Jude Law - Biography

Founded by Jeremy James Taylor in 1976, and originally known as The Children's Music Theatre, the NYMT had already spawned Tom Hollander and Toby Jones, Matt Lucas would be a contemporary of Law's, and future pupils would include Sally Hawkins, Jamie Bell, Ben Barnes and Eddie Redmayne. The troupe had renamed itself the NYMT in 1985 and was on the up, so much so that TV star and renowned satirist Richard Stilgoe was now giving them the opportunity to premier his new musical for schools, Bodywork. This would prove to be Law's debut as, with Stilgoe using the play to explain the working of the human body, he'd appear as Adrenalin, his soon-to-be best friend Jonny Lee Miller popping up as a virus. The show was a huge success and would be taken to the Exeter Festival, playing at the Northcott, then moving on to the Edinburgh Fringe. Audiences were huge, reviews raved, all of it leading to a Royal Gala Performance. This success would lead to the NYMT scoring new sponsors and moving to Sadler's Wells where they'd enjoy not only an annual three week season but also, much to their delight, an office with a telephone. All good news for new boy Law.

1988 would see Law in an NYMT production of The Little Rats, returning to the George Square Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe then moving on to Greece, where they appeared at the National Theatre at Thessalonika and the Opera House of Piraeus. Further success would be found with The Ragged Child, in which Law would play several roles, including those of Anthony Ashley-Cooper and Sir Peter Dykewater. A musical set in mid-19th Century London, with kids struggling to survive, this would run at Sadler's Wells and Exeter's Northcott and be so well received it would be filmed by the BBC and screened that Christmas. The next year would bring more experience when Law appeared on TV again, playing the mayor's stableboy in The Tailor Of Gloucester, Ian Holm playing the titular seamster. With the NYMT he'd then appear in Joseph And His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, taking the production to the Herriot Hall at the Edinburgh Fringe. And there'd be yet more as he moved into the new decade, Law appearing in both Captain Stirrick and Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, first at Sadler's Wells, then once again at the George Square Theatre in Edinburgh.

Law's life would now take a fortuitous turn for the better. With his parents now moving to France, they allowed him to sign on as Nathan Thompson in a new TV series, Families, concerning the lives of normal folks in both Manchester and Australia. So, at the age of 17, he bravely took off for a new life, alone in Manchester, filming two seasons of the show over the next 18 months, the first episode appearing on April 23rd, 1990. He'd also make the most of the thriving social scene, the city then being in the throes of the Ecstasy-fuelled indie-dance phenomenon that saw it known as Madchester.

Law would take a brief break from Families in 1991 to film at episode of the Jeremy Brett-starring Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes, based on the Conan Doyle story The Adventure Of Shoscombe Old Place. Come 1992, tiring of TV and keen to make his presence felt in the theatre, he signed on to make his professional London stage debut in The Fastest Clock In The Universe, at the Hampstead Theatre. A controversial piece, this saw Con O'Neill as Cougar Glass, a fellow devoted to pleasure and very keen on young Jude's narcissistic teenager Foxtrot Darling, their two-way ego trip being interrupted when the girlfriend of Law's dying brother takes a fancy to him, too. The Fastest Clock would be named Best New Play of 1992 by Time Out magazine. Law's other effort of 1992 would be the odd, comedic, Romford-set short The Crane. Made by the BFI this would see him as a bored burger chef in a miserably empty shopping precinct, at the mercy of his schizophrenic manager and mooning over Melanie Ramsay, a girl working in a closing-down hair salon opposite. Thrown out by his parents (over the phone), and dumped by his tremendously freaky nurse girlfriend, he gains Ramsay's attention by piercing his ear-lobe with a nail, joins her weirded-out religious gang and finally rises above it all by climbing the crane of the title, Ramsay following him to presumably share in a Titanic-style moment of high romance.

