The Bookshop a new chapter in Emily Mortimer’s acting career
There were two major rules in Emily Mortimer’s home when she was growing up in England. Her father, author John Mortimer, made it clear everyone in the household had to like Charles Dickens or they would not be considered cool. And, anyone who liked sports would be uncool. It was easy for her to follow her father’s first rule as Mortimer grew up with such a passion for books she studied literature both in English and Russian while attending college.
The sports rule has not had much impact on Mortimer’s acting career, but books definitely play a role in her latest work, “The Bookshop.” Mortimer portrays a widow who in 1959 decides to take a major chance and open a bookshop in a very conservative coastal town. Her passion for books earns her the admiration of a reclusive widower (Bill Nighy) and makes her a target for the town’s grand dame (Patricia Clarkson) who wants to use the shop as an art centre.
Not only do the books storylines weave in and out of quaint shop, the film is based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Penelope Fitzgerald. Mortimer was not aware of the source material before landing the job but sought it out immediately.
“With any role, you are grabbing for anything to grab hold of that helps with the process of finding a part, the character,” Mortimer says. “When there is a book to read, you read it and use it as much as you can for research and to help understand the world of the character.
“In the book and the film, she’s not a person who shows off but she has no self-pity. It was very helpful reading that into the book.”
The other helpful parts for taking on “The Bookshop” came from cast and crew. Mortimer knew from her first meeting with director/writer Isabel Coixet that she wanted to work with her, and it was Clarkson who brought the role to her attention. The advice Clarkson gave to Mortimer was that she would be a fool not to be in the film.
And then there was the chance to work with Nighy, the man Mortimer calls a matinee idol. Just before doing the interview, Mortimer and Nighy were texting each other in regards to how they should do another movie together and that it should be shot in Paris. She calls working with him as one of the high points in her career.
Her process of researching a role has been important over the years as Mortimer has put together an eclectic collection of credits. She’s been an animated voice in “Cars 2,” took on the task of playing a television producer in “The Newsroom” and starred in her own twisted reality show with “Doll & Em.” Her next big project has to be stepping into the role of Mrs. Banks for “Mary Poppins Returns.”
Mortimer says her process of selecting jobs comes out of a desire to “be a moving target.”
“Part of why I am drawn to performing is that it allows you to not be defined as one thing. You can be a million things,” Mortimer says. “You can express yourself in a million different ways and show all these different sides of who you are.
“We are a million different things, so I get scared at the idea of doing one thing.”
The amount of research she does to show off all those different parts of herself depends on the role. Movies based on books, as in the case of “The Bookshop,” come with a built-in research resource. When she doesn’t have that kind of material and she finds herself struggling with finding the way to play the role, Mortimer will write long pages of thoughts about the character’s past and who she thinks they are.
A lot of times she will just turn to bits and pieces of her own life to fill in the blanks. That was even the case with “Doll & Em,” a British television comedy about an actress named Em (Mortimer) and her best friend Doll (Dolly Wells) who has been hired as Em’s assistant. The stories were a blend of fiction and reality as many of Mortimer’s family members appeared in the show.
No matter the role, the process is the same to Mortimer.
“You have to make the scene work and you have to find ways of making the scene seem real and believable. And even if it’s something that’s very familiar to you, you’re still acting and you’re still pretending and there’s still kind of some sort of craft involved.”
Working on “The Bookshop” put Mortimer back in the world of books that were so much a part of her life while growing up. These days — both because she’s a mother and a very busy actor — Mortimer has trouble finding the time to open a book unless it’s something full of material she can use for her next job.