UNITED KINGDOM/FILE: British comedy actor Steve Coogan attends London premiere of his latest film "The Look of Love"

Record ID: 221045

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM/FILE: British comedy actor Steve Coogan attends London premiere of his latest film "The Look of Love"
  • Date: 15th April 2013
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (APRIL 15, 2013) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR STEVE COOGAN, SAYING: "It became a bit exhausting playing him really. He didn't see much daylight, he seemed to live the life of a vampire, he hardly ever ventured out during the day. At the end of it I just wanted to see some daylight. I wanted to see some daylight and no naked women."
  • Embargoed: 30th April 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAEQ64CSK2EYAP1JPVJDGB6ECYM
  • Story Text: British actor Steve Coogan said the amount of full-frontal nudity in his new film in which he plays a porn baron was one of the things that attracted him to the project.
    The Alan Partridge star attended the premiere of The Look of Love on Monday (April 15) with his co-stars Anna Friel and Tamsin Egerton.
    The film, directed by Coogan's long-time collaborator Michael Winterbottom, tells the real-life tale of strip club owner and adult magazine publisher Paul Raymond, dubbed the King of Soho.
    "The Look of Love" features plenty of naked flesh - on stage, in bed at photo shoots - and Coogan said it was a deliberate ploy.
    "I hope it does raise a few eyebrows. I hope it raises more than eyebrows. That was also what attracted me to it, people don't tend to do nudity anymore, they are a bit scared of it because they think it's politically incorrect so we thought let's have lots of nudity, including me," he told Reuters Television.
    Paul Raymond began amassing his fortune in 1958 with the opening of the "Raymond Revuebar" and expanded to theatre and men's magazines.
    The erotica club played host to the likes of The Beatles and Frank Sinatra in its heyday and Raymond was named Britain's wealthiest man by 1992, the year his daughter and heir apparent Debbie died of a drug overdose aged 36.
    "It's sex, drugs and not rock n' roll, it's sex drugs and more sex, really. But it was laced with tragedy too and those are the things that attract me and Michael, it's to do stuff that has a bit of fun but it also has this sort of dark side," he said.
    In the film's darker moments Coogan attempts to convey his subject's sense of loss and bewilderment at the death of a daughter he had cared for materially if not emotionally.
    "The Look of Love" is the fourth time Winterbottom and Coogan have collaborated following "24 Hour Party People" about music producer Tony Wilson, "A Cock and Bull Story" based on "Tristram Shandy", and "The Trip" about restaurant critics.
    Winterbottom said, despite the subject matter, his latest film told a positive story about women.
    "Raymond made money out of men looking at women. He created bars and magazines around that idea. But in defence of our film, the three strongest characters in our film are all women. Although the world of Paul Raymond is one where women are just objects to be looked at and be desired, in our film Imogen's role, Anna's role, Tamsin's role, they are all really strong fully rounded characters," he said.
    These three characters were Raymond's wife Jean, played by Anna Friel, his lover Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton) and daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots).
    Raymond enjoyed pushing the authorities to the limits in what he was able to get away with on the stages of his clubs. The Lord Chamberlain's Office, which then controlled what could be shown in London theatre, decreed nudes could not move on stage.
    "What I found so fascinating about the story was that there was an actual law that women could be naked but they weren't allowed to move and I thought 'what does that mean'," said actress Anna Friel "And so he thought well if the women can't move, I will move the women because I am still not breaking the law. And he put them on a conveyer belt so the boobies went like this and caused a little bit of titillation."
    81-year-old Oscar Owide, owner of the Windmill Table Dancing Club in Soho, was Raymond's friend for 40 years until his death in 2008.
    "It was Paul Raymond who eventually got permission from the authorities to have a proper strip club with moving parts, and of course at the Windmill they couldn't move, in the Revuebar they started moving, and became very sexy, very open," he said.
    "Then we progressed to what we have today which is 100 girls working in a place like the Windmill and they all move. They're all completely nude and they can move in any direction they like."
    Owide said that after his daughter's death in 1992, Raymond became a recluse, living alone in his penthouse near the Ritz Hotel.
    "That was a sad time for him of course and so he became a lot quieter, a little more introvert and the celebration had gone out of his life a lot," he said.
    The movie opens in the UK on April 26.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register