Pals mourn dazzling 9½ Weeks visionary
HE MADE a series of fortunes by carving out a career path that seems unlikely ever to be emulated, beginning by erecting warehouses stocked with DIY kit.
He then vaulted into the dazzling world of Old Etonian jeweller Theo Fennell, whose blingtastic creations find favour with the likes of the Beckhams and Sir Elton John.
But Richard Northcott, who has died aged 76 after a battle with cancer, made the most startling switch of his life aboard a cruise ship. A chance encounter with a fellow passenger, who handed him a film script, prompted him to set himself up as a producer — and strike gold with 9½ Weeks.
Filmed in 1984, it starred Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke, but its intense eroticism meant that it was two years before it was released. It became a global blockbuster, propelling Basinger to sex-symbol stardom.
The director, Adrian Lyne, explained that he made a point of involving himself in Basinger and Rourke’s most intimate moments, ‘a little bit like a cheerleader’.
Northcott, whose cinematic credentials were less obvious, didn’t hang back either. ‘I used to go on the set,’ he said, adding that Basinger was ‘just breathtaking’.
He went on to co-produce two more blockbusters — When Harry Met Sally, starring Meg Ryan and
Billy Crystal, and A Few Good Men, with Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. Living latterly in a £17.5 million house in Chelsea, he said: ‘It was pure luck that the first one worked. Absolutely zero skill and pure luck.’
But if fortune favoured him in Hollywood, it deserted him at home when his Canadian wife, Kirsten, with whom he had three children, walked out. She subsequently enjoyed an affair with former cricketer Mark Nicholas — marrying him after receiving a ‘vast’ divorce settlement.
Happily, Northcott, who became a key shareholder in Theo Fennell’s business, found consolation with Joanna Kurpiers, a Polish fashion student in her 20s.
Of his final illness, the Marquess of Reading’s brother, film producer Lord Antony Rufus Isaacs, tells me: ‘Richard was incredibly courageous.’