There's a reason (http://ninamusing.livejournal.com/tag/vampire%27s+kiss) this is one of my favourite icons!
He's so frakin' amazing ...
He's amazingly skittish - even though he was a struggling actor through most of his late 20s (working the rather astonishing combination of construction work by day and life (nude) model at night - can you imagine how he'd have to keep the latter secret from the former?), his first real substantial, continuing job was as the baby boss on Cracker - and he decided he didn't want to be trapped on a successful tv show, so asked Jimmy McGovern, the writer (who's now one of the 2-3 most important writers in British TV, along with Russell T. Davies and Paul Abbott, and British TV is run by the writers), to let him go. McGovern not only wrote him the most astonishing and agonizing death scene in TV history (there are Brits who are still traumatized!), he also wrote him an absolutely wonderful miniseries called Hearts and MInds, which is about an idealistic student teacher in his first year. And McGovern also gave him the central role of Trevor Hicks, a middle-aged father who'd lost his two daughters at Hillsborough and became an activist for reform (he was 30 at the time). He's worked with Danny Boyle a lot, and still does, but still went through a strop when Boyle wanted to cast him as Begbie in Trainspotting - he wanted to play Renton or nothing, and so he took nothing, and instead went on to play Nicky in Our Friends in the North, generally regarded as the greatest TV production of the 1990s in Britain and one of the top 5-10 ever. Even there, he was originally cast as Geordie, but kept arguing he'd be better as Nicky - so Daniel Craig got his big break playing Geordie, and Eccleston became one of the youngest men ever nominated for a BAFTA for lead actor (lost to Nigel Hawthorne who was suffering from cancer, which was a bit of a sympathy vote for a fairly safe performance, IMO!). He turned down Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan, and was actually signed as the Monk in The DaVinci Code, but took a penalty to withdraw after he saw the script. He gets a hell of a lot of flak for leaving Doctor Who "early", but it's part of a much larger pattern of not getting tied down, and in a recent interview, Russell T. Davies finally admitted that they only ever intended one series,* but CE has never broken that confidence despite being absolutely reviled in some quarters of the press - that famous quote about him "not wanting to be typecast" is actually an old quote from when he turned down the TV-movie in 1995 at the age of 31!
*Again, he's worked with RTD a lot. He was originally cast as Stuart Alan Jones in Queer As Folk, but when they mutually decided he was a little too old at 34 to play 29 (and was way too tall for the rest of the cast!), he's the one who recommended the guy to replace him. So he also knows when to step aside for reasons other than pride, and RTD then wrote him the part of Stephen Baxter in The Second Coming - so instead of playing the charming predator who slept with half of Manchester, he got to play a virgin video clerk! Who also happened to be the son of God.
I just find it's an amusing and amazing pattern of turning really important people down - and the ones who really know what he's capable of come back with something better for him to do! Kring? Take notes.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 04:36 pm (UTC)There's a reason (http://ninamusing.livejournal.com/tag/vampire%27s+kiss) this is one of my favourite icons!
He's so frakin' amazing ...
He's amazingly skittish - even though he was a struggling actor through most of his late 20s (working the rather astonishing combination of construction work by day and life (nude) model at night - can you imagine how he'd have to keep the latter secret from the former?), his first real substantial, continuing job was as the baby boss on Cracker - and he decided he didn't want to be trapped on a successful tv show, so asked Jimmy McGovern, the writer (who's now one of the 2-3 most important writers in British TV, along with Russell T. Davies and Paul Abbott, and British TV is run by the writers), to let him go. McGovern not only wrote him the most astonishing and agonizing death scene in TV history (there are Brits who are still traumatized!), he also wrote him an absolutely wonderful miniseries called Hearts and MInds, which is about an idealistic student teacher in his first year. And McGovern also gave him the central role of Trevor Hicks, a middle-aged father who'd lost his two daughters at Hillsborough and became an activist for reform (he was 30 at the time). He's worked with Danny Boyle a lot, and still does, but still went through a strop when Boyle wanted to cast him as Begbie in Trainspotting - he wanted to play Renton or nothing, and so he took nothing, and instead went on to play Nicky in Our Friends in the North, generally regarded as the greatest TV production of the 1990s in Britain and one of the top 5-10 ever. Even there, he was originally cast as Geordie, but kept arguing he'd be better as Nicky - so Daniel Craig got his big break playing Geordie, and Eccleston became one of the youngest men ever nominated for a BAFTA for lead actor (lost to Nigel Hawthorne who was suffering from cancer, which was a bit of a sympathy vote for a fairly safe performance, IMO!). He turned down Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan, and was actually signed as the Monk in The DaVinci Code, but took a penalty to withdraw after he saw the script. He gets a hell of a lot of flak for leaving Doctor Who "early", but it's part of a much larger pattern of not getting tied down, and in a recent interview, Russell T. Davies finally admitted that they only ever intended one series,* but CE has never broken that confidence despite being absolutely reviled in some quarters of the press - that famous quote about him "not wanting to be typecast" is actually an old quote from when he turned down the TV-movie in 1995 at the age of 31!
*Again, he's worked with RTD a lot. He was originally cast as Stuart Alan Jones in Queer As Folk, but when they mutually decided he was a little too old at 34 to play 29 (and was way too tall for the rest of the cast!), he's the one who recommended the guy to replace him. So he also knows when to step aside for reasons other than pride, and RTD then wrote him the part of Stephen Baxter in The Second Coming - so instead of playing the charming predator who slept with half of Manchester, he got to play a virgin video clerk! Who also happened to be the son of God.
I just find it's an amusing and amazing pattern of turning really important people down - and the ones who really know what he's capable of come back with something better for him to do! Kring? Take notes.