Northam Lights (2001) Glamour Magazine

Northam Lights
Glamour Magazine
April 2001
by Samantha Youngman.
Photos by Kim Myers Robertson.

For his role as a down-on-his-luck Italian prince in this month’s turn-of-the-century drama The Golden Bowl, costarring Uma Thurman, 39-year-old actor Jeremy Northam made a few changes: “I desperately tried to grow a beard in 10 days and master an Italian accent in four days,” the actor laments. “I was terrified – it felt like amateur night!”

But make no mistake, he’s a pro: Best known for as Gwyneth Paltrow’s true love in 1996’s Emma, he’s played a cyber stalker in 1995’s thriller The Net; an escaped con posing as a gay pageant director in 1999’s quirky comedy Happy, Texas; and an early-twentieth-century politician in 1999’s romance An Ideal Husband.

“I never expected to get film work – I concentrated on theater for eight years,” admits the London bachelor, whose stage roles included 1989’s Hamlet and 1990’s The Voysey Inheritance. But now that his big-screen career is in full swing, he’s keeping company with legends like rocker Mick Jagger, who produced Northam’s upcoming World War II spy thriller Enigma. (“Mick’s an ordinary bloke,” Northam declares. “You forget the effect he has on people until they walk by shouting, ‘Yo, rock and roll, man!’”) But unlike Jagger, Northam is content in his far-from-Hollywood lifestyle.

“It’s important to me to have a home base away from L.A. It’s only work – and I would hate to meld my work and my social life,” he claims. “I’m an old boy. I need my space.”