British comedy stars in Hollywood
There's a thoroughly interesting interview recently uploaded to YouTube that features the fine American actor Willem Dafoe, who's currently up for a Best Actor Oscar for Eternity's Gate, and is best known for playing some seriously sinister villains. In that video, the craggy star talks the viewer through his best-known roles, in movies such as Oliver Stone's Platoon, Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic, David Lynch's Wild at Heart, and as the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider Man. What many of us probably didn't realise is that Willem was also in Mr Bean's Holiday.
Yes, it may sound deeply unlikely, but it turns out that Dafoe is a big fan of Blackadder, and wanted to work with Rowan Atkinson. But should we be surprised? British comedy has a bigger influence on global cinema than many of us probably realise. Elsewhere online you'll find a feature about the biggest film industries in the world, which includes the United Kingdom alongside Hollywood, Bollywood and beyond. It mentions James Bond movies as our big money-spinners, understandably, but they too have a big UK comedy strand: John Cleese, Robbie Coltrane, and Atkinson himself in Never Say Never Again.
Look at the other Oscar nominations. Olivia Colman is one of the big favourites for her role in, er, The Favourite, having initially made a splash in various Mitchell & Webb vehicles, most notably Peep Show. Speaking of online interviews, there's a fascinatingly honest one with Paddy Considine on Scroobius Pip's Distraction Pieces podcast, in which the Tyrannosaur director discusses how he wasn't initially sure if Colman could cut it in a serious role, and really thought it wasn't going to work out, before she suddenly came good.
Colman also popped up in the UK version of The Office, early on, and several stars of that show moved on to big movies. Martin Freeman is now a cog in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including a role in another Best Picture nominee this year, Black Panther; previously he was the lead in the three huge Hobbit movies. Mackenzie Crook cropped up in Pirates of the Caribbean; Lucy Davis was the comic relief in Wonder Woman; Ralph 'Finchy' Ineson is in Guardians of the Galaxy and several Harry Potter films, and then there's Ricky Gervais, who did alright.
Talking of The Office, co-writer Stephen Merchant is one of several UK TV comedy alumni currently helming high-profile movies. Merchant - who appeared in the major action movies Logan and The Girl in the Spider's Web - directed the wrestling film Fighting With My Family, which is all over London buses at the moment, and stars The Rock. Joe Cornish, originally of The Adam And Joe Show, co-wrote Marvel's Ant Man and Spielberg's Tintin - with Edgar Wright - and has just released his second film, The Kid Who Would be King (having launched Star Wars' John Boyega with his first one, Attack the Block).
Most significant of all is Richard Curtis, who cut his teeth writing sketches for old college pal Rowan Atkinson on Not the Nine O'Clock News, before re-establishing UK comedy films across the world, as a writer and director: his new one, Yesterday, is out soon.
And then there's Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan and Simon Pegg on both sides of the camera, Miranda Hart, Natasha Demetriou and Lolly Adefope all getting interesting transatlantic roles, while Catherine Tate is in the new Amazon Prime series The Hunt, alongside one Al Pacino. But is she bothered?