’ He also claimed that Stuart was the best role he’d ever had and was ever likely to have again. ‘I could stop now, technically. I’m not going to, because I love the craft.’
The motivation to continue improving his skills meant that Tom was eager to keep pushing forward, ready to test himself with a new challenge. Luckily, a second career-defining role was just around the corner.
‘My name’s Charles Bronson and all my life I’ve wanted to be famous.’ The opening line of Bronson, aside from being controversial, encapsulated what its Danish director, Nicolas Winding Refn, hoped to explore when making his film about the life of the prisoner. What drove Bronson’s desire for notoriety? How had he managed to build a mythology around himself? For the director at least, the film was not to be a straightforward biopic but a piece that used Charles Bronson as a means to examine one man’s relationship with fame.
Charles Bronson was born Michael Peterson on 6 December 1952. His upbringing in Luton was unremarkable but when the family moved to Merseyside, he apparently fell in with the wrong crowd and his behaviour grew increasingly violent. He was originally sentenced to seven years in prison in 1974 for a bungled post office robbery – the sum total of the loot being just £26.18. The gun he took with him for the job wasn’t loaded.
He changed his name to Charles Bronson during a stint as a bare-knuckle fighter, his promoter insisting he needed a more exciting fighting name. In prison, Bronson’s violence continued and saw him lashing out at officers, fellow prisoners and prison workers. His charge sheet grew and amongst the offences he racked up were wounding with intent, criminal damage and GBH. It seemed the system didn’t know what to do with him, and time and again he was transferred between prisons. He was eventually deemed criminally insane and sent to Broadmoor Hospital where, in 1983, he famously led a rooftop protest.
He was released in 1988, having been declared sane. Free for just 68 days, he was imprisoned again after stealing an engagement ring for his fiancée. He was released in November 1992 and spent only 58 days as a free man before being sentenced for conspiracy to rob. That was, to date, the last time Bronson lived outside prison walls; in 2000, he was sentenced to life for holding a prison teacher hostage.
Bronson has spent much of his prison life in solitary – 33 years of it, in fact. He has very limited contact with the outside world and keeps himself occupied (when permitted) with art. He is a talented artist and has won six Koestler awards for his work. He takes pride in keeping himself fit despite only having four walls to use as gym equipment and has even published a book called Solitary Fitness, which describes how to stay in shape in prison. In fact, Bronson’s publishing output has been quite phenomenal for someone inside and he has written a host of books including his life story and even a guide to Britain’s prisons, The Good Prison Guide.
Bronson is an expert in drawing attention to himself – he will never allow himself to be just be a number, lost in the prison system. He makes sure the public know who he is and that he will not be forgotten. As Tom put it: ‘His fame keeps him safe.’ Winding Refn was clear from the start that the personality of the figure would be key to the film and when he read the first draft of the script, he felt more could be done to infuse it with greater character. Hence we see the varied elements of Bronson’s personality through different prisms during the film: he is a narrator telling his story, he is a performer and he is an artist.
The path that led Tom to Bronson was not a smooth one. He and Nicolas Winding Refn had initially tried to get the project off the ground together but had not seen eye to eye on certain aspects of it. Later on, after the film had been released, the pair were able to look back at that time and joke that they had ‘hated each other’! Having parted company, Winding Refn went off to work on the script for a year and Tom went away and immersed himself in other projects. When they met again, the chemistry needed to make the film was there. According to Winding Refn, Tom had grown as an actor and he could now envisage him as Charles Bronson. Tom agreed with this, saying ‘there was a succession of characters that sort of led me there…’
There were also some press stories that circulated at the time, implying that Bronson was unhappy that the film had faltered and that Tom was rumoured not to be in it any more. Bronson himself had seen Tom in Oliver Twist and Stuart: A Life Backwards and had liked what he’d seen. ‘I know he will play the part of me really well,’ he said. ‘Plus my mum likes him, so he can’t be bad, can he?’ The ultimate seal of approval.
For Tom to be able to develop his Charles B
ronson character – and also so that he could gain his subject’s approval on certain elements of the story – he needed to see the man in person. This was no mean feat. Prison authorities had got wind of the fact that a film about Bronson’s life was in the offing and were staunchly opposed to it. In fact, when it was announced that the film was to be made, Bronson wasn’t permitted to receive correspondence relating to it, nor was he allowed to see visitors connected with it. This of course applied to Tom, who was denied access to him. So incensed was Bronson that he consulted his lawyer and a letter was fired off to the governor of Wakefield prison, where Bronson was at that time incarcerated. His letter stated: ‘Tom Hardy is a proposed visitor who has been vetted by police and passed. But he has been stopped by the governor here for no other reason than a “power decision”. Give Tom Hardy a pass or let’s take it to court and let a judge decide who’s right or wrong.’ It did the trick and Tom was granted a visiting order.
Bronson is sometimes touted, unfairly, in the media as being Britain’s answer to Hannibal Lecter because of the highly secure conditions in which he is kept. So one would imagine that going to see him would be like undertaking Clarice Starling’s tortuous walk down the dark, threatening corridor at the end of which is the prisoner, spookily illuminated. Not a bit of it. Tom described going to see Bronson as a much more clinical affair. ‘It was more like visiting a patient in a hospital,’ he stated.
Others who have been to see Bronson in Wakefield prison report that upon arrival, the visitor is greeted by a sniffer dog to detect if they are carrying any drugs. This is followed by a security process similar to one you might experience at an airport. Visitors are prohibited from taking anything at all in with them, not even so much as a pen. The only concession to this is some small change, so that you can buy Bronson’s favourite soft drinks and chocolate from the prison’s vending machine. The journey to see him takes you through three or four pairs of double gates which are opened and locked again one at a time. The visitor is shown into a room and Bronson is shown into a cell on the other side of it – there’s a barred gap of about two square metres in the wall and Bronson and his visitor converse through the gap, sat on chairs bolted to the floor.
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