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| Helena Bonham Carter, Gbriel Byrne and Dónal Finn in Four Letters Of Love |
Adapted by Niall Williams from his international bestselling book of the same name, Four Letters Of Love is the story of a young man and woman whose lives intertwine in multiple ways before they meet, hinting at the idea that they’re destined to fall in love. Helena Bonham Carter, a veteran of romantic tales, plays the young woman’s mother, Margaret Gore, a supporting character who has a weight of complex emotions of her own. When we spoke about the film last week, I noted the large number of literary adaptations she’s starred in over the course of her career and asked if that was part of the appeal in this case.
“I guess it must be what something I'm attracted to,” she says. “So much of acting as what people come to you with, but I am always keen on a literary adaptation, just because you've got the whole of a novel and all that material to work with. With this in particular, I'm just such a fan of the novel. I'd read it 25 years ago so I've wanted really to be Isabel Gore. And I love Niall Williams' writing. And so when it came back I thought ‘How weird it still hasn’t been made.’ I tried to get the rights way back to play Isabel and then I couldn't believe it when it still hadn't been made and came back after 25 years. So I romantically thought ‘Oh, it's like the book. It's the life of destiny that's come out of the book.’”
She hadn’t consciously thought about the book for some time, she says, but getting into character and developing her character’s relationship with Gabrial Byrne’s Muiris came easily.
“I had never worked with Gabriel before. I'd met him fleetingly, but not properly. But he'd always been somebody who I admire from afar and was interested in, and he’s an incredibly accessible person. We got on very, very well and instantly, and we basically had a three week conversation through the shooting. A three week chat.” She laughs. “A master of chat, he is, and a master of storytellers, and boy, he’s had stories. It was very easy. I mean, he's a perfect master because he's a weaver of stories.”
She’s worked with some really fantastic actors over the course of her career, from her days with Merchant Ivory to her Fight Club reinvention and beyond. So what was it like working with the younger ones in this cast?
“They were all great. Really, really well prepped,” she says, unhesitating. “They're all very talented and Isabel – Ann [Skelly] – is amazing. She's got such life, and in a way, she was like what Margaret would have been, before life stamped all the joy out of her. And so I was very impressed with them. And Dónal [Finn] and Fionn [O’Shea]. Very, very nice. It was a really lovely gang.”
Margaret could indeed be accused of having a lack of joy but, I contend, she has a grounding role to play in a rather elaborate plot
“Yeah. When I was watching it, I was thinking, like, do you really realise why she does what she does? I know she does the wrong thing for the right reason. It's like her need to control, because I think it's also that she's had the catastrophe of Sean, and she doesn't want that to happen again, and she's trying to protect her daughter. And she also knows that, yes, she married for love. I don't think she regrets marrying for love, but it was also...” She hesitates for a moment. “She knows the cost of it, too.”
How did you research the character, beyond what she could find in the book?
“Well, that was good was because we’d got the writer online. I asked Niall for any notes and wrote two chapters for both me and Gabriel. We got personal little essays on our characters, which is just like gold dust. Then I had the accent to learn. And a lot of it was being there, too. You know, I do a lot of films in studios. This was just incredibly pure because we were just on location and the interiors were the cottage. When you walked in and out, it was, like, for real. So we had the novel, and I did the novel and then I did the script, and I had Niall. Every writer, I feel like, contains the actual character within themselves.”
Margaret may not be the role she originally planned on playing, but she has very much made it her own. We discuss the kind of parts she’s getting and the kid she’s looking for at this stage in her career.
“I definitely get diverse roles, which is fine because I don't know quite what next. You know, it's quite fun, it’s quite unpredictable. And at heart I've also always wanted to be a character actor, so yeah. Yeah. And basically all I look for is good writing, you know – good writing and a story worth telling. That is all. And it doesn't matter. And I’m not descriptive and demanding.” She doesn’t care too much about things like genre, she explains. “I just want to know that the sensibility of a script matches mine.”