It was a good start for Law in the capital and he'd work hard to keep up his momentum. 1993 would see him join the London Gay Theatre Company for a production of Joseph Pintauro's Snow Orchid at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill. Here, in a dramatic tale of spilled guts and emotional laceration, Roger Lloyd Pack would star as an Italian American father who returns after two years in an asylum to face a family still bitter about his former violence. His resolve to stay calm would now be tested as his eldest son comes out as gay, Paola Dionisotti giving a fraught performance as the mother who dotes on her gay son because he was born in her beloved Sicily, and actively dismisses her poor younger boy, her "American" son, played by Law. It was not the showiest of roles, and Law would again be down the bill in an episode of the TV show The Marshal where Alfred Molina would play a large Sicilian detective in Florence, in a heatwave investigating the murder of an old lady, the episode being based on Magdalen Nabb's novel The Marshal And The Madwoman. Law would now also make his Silver Screen debut in Shopping, concerning alienated, thrill-seeking British teenagers fighting and wreaking havoc in dilapidated urban landscapes, and featuring Marianne Faithfull and Jonathan Pryce. It was not a success. Law was roundly panned for his efforts, but did forge important friendships - with actor Sean Pertwee and, especially, Sadie Frost (at that time married to Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet, with whom she had a son, Finlay).

Clearly being drawn to theatrical material of a more challenging variety, Law would now move on to a revival of John Arden's Live Like Pigs at the Jerwood, upstairs at the Royal Court, between October 1st and November 30th. When it opened back in 1958, this play had made the names of both Arden and actor Robert Shaw. Now, though its story of a gypsy family housed on a new estate and warring with their neighbours seemed a little dated, its central message and verbal violence were certainly contemporary. Also aging but still relevant would be Law's other play of 1993, Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman, put on at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Here Ken Stott would play the tortured loser Willy Loman, with James Purefoy as his rebellious failure of a son Biff and Law as his younger boy, Happy. Just like his father, he's a major fantasist and will resort to almost any tale to gain his parents' attention.

Including his efforts with the NYMT, Law now had eight years of tough onstage experience behind him and his reputation was building.  And now, in 1994, he would make his breakthrough in Sean Matthias's adaptation of Cocteau's Les Parents Terribles at the Lyttelton. This would see him as an innocent, emotionally stunted 22-year-old (a part written by Cocteau for his lover Jean Marais), trapped in a near-incestuous relationship with his overpowering mother Sheila Gish, finding a younger lover only to discover she's connected to his father, Alan Howard. Meanwhile, his sharp-tongued aunt Frances de la Tour is cutting through the bullshit and going after Howard. The play would be a big smash, with Law being nominated for an Olivier award and winning an Ian Charleson award as Outstanding Newcomer. When the production, re-titled Indiscretions, the next year moved on to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, he'd be the only major cast member to go with it. With his mother now played by Kathleen Turner, his father Roger Rees, his aunt Eileen Atkins and his maybe lover Cynthia Nixon, he'd stand out once again, even being nominated for a Tony. It was a far cry from the pasting he'd taken for Shopping. Jude Law had arrived. The same year, 1995, would see him join the RSC for Euripides' Ion at the Barbican's Pit. Also featuring Eve Pearce, this had opened on January 28th and had seen the RSC squeeze as many laughs as possible from the great tragedian, with Law commuting from London to New York for rehearsals of Indiscretions.

Absurdly photogenic, Law would now inevitably find himself courted by film-makers, spending all of 1996 in front of the cameras and enjoying a rush of releases the next year. First of these would be Wilde where he'd play Bosie to Stephen Fry's Oscar. The son of Tom Wilkinson's severe Marquess of Queensbury, a man who carries a horsewhip at all times in case anyone needs disciplining, Law's spent his life being beaten and harangued by his moral imperialist father and then spoiled by his guilty mother.

