American dream

Published Monday 22 September 2008 at 18:15

Liz Thomas makes valid points in her column “Losing Britain’s best to the US” (September 11, page 25), but Keira Knightley is far from being “the most obvious case in the past decade”. The pirate movie trilogy aside, her highest-profile screen roles have been in a British milieu.

To compare and contrast with a more mature (but not that much) example, Kate Winslet has attained most of her Oscar nominations with American accents.

Of greater concern (to artistic integrity, rather than employment opportunities) is how often British character players seem to be cast in American roles for what seems to be no valid reason besides what might be called affectation - an early exemplar would be Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, when all the eminent players that he imported to be billed below the title were given almost nothing of consequence to do.

Another matter arises from Liz Thomas on Knightley with the reference to Bend it Like Beckham. While a pretty girl being good in a role may be called “perfectly adequate”, conventional previewing/reviewing practice is to describe a supposed funny man being adequate in an acting job as marvellous or some such, even when adequacy is no more than an aspiration and the performance is self-indulgent posturing (or, in critical parlance, scene-stealing).

Bryn Hughes

Elm Grove

Wrexham

North Wales