Beatty’s lesson in Hollywood history
ALDEN EHRENREICH is just 26 years of age, yet because he was lucky enough to have Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Warren Beatty as his mentors, the young actor has links to the whole history of Hollywood. Spielberg spotted the lad when he was in his early teens, in a video shown at a bat mitzvah. The film-maker was impressed with what he saw and got Ehrenreich an agent. By the time he was 19, he was starring in Coppola’s film Tetro on location in argentina, where he spent much of his time peppering the legendary director with questions about The Godfather trilogy. Then he scored a main role in Beatty’s long gestating, as yet untitled, picture about the reclusive billionaire and aviator Howard Hughes. ‘It’s a three-way romance, with Warren as Hughes, Lily Collins — and me!’ Ehrenreich said, referring to the 26-year-old actress daughter of Phil Collins. The process of being cast in, and then shooting, the Hughes film took several years, during which Ehrenreich studied in New York, and helped establish an experimental theatre troupe. Plays were performed in pretty basic premises. One night, Beatty turned up with his wife, actress annette Bening. ‘Not the kind of place you’d expect to see Warren,’ Ehrenreich said. ‘Warren came out to Hollywood in 1959, so he knew Charlie Chaplin. He knew Orson Welles. He knew Louis B. mayer. He knew Lillian Hellman. ‘He’s the bridge, more than anybody else, to that bygone world, because he was right in the heart of it, too. ‘Sometimes, we’d have six-hour meetings where Warren wouldn’t talk about the film we were making — but about who he met, more than half a century ago,’ Ehrenreich recalled. Everything he learned from Beatty (and Spielberg, and Coppola) somehow informs Ehrenreich’s astutely observed performance in the latest Coen brothers film Hail, Caesar!, which opens in the UK on march 4. Hail, Caesar! is set in the early Fifties, in the fictional Hollywood studio Capital Pictures. Ehrenreich plays Hobie Doyle, a hick cowboy star (modelled after western legends roy rogers and Gene autry) who’s hired to do a non-cowboy role for a snobbish director, played to perfection by ralph Fiennes. Ehrenreich and Fiennes do a delicious scene where Hobie has to repeat the line: ‘Would that it were so simple.’ as played by Ehrenreich and Fiennes, it’s comic gold and could itself become a part of film history.