They're the LitChick Flicks
November 26, 2002

Transformed ... Nicole Kidman's fake nose and wig in The Hours

By KATY WEITZ

MENTION Nicole Kidman or Kate Winslet and you think of glamour-packed Hollywood blockbusters.

But the sexy stars are swopping the corsets they wore in Moulin Rouge and Titanic for cardigans and tweed skirts — to play dowdy English writers.

Screen beauties like Nicole, Kate, Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore are queuing up to make LitChick Flicks — the latest movie trend.

Ticket sales are suddenly less important than artistic merit, with a string of low-budget films about authors.

Filmgoers may not know much about the worthy poets and novelists — two of whom killed themselves — but many had wild and raunchy lives ideal for movie storylines.

The most amazing style change was Nicole Kidman’s leap from a diamond-clad prostitute in Moulin Rouge to plain Virginia Woolf in The Hours.

Bisexual English writer Woolf was a tortured genius who drowned herself in a river near her Sussex home in 1941.

Aussie actress Nicole, 35, was completely transformed for the part — donning a fake nose, a dark, knotted wig and ill-fitting floral dress.

Dowdy ... Kate as Iris

The trend was started by Britain’s own Kate Winslet in Iris. She dressed in drab skirts and a bobbed blonde wig last year to play novelist Iris Murdoch, who died in 1999 from Alzheimer’s.

The film — with Dame Judi Dench as the older Murdoch — won critical acclaim from both sides of the Atlantic.

Soon, more LitChick Flicks in the pipeline. Gwyneth Paltrow is to play tragic American poet Sylvia Plath in a £7million British film on her tempestuous life with English poet laureate Ted Hughes.

Ted And Sylvia, now being shot in the UK by BBC films, charts their torrid love affair which lasted until Plath’s suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Meanwhile, Julianne Moore is lined up to play manic depressive poet Deirdre Burroughs in Running With Scissors. Filming starts next year.

So why has Hollywood fallen for female writers?

Nick James, editor of British film industry mag Sight & Sound, believes the movies are designed to bring older women back to cinemas. He says: “The industry is after women who gave up going to see films when blockbusters like Bond and Harry Potter took over.”

Poet ... Gwyneth's role

Movie-makers have lost their female audience because the romantic comedies they like have died out, he adds.

He says: “This genre has more or less collapsed and the film industry hopes to revive interest through these biopics.”

Nick also reckons the stars aim to boost their reputations — and gain award nominations.

BAFTA member Barry John, a retired film editor, agrees. He says Iris was praised by critics and got three Oscar nominations, winning one.

He adds: “It was also a story about scandal, as are the two new films about Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.

“Scandal works very well on screen. Because these women were trailblazers, their lives were often excessive and off the moral scale of their age.

“It all makes for compelling viewing.”

Source: The Sun