Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
LOW-PAID EMMA WON AN OSCAR
The 1992 Merchant Ivory film version of Howards End became an instant classic. Boasting an all-star cast including Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham Carter, it won three Oscars, including best actress for Emma Thompson. But it almost didn’t get made. Although Merchant Ivory has become a byword for lavish and successful British period dramas, when producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory proposed making Howards End, their third Forster novel adaptation, they struggled to get the funding. In the end, the £6 million movie was part-financed by backers in Japan, where the team’s first Forster project, A Room With A View, had been very popular.
However, according to the stars, the money was not lavished on them. ‘Merchant Ivory paid me a pittance – and everyone else,’ Emma Thompson, who played Margaret Schlegel, later revealed. ‘They struggled from week to week to get everyone paid. It was tough for them and pretty tough on the crew as well.’
Emma had been strongly compelled to try to win the role in the first place. ‘That was the only time I’d written to someone and said, “I know how to do this, I know this woman so well,”’ she recalled. ‘I felt unusually convinced I would be able to do it. That I was the right person.’
The decision to cast Vanessa Redgrave as Ruth Wilcox was made early by Ivory. ‘Vanessa was playing the great English soul,’ he said. ‘Which she is herself. She’s perfect for it.’
Anthony Hopkins, who’d just become one of the hottest actors around after The Silence Of The Lambs, was cast as Henry Wilcox, while Helena Bonham Carter (right), who’d appeared in both A Room With A View and Maurice, the second Merchant Ivory film of a Forster novel, played Helen Schlegel.
The film, recently restored and re-released to mark its 25th anniversary, was a huge hit and was praised by reviewers for making the story seem as relevant to the 90s as it had been to the era in which the novel was written.