the moment
felt an affinity with her character: ‘I think what I identified with was the age thing — Lucy is nineteen and I was seventeen when I did the movie. At that age, you’re very strong and very open and very sure of things. But then in another way, you have no clue as to what the reality of the situation is. It’s a very uncertain period in your life.’
Even so, it seems a little odd that such a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl should still be so confused about boys and in the midst of discovering her sexuality. Tyler doesn’t think so: ‘For Lucy, it’s not so much that she’s discovering boys — because it isn’t as if she hasn’t been with a boy before, or never kissed a boy, or loved a boy — it was more that she had never wanted to make love with a boy before. It’s not even that she had never wanted to, but she’s chosen not to. She’s strong and she needs a reason. And because it doesn’t work out with the boy that she wishes it would work out with, she’s testing. everyone out. Also, she’s slightly terrified because she’s in this beautiful,
‘You know you have a big scene with an actor like Jeremy Irons, so you’re scared of it. When it comes
out good and you teel like you’ve done the best lob you can do, then that’s the most rewarding feeling there ls.’
romantic villa in Tuscany, where her mother also had a wonderful romantic adventure.’
Since finishing Stealing Beauty, Tyler has starred in Tom Hanks’s directing debut That Thing That You Do, a mostly studio-bound teen movie set in 1964 about a rock band who make it big overnight but then turn out to be one-hit wonders. ‘It was really weird to go from one to the other,’ Tyler admits. ‘Tom is an incredible comedian, and he’s a real performer. So during rehearsals we would just be laughing until we practically pissed our pants. It was just this constant laugh-fest. It was also really funny for me to have to play a small-town girl who’d never seen a rock band play a big show before. I had to stand there on the side of the stage in awe, like I had never seen anything like that in my life, when in fact I’ve been doing that since I was about three.’
Together with Empire Records and Pat O’Connor’s forthcoming familial comedy Inventing The Abbotts, this makes four films in eighteen months for Tyler. Yet she constantly
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talks about how tem'fying she finds the whole process of acting. Perhaps that sense of trepidation will lessen with time.
‘I hope not,’ she answers back. ‘I wouldn’t want to act anymore if it did. It’s a good feeling, it’s adrenalin, it makes you work harder. You know you have a big scene with an actor like Jeremy Irons, so you’re scared of it; it’s challenging, and then you go in and do it, you work it out between you. And when it comes out good and you feel like you’ve done the best job you can do, then as an actor that’s the most rewarding feeling there is.’
Stealing Beauty, ABC, Edinburgh, 20 Aug, 6pm; GF'II Glasgow, 20 Aug, 8pm, £6 (£4).
Acclaimed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, in Scotland for the Film Festival, tells Alan Morrison about his first movie on home soil for fifteen years.
BEAUTIFUL
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Think Bertolucci. think big — The Last Emperor. The Sheltering Sky. Little Buddha. After a decade working in Africa and in the East, however, one of the world 's top directors has decided to return home. ‘At the beginning of the 80s, a strong feeling of corruption and cynicism convinced me that I had to go away front ltaly.’ Bertolucci explains. ‘But in the 905, with the trials against corruption. I felt that we Italians had a chance to examine our collective conscience. A few months ago there were elections and things have changed. So far, so good.‘
. -" ~ I Fellow I! lead: Bernardo Bertolucci directs Met Ia Stealiag Beauty
Stealing Beauty, with its closed setting and intimate theme, also marks a change in scale for the director. ‘I wanted to go from epic movies to something much smaller, like switching to chamber music instead of conducting a big orchestra,’ explains the 56-year-old, who had a retrospective in Edinburgh quarter of a century ago. ‘The idea of a young girl going to Italy to have her initiation came because I wanted to have a new start myself. When my father - who is 85 and a poet - saw Stealing Beauty. he said. “I have to agree with you — it’s like a first film.m
As the beautiful Lucy, Liv Tyler is the American ingredient in a truly international cast that also includes the English (Jeremy Irons), Irish (Donal McCann, Sinead Cusack). French (Jean Marais) and Italian (Stefania Sandrelli). They form an inward- Iooking. ex-pat community entrenched in the hills of Tuscany. whose hidden natures come to the surface when in catalytic contact with their young guest.
‘Everyone has his or her own secret, and the secret of a person in front of a camera is going to add an extra dimension of reality to the characters,‘ says Bertolucci, explaining why he decided on the relatively inexperienced Tyler for the lead. ‘With Liv. the thing that convinced me was that in the first fifteen or twenty minutes of our first meeting I couldn‘t work out how old she was. At some moments she appeared to be seventeen, then all of a sudden I thought she was thirteen, then 25 - like someone who was searching for their identity. just like the character of Lucy. The camera looks at Liv and watches her ageing and maturity. creating herself and becoming a woman.‘
Bernardo Bertolucci Scene By Scene on Stealing Beauty. ABC. Edinburgh. 21 Aug. 6.15pm. £8 (£4).
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