Looking ever so platinum actress Nicole Kidman lounges on the cover of the May 2012 W magazine with actor Clive Owen for HBO’S Hemingway & Gellhorn a film about the lives of journalist Martha Gellhorn and her husband, writer Ernest Hemingway. It will be directed by Philip Kaufman.
Retelling the story of one of America’s most famous literary couples, the movie begins in 1936 when the pair first met in a bar in Florida. He was already a famous writer and she was one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th Century. Their five-year marriage first saw them travel to Spain to record some of the most famous reports on the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. Gellhorn was the only woman to ask Hemingway for a divorce and she inspired him to write his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
In the magazine’s article with Owen and Nicole they recount their attraction to the film as well as creating the sex scenes.
Nicole, on what attracted her to the HBO project: “I knew nothing about Martha [Gellhorn], but I’ve always been drawn to unique women who are willing to take on the world. The exciting thing about this film is that you see her discovering her nature. At the beginning, she’s a lot of talk. She knows that she’s either got to get her hands dirty and become what she pretends to be or she’s a fraud. In the end, Gellhorn out-Hemingways Hemingway.”
Clive, on sex scenes vs. scenes where he dies: “It’s much harder to do a death scene. You’ve got to do it convincingly, and it’s a huge thing to die [laughs]. Sex scenes are only hard if there’s no narrative conveyed through the sex scene. In the Hemingway film, the sex scenes have a story going through them. It’s part of who these people are and what they are.”
Scoot over to wmagazine.com
