Redmayne’s movie regret
QUESTION Have many actors told of their regrets at taking a particular film role?
ONE high-profile example is Eddie Redmayne, who spoke of his regrets over his role in the 2015 biographical romantic drama, The Danish Girl. The English actor played the Danish painter Lili Elbe, a transgender woman who was one of the first recipients of gender-affirming surgery.
The film received decent reviews, but there was some criticism over the decision not to cast a transgender person in the role of Elbe.
Redmayne ultimately agreed, saying in 2021 that he regretted accepting the role, and that he ‘wouldn’t take it on now’.
He told the Sunday Times: ‘I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake .’ Elaborating, he commented :‘ The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a levelling; otherwise we are going to carry on having these debates.’
Other stars who have expressed regret over roles include Sandra Bullock, who was unenthusiastic about Speed 2: Cruise Control, the 1997 action sequel in which she starred. Bullock made her big breakthrough in the original Speed film, which was a massive success, but the follow-up – set on a boat rather than a bus – failed to gather the same momentum.
The American actress later remarked ruefully: ‘I have one [film that] no one came around to and I’m still embarrassed I was in. It’s called Speed 2... Makes no sense. Slow boat. Slowly going towards an island. That’s one I wished I hadn’t done.’
Jayne Kearney, Co. Louth.
QUESTION How and when did areas such as ‘Dogger’, ‘Rockall’ and ‘German Bight’, used in the Shipping Forecast, get their names?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, this question reminded me of when I was just five years of age and could ‘recite’ all of the sea areas in BBC Radio 4’s shipping forecast, given each day by the (then) Long Wave Service – the only station that could be heard all around the sea and coastal areas of Britain and Ireland, back then. The early evening weather forecast was an essential part of their day’s routine for both of my parents – broadcast to our family radio set at 17.54 (5.54pm). As a very young boy I would amaze my relations by reciting the BBC’s ‘sea areas’, starting with... ‘Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, and ending with... Fair Isle, Faroes, South East Iceland.’
Being the offspring of a fishing family living in the southeast of Ireland, we children were told to ‘hush’ when the radio announcer came to ‘Sole, Lundy, Irish Sea,
Fastnet, Shannon...’, as our parents listened attentively to what the sea-weather predictions f or t hese areas during t he following days might be.
Three of t he areas ‘ came together’ at Carnsore Point (Co. Wexford) and – depending on the forecast and weather ‘direction’ – either might apply to what my Dad needed to know about what ‘Mother Nature’ could ‘ throw at them’ when he and his crews would be about to go fishing (or stayed tied-up ashore, depending whether a storm was in the offing, especially during winter times).
My Dad (John Baldwin) had two ‘Fifty-footer ringer/trawler’ fishing boats back then, the MFV (motor fishing vessel) Silver Crest and
MFV Florentine, which he bought in Scotland. These gave employment to some men of our fishing village of Passage East (on Waterford Harbour).
Tom Baldwin, Midleton, Co. Cork.
QUESTION Was scientist Niels Bohr once arrested for climbing the walls of a bank?
NIELS BOHR was a Danish physicist who made a key contribution to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
Bohr founded the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) in Copenhagen to gather the world’s most innovative minds to conduct scientific research. He based it on Ernest Rutherford’s Cavendish Laboratory in Britain, admiring its energy and thirst for knowledge.
In the furtherance of science, Bohr was happy to try anything. George Gamow, in Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story Of Quantum Theory, recalled how he was returning from a late dinner given by Swedish physicist Oskar Klein, on the occasion of his election as a university professor in his native Sweden, in the company of Bohr, his wife Margrethe and Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir.
The streets were empty and they passed a bank building with a wall of large cement blocks: ‘ At the corner of the building the crevices between the courses of blocks were deep enough to give a toehold to a good alpinist.’ Casimir, an expert climber, scrambled up to the third floor. Bohr, not an experienced climber, wished to share the experience. ‘ When hanging precariously on the second-floor level, and Frau Bohr, Casimir, and I were anxiously watching, two Copenhagen policemen approached from behind with their hands on their gun holsters.
‘One of them looked up and told the other: “Oh, this i s only Professor Bohr!” and they went quietly off to hunt f or more dangerous bank robbers.’
Simon Gower, Malvern, Worcestershire.
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