My Past Loves - August 2005

From Sports Telegraph UK - August 29, 2005

MY SPORT: IAN BELL

Interview by Gareth A Davies

Earliest sporting memory: Watching Coventry City win the FA Cup, though I'm an Aston Villa fan. My family support Coventry. Around the same time, it was watching Warwickshire win the NatWest Trophy at Lord's, when Asif Din scored a hundred in a run chase of around 300, which, back in the Nineties, was a huge one-day total. Taking part in sport myself would be playing in the under-11s at my local club and scoring my first hundred.

Sports watched: I like football and would like to see Villa play more often. I like rugby - I support Northampton Saints. I watch golf - the Open and the Ryder Cup I find unmissable - then I'll follow all the big events, World Cup rugby, football World Cup, the Olympics, big fight nights. I've just had Sky installed in my flat, so sport won't be taking a back seat.

Sports played: I played football at Coventry City School of Excellence in midfield and at right-back. I played rugby at school, fly-half or full-back, and enjoyed it all. Cricket was a major commitment from a young age. I play golf, though I've never had any lessons. I play off 12.

Why a life in sport, and if not, what would you have done? I would most likely have gone into sport in a general way, perhaps by becoming a PE teacher. I did my A-levels, but cut them down to two - geography and PE - because I was away so much playing cricket with England Under-19 and England A. I'm still keen to do a degree, which will most probably be sports science.

Toughest part of your sporting life: This Ashes series is the toughest time I've ever had in terms of the sport being so demanding - but it's also the most enjoyable cricket I've been involved in. As far as my career is concerned, I think the most trying period was going from schoolboy cricketer to professional. That transition from 17 to 20 I found the toughest. I was earmarked from a young age - even as young as under-15 at the ESCA Bunbury Festival in Sefton Park in Liverpool - on to England Under-19s and a year of county cricket, and when you play in your second year, most bowlers have an idea about you and will set out to go for your weaknesses.

At 23, you are the youngest player of either team in this series. Has the level of intensity surprised you? Not surprised me, but it has been both physically and mentally tiring because of the intensity of every session. After Old Trafford, I realised for the first time in my life the value of having a couple of days off, not thinking about cricket at all.

Most memorable sporting moment: Probably the Edgbaston Test against Australia, because it was at my home ground, I played two important innings, getting two half-centuries, took a good catch and it felt like a turning point in my career. Outside this summer, winning a Lord's final, the Benson & Hedges Cup, with Warwickshire was great, but it would take a lot to top winning the County Championship last season.

Worst sporting moment: Getting a duck on debut for Warwickshire.

Sporting heroes: My first cricket hero was Robin Smith. I have memories of him getting hundreds against the West Indies. Then I liked Alec Stewart and Michael Atherton. Then, through the 1990s at Warwickshire, there were brilliant overseas players to look up to and learn from, the likes of Heath Streak, Brian Lara, Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald.

Favourite place to play - and why? Lord's always stands out for me - thankfully, I've always done pretty well there. For the same reasons, the Melbourne Cricket Ground is a wonderful place to play.

Sporting event you would pay the most to see? England winning the Rugby World Cup would have been a great event to be at, as would a Ryder Cup. Looking ahead, I would have to say the ultimate would be being on the winning side in an Ashes series. Fingers crossed.

And to miss? Marathon running. It's a real feat to be able to do what top-level athletes do, but it doesn't do a lot for me as a spectator.

Question asked most often by the public: What's it like facing Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, and what are they saying to you when Warne is bowling and you have wicketkeeper, slips, gully, silly point and short square leg around you?

And the answer: It's the most intense cricket I've ever been involved in. They don't really talk to you directly that much. They're normally saying things to each other.

Greatest change you would like to see in your sport: Longer lunches, maybe? Not really. More of the changes we've seen this summer, with young kids wanting to play cricket. I think Twenty20 has really helped us to play in a different way, making cricketers realise that 20 overs is a long time and a lot can happen. I also don't have a problem with overseas players in the game as long as young players from this country are gaining from their presence.

How do you think cricket is covered in the media? 'Sound' is the way I'd describe it. Obviously, the coverage this summer has gone through the roof, which is brilliant for the game. The analysis of cricket is excellent.

Sporting motto: Make the most of it and don't leave anything to chance. The one thing I have learned is about being properly prepared before you play.

