Telegraph.co.uk – When Mike Newell cast Jeremy Irvine as Pip in his forthcoming dramatisation of Great Expectations Irvine had only one film under his belt. But that film was War Horse, and its director was Steven Spielberg. As starts go in the movie industry, the lead role in a $100 million First World War epic made by one of the greatest ever filmmakers is some learning curve.
But Irvine says his education was made all the easier because of the example set by Spielberg: ‘He was the first on set every morning, the last to leave, and he spent long hours with me.’ Irvine had been plucked from nowhere to play Albert, the West Country farm lad who forms an unshakable bond with his horse, Joey. The partnership even survives the separate horrors endured by them both on the Western Front.
Almost daily on the Devon set, Irvine – with only one year’s experience of drama school – had to pinch himself as a reminder of his great fortune and unique opportunity. ‘There is no way if I was in Spielberg’s position that I would have cast in that role someone who’d never been on a film set before,’ he says. ‘Because it’s too much of a risk. They might get on set and just freeze up in front of camera for a start.’
Spielberg has described his search as ‘look[ing] for months and months… I was running out of hope, then Jeremy Irvine came in towards the last third of the casting process.’ Ten months on from the release of War Horse, does Irvine yet have any understanding of why Spielberg did choose him from hundreds of auditionees? ‘I honestly still don’t know why he felt that risk was worth taking,’ Irvine insists. ‘That is a huge responsibility to put on this snotty-nosed little kid who’s really done nothing. My way of explaining it is, he took that huge risk because he knew that he had the skill to manipulate and work with someone and make them feel comfortable.’ Irvine thinks that is Spielberg’s ‘greatest skill as a director of new actors. With me the best thing he ever did was make me feel totally at home.’
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Jeremy Irvine was jumping on top of Helena Bonham Carter and the director Mike Newell was urging him to be more vigorous. I was watching Irvine — playing Pip — smother Miss Havisham, who has just gone up in flames on the set of the big-screen version of Great Expectations. Helena plays the vengeful Miss Havisham, but for part of this scene a stuntwoman had been called in to take the heat. Things are heating up for Irvine (pictured), too, but in a very good way.
Before Irvine, 21, was cast as the equestrian World War I soldier in Spielberg’s War Horse, he was just a kid from tiny Gamlingay, England (pop. 3,535) who trained at the National Youth Theatre and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won limited fame for an MTV commercial, a British Disney Channel show and a role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Dunsinane, “literally playing a tree,” as he puts it. Good thing he fell into the hands of Steven Spielberg, who has launched little-known actors to fame before — Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun and Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List. “I virtually went from having no lines in a theater show to playing the lead in a Spielberg film,” says Irvine. Never a horse lover, he had to act alongside 130 of them, including one that stepped on his foot during a shot. He has just finished Now Is Good with Dakota Fanning and is filming Mike Newell’s Great Expectations with Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter, due in theaters next year.
Jeremy Irvine, star of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming drama War Horse, has been cast in The Railway Man, a drama to be directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. The project is based on a memoir by Eric Lomax that chronicles his experience working on Japan’s Death Railway during World War II and the woman he loved. Japan forced prisoners of war to work on the railway, which connects Bangkok to what is now Yangon, Myanmar. Lomax was a British officer during the war, and was tortured by the Japanese for being a spy. Later in life, Lomax sought to track down one of his torturers. He will also be portrayed by Colin Firth in the film.
