UNITED KINGDOM: RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH DIRECTS SANDRA BULLOCK AND CHRIS O'DONNELL IN HIS ADAPTATION OF 'IN LOVE AND WAR'

Record ID: 386594

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH DIRECTS SANDRA BULLOCK AND CHRIS O'DONNELL IN HIS ADAPTATION OF 'IN LOVE AND WAR'
  • Date: 17th October 1995
  • Summary: SHEPPERTON STUDIOS, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (RECENT) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) EXTERIOR SHEPPERTON STUDIOS STAGE "R" EXTRAS IN COSTUMES MILLING AROUND OUTSIDE SOUND STAGE ACTRESS SANDRA BULLOCK SIPPING COFFEE OUTSIDE WITH EXTRAS EXTRA WITH MAKE-UP WOUNDS AND BLOOD EXTRAS IN COSTUME BEHIND GIANT FAN ON-SET, EXTRAS AND CREW SETTING UP FIELD HOSPITAL SCENE TWO EXTRAS IN MILIT
  • Embargoed: 1st November 1995 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SHEPPERTON STUDIOS, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA6FRFXAIQ2MR7FTZ82FEGU5LQ6
  • Story Text: Sandra Bullock and Chris O'Donnell have been brought together for legendary actor/director Lord Richard Attenborough's latest project "In Love and War." The movie is an emotive and passionate dramatisation of the relationship between the young Ernest Hemingway and an American Red Cross nurse during the closing months of World War One.

    Injured in the leg while working for the Red Cross along the front line, 19-year-old Hemingway met Agnes von Kurowsky while recuperating in hospital.

    Their relationship, though short-lived, was intense. Agnes provided the inspiration for Katherine, the English nurse depicted in Hemingway's 1929 novel "A Farewell to Arms".

    Attenborough, fascinated by the drama of the First World War since his directorial debut with the satirical "Oh What a Lovely War", describes the film as "a love story, a beautiful love story", made all the more intense by the surrounding carnage and brutality of a world at war.

    Sandra Bullock (Agnes), following hot on the successes of "Speed" and "While You Were Sleeping", said Hemingway and Agnes had "what few of us manage to find in a lifetime".

    Despite a few early hitches, Bullock jumped at the opportunity to play the role of Agnes. Attenborough wanted her for the role "right from the start".

    Impressed by Bullock's performance in "Speed" Attenborough was excited by Bullock's enthusiasm for the role and her desire to take on something new and challenging.

    "(She said) I want to do something I haven't done before. I want to try something new, will you make me, will you force me, will you pressure me into giving the performance with elements and qualities in it that I have never tried to do before," Attenborough said.

    "I said I would love to do that and she said 'OK we're on'", the director continued.

    Like Bullock, Chris O'Donnell was drawn to the project by the opportunity to work with Attenborough and the chance to play a more involved character part.

    Joking aside Bullock describes her partner in crime as "a pleasure to work with".

    "We are both sort of in the same boat with this in that we are allowing someone to dictate something completely new than what we have been used to and what comes easy to us, and we have put ourselves in Richard's hands, who saw it in us and we have to honour what he believes is the right direction to go and we have been completely swept away".

    The attention to detail on-set at London's Shepperton studios is remarkable. But Attenborough is clear that recreating the atmosphere of chaos and horror of the trenches in World War One is crucial to the success of the film.

    "If we fail to recreate the atmosphere of the First World War the picture will be a failure. Because as Hemmingway himself said 'I have to get into this war, because everyone says that this is the war to end all wars and I want to see war'," he said.

    Having broken off her engagement with Hemingway and a failed marriage to an American in Cuba, Agnes later settled into a long and happy marriage with another American, Bill Stanfield. She died in 1984, aged 90.

    Hemingway committed suicide in 1961 after the failure of his fourth marriage. Agnes's letters were still in his possession when he died.
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