Who would you most like to invite to dinner - and why? Muhammad Ali, because he's made of legendary stuff, Peter Kay, who I think is a great entertainer, Frank Sinatra, a real bit of style and a sing-along with him, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. I've seen a few of her films and I think she's great.

Now the family plan to publish the director’s screenplay, movie treatment and notes for an unmade three-hour epic on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Kubrick hoped the film would enable him to eclipse Orson Welles, whose 1940 film Citizen Kane is commonly regarded as the best ever made.

Jack Nicholson, star of The Shining, one of Kubrick’s best-known films, the British actors David Hemmings and Ian Holm and the Austrian film veteran Oskar Werner were all considered at various stages for the title role.

Kubrick, who had just made 2001: A Space Odyssey, wrote to Audrey Hepburn, star of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in 1969 asking if she would appear in his next film, probably as Napoleon’s wife Josephine.

It was not to be. Another studio made the film Waterloo, featuring Rod Steiger as Napoleon. It failed at the box office and MGM, fearing another costume drama on the same subject would do just as badly, cancelled the project.

Instead Kubrick went on to make A Clockwork Orange, his treatment of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel set in the near future, with Malcolm McDowell in the lead role.

For the past three years Alison Castle, an American editor for the German art publisher Taschen, has been given the virtual run of Kubrick’s archives at Childwickbury, his estate near St Albans, Hertfordshire.

The Stanley Kubrick Archives, the first book to result from her research, has been published in English, French, German and Japanese — in a limited edition of 5,000 copies. It costs £100.

Castle said from her home in Paris last week: “It was exciting because you could find all sorts of treasures and never knew what was going to turn up next.

“Kubrick kept his archives all over the estate: in the stables, in a cabin, the basement, in another wing of the house.

“I would come along, open the box, blow off the dust and see what was inside. For me the most exciting things were Kubrick’s notes on the scripts and notebooks with his ideas.”

Last month the director was voted the fourth greatest of all time by Empire magazine. Number one was Steven Spielberg, who filmed AI, another of Kubrick’s unmade projects, after his death.

Kubrick, an American who moved to Britain in 1974, never forgot Napoleon. “He fascinates me. His life has been described as an epic poem of action,” he said in an interview.

Castle found a filing cabinet with 12 drawers containing cards detailing every known fact about Napoleon.

Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s brother-in-law and executive producer of his later films, said last week: “He considered Eyes Wide Shut, his last film, to be his best, but Napoleon would have been an amazing film.”

She couldn't make it to the world premiere of her film, Rag Tale, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival yesterday because she was filming The TV Set with Sigourney Weaver and David Duchovny (whom Davis refers to as "David Do-shag-me").

For someone on the brink of major stardom, Davis is refreshingly down to earth, which must make her something of an oddity in California. "When I saw [Rag Tale] I thought 'I'm in a film. Oh my goodness, how did this happen?'," says the 31-year-old.

A savagely funny satire set in a London tabloid newspaper, Rag Tale stars Malcolm McDowell, Rupert Graves, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Sessions, Simon Callow and Ian Hart. Director Mary McGuckian supplied the cast with descriptions of their characters and a basic plot and then it was up to them to improvise. "I was petrified every single day," says Davis, adding, "but that is good, it means I'm being challenged."

The company she now keeps on screen is dazzling but Davis hasn't had to abandon everything about her life in Britain. This week, before she starts work on her first Hollywood film, she is making a visit to the US set of The Office. "I can't wait but it'll be a bit strange," says Davis. "The first episode was so close to the British version that I found it difficult to watch. But now it's doing its own thing, it's a very different show. I love it."

She is visiting the set with Jenna Fisher, who plays the American version of Dawn, the doleful receptionist who made Davis a star and a very British sex symbol to a whole generation of men who empathised with the plight of lovelorn Tim. Davis and her US counterpart have become close friends after meeting at Davis's first LA casting. "I've had to promise Jenna that I'll behave and not get in the way," adds Davis, laughing.

In Rag Tale Davis plays Debbs, the editor's secretary who can't resist spreading office gossip.

Isn't she afraid of being typecast? "I did say to myself after The Office, 'Do not play another secretary for a very long time.' But the fact that it was with such a fabulous cast and it was improvised made it such an amazing challenge that I couldn't turn it down. Even if Mary [McGuckian] had said your name is Dawn and you are in love with a character called Tim I'd have still done it."

Davis is full of stories about her new life and talks with awe about the strangeness of living in movieland.

