Unlocking the secrets of Shakespeare's twisters
by BAZ BAMIGBOYE
Last updated at 20:51 19 July 2007
Kelly Reilly was her usual calm and funny self when she rang me on her mobile from the red desert in the middle of Namibia.
She was on holiday before a burst of activity back in London, starting on Monday with rehearsals for a new movie called Eden Lake.
She and Michael Fassbinder play a young couple who find all is not well when they go camping.
"They're on this beautiful English getaway when suddenly horror comes their way," she said down a crackling line.
A group of menacing teenagers led by 17-year-old Jack O'Connell, who was so good in the movie This Is England, storm the caravan site.
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She will also need to find time to pore over the text of Shakespeare's Othello with Donmar Theatre artistic chief Michael Grandage. He will direct Kelly at the Donmar at the end of the year, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Moor and Ewan McGregor playing Iago. It will be her first stab at the Bard.
Shakespeare, she told me, had always been a foreign world to her. But Grandage has already helped her make better sense of the playwright's prose. Perchance, both happened to be in New York, and Grandage spent an hour talking to her about Shakespeare's words.
"He translated it for me and I didn't feel lost any more," she laughed.
"I've seen a lot of productions of Shakespeare where I've felt disconnected from the play and the actors. It felt like there was a door and there's a key to it, but they're not giving it to me.
"One of the reasons I want to play Desdemona for Michael is to be able to open that door, not just for myself but for others like me."
In the meantime, she's helping to launch a film called Puffball, her first proper lead, in which she plays an architect who goes to Ireland and becomes pregnant. Just like that.
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