"I went to the 7/11 store the other day and this guy with greasy hair, no teeth and tattoos all over his body leant in the car and asked for money. I gave him a few dollars but then he started asking for drugs and telling me that he had killed nine men. I was terrified, I ended up giving him two Solpadeine just to get rid of him. He had a gash on his head so it probably did him some good."

But if the actress famous for playing ordinary English girls is having a hard time adjusting to the crack dealers, Jesus freaks and hustling wannabes of West Hollywood, she isn't showing it. "Everyone has been so friendly," she enthuses in a refined Solihull accent. "I'm forever being invited to dinner by people I've just met. I feel a lot more settled now, although I still haven't found a cafe serving good English tea."

The UK version of The Office had a cult following in the US and, much to her surprise and delight, Davis is often recognised in the bars, clubs and cinemas of LA.

Yet the actress can't resist telling a funny story against herself; she was at a film premiere recently when someone recognised her walking up the red carpet "in a $40 dress from a market" and screamed out, "Lucy". The photographers spotted that she was causing a stir and began snapping. "They were all shouting, 'Lisa, Lisa, look this way.' As I walked past I heard them saying, 'Who was that?' It was hysterical. If you didn't know better you might have mistaken me for this amazing A-list star."

Which is exactly what she will be when The TV Set is released. Made by Ben Stiller's production company, the film is set in the bitchy, back-stabbing world of the pilot season in LA, when hundreds of pilots are shot for new television series, of which only a handful are ever made. Davis plays Chloe, the wife of a film producer, who is bitter about being uprooted from her home in England to go to LA.

Having filmed a number of pilots herself, Davis has experienced first hand just how bitchy it can be. "Once I was waiting for an audition and this actress came out shrieking, saying that we had to audition five scenes that we hadn't been told to rehearse. It threw us all into a panic. It turned out she was lying to put us all off just before the audition. It's an absolute cattle market and fabulous material for a film."

After The TV Set, she moves straight on to Garfield 2 with Billy Connolly and Jennifer Love Hewitt, before going to New Mexico to shoot Funny Farm, the second part in McGuckian's trilogy (Rag Tale is part one) with Kathy Bates, Malcolm McDowell and Rupert Graves. As in Rag Tale, the film, which is set in a celebrity drug rehabilitation clinic, will be improvised by the cast. Davis plays a detox nurse.

Emboldened by her foray into improvisation, she has been invited to perform at the famous LA comedy improv club, The Groundlings, where Friends star Lisa Kudrow got her big break. And on Thursday she had an audition for a 26-part animated TV series.

But Davis shows no sign of letting imminent global stardom go to her head. Despite being warned by her prickly Hollywood agency that "Miss Davis" could give me 15 minutes of her time, she is still happily giggling and gossiping after an hour, and making herself late for her first appointment. If Hollywood is a place which is supposed to make you hard and superficial, then it seems to be failing; Lucy Davis is as likable and ordinary as you hoped she would be.

So, even though she's recently split up with her boyfriend of 13 years, the actor-cum-writer, Richard Manson, and Hollywood is full of buffed, available young hunks, she's really looking forward to visits from her family. One of her two younger sisters is coming next month, followed by her brother and her parents in October. And she is already counting the days until she flies back home for a traditional family Christmas. "I miss my family more than I could say," she sighs.

It's a tribute to the ordinariness of her family life that when, aged 18, she enrolled at the Italia Conti stage school, she was determined no-one should find out that her father was the comedian and actor, Jasper Carrott. "My childhood wasn't in the least bit showbizzy. Dad always kept us very separate from his work and it has always been important to me to know that I've done it off my own bat," says Davis.

Within a year of leaving stage school, she landed a part in the BBC's acclaimed 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which made Colin Firth a household name.

Davis stresses that she has no intention of staying permanently in Hollywood and is keen to continue doing British films (before Rag Tale she appeared in the flop The Sex Lives of the Potato Men and critical hit Shaun of the Dead). "I have no major plan," she says. "I'll just go wherever the work is and, for now, there seems to be a lot of work for me here."

She has not seen Ricky Gervais's new show, Extras, which has yet to start screening in America, but has heard good reports from friends back home. Is she ever afraid that she will always be remembered for The Office? "Even if I'm 60 and someone shouts, 'Hey, Dawn' in the street, then I'll think how amazing to have made that impact. I'll never be bitter about something that was so much fun to do."