Now came America. Law was well-cast as a hopeless romantic in Music From Another Room, deciding to marry Gretchen Mol at the age of five then, twenty years later, trying to win her away from her fiance and an eccentric family including Brenda Blethyn, Jennifer Tilly, Martha Plimpton and Jeremy Piven. He'd then play opposite Claire Danes in I Love You, I Love You Not, which courageously placed the pain of young love up against the horrors of the Holocaust, the Holocaust being a  subject he would revisit with a cameo role in Bent, directed by his Indiscretions helmsman Sean Matthias, where gay Berlin playboy Clive Owen would be sent to Dachau. At extreme speed, he found himself in bigger and bigger movies. There was the sci-fi thriller Gattaca, a sci-fi thriller where the genetically altered run the Earth, while the normally born toil as slaves. Unable to accept his fate, normally born Ethan Hawke wishes to become an astronaut and plots with a genetically superior but crippled Law to take Law's identity. It was good work by all concerned, with Law excellent as a bitter elitist delighted to out-do a system that has abandoned him. Next would come Law’s finest performance to date, as the hot-headed Southern hustler Billy Carl Hanson, attempting to shake down Savannah's most famous citizen Kevin Spacey in Clint Eastwood’s classy Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil.

With all of these movies being released in 1997, Law was on a major roll. He took a brief sabbatical to marry Sadie Frost - five years his senior - on a barge on the Grand Union Canal (as well as Finlay, they had three children, Rafferty, Iris and Rudy), then went back to work. First came The Wisdom Of Crocodiles, where he impressed as a sensitive medical researcher who is forced by his vampirism to feed on humans by night, being tracked by cop Timothy Spall as he stalks Elina Lowensohn. Much like Abel Ferrara's The Addiction, the film would simply use bloodsuckers as a chance to discuss the nature of good and evil. He'd then appear as Ted Pikul, the confused and frantic hero trying desperately to survive in David Cronenberg’s futuristic freak-out eXistenZ where, following on from the same director's Videodrome, people became fatally obsessed with computer games jacked directly into their nervous system.  He'd next move on to a different level entirely.

In the meantime, aside from directing a segment of Tube Tales for TV, Law had started up a production company, Natural Nylon, in partnership with his wife Sadie Frost, his old friend Jonny Lee Miller, Sean Pertwee, and Ewan McGregor. The firm had produced eXistenZ, and now put together the rather weak, Law-starring Brit crim flick Love, Honour & Obey where Miller would persuade his buddy Law to hook him up with his karaoke singing gangster uncle Ray Winstone, eventually to the chagrin of all concerned. Having returned to the stage to perform in the Young Vic’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, for which he received a commendation at the Ian Charleson Awards, now Hollywood beckoned Law once more. First there was Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Enemy At The Gates, with Law as a hot-shot sniper battling it out with Ed Harris amidst the ruins of Stalingrad. Then Spielberg came calling with AI, a project he’d inherited from the late Stanley Kubrick. Here Haley Joel Osment played a mecha-kid, the first robot to exhibit real feelings, but is tossed out by his “foster-parents” and engages in a Pinocchio-like quest to find the Blue Fairy who can make him a real boy. Lost and alone, he encounters Law, playing Gigolo Joe, a cyborg programmed to pleasure women, who agrees to help him. Jude received many plaudits for his efforts, including a Golden Globe nomination, having made Joe a theatrically overblown creature, prone to camp and the odd dance (for which Jude trained for 3 months in ballet, tap and Kabuki).

After this came Sam Mendes’ Road To Perdition, where Tom Hanks played a hitman for mobster Paul Newman. When Hanks’ young son witnesses one of his dad’s murders, he must be eliminated, so Hanks takes him on the run, pursued by remorseless fellow-assassin, Harlen Maguire, played by Law. With his teeth stained, his face whitened and his hair pulled out to make it look thinning, Jude was making serious efforts to avoid a pretty-boy image. The same year, 2002, would see him return to the Young Vic as Doctor Faustus, selling his soul to the Devil for 24 years of fun. Heavily bearded but nevertheless still fresh-faced, his Hell would be the most profound depression, a bottomless self-obsession that would see him reject redemption for a chance to kiss Helen of Troy and wind up making love to his own reflection. Having visited the Young Vic as a youngster with his parents, Law was by now a major patron of the theatre, both donating and helping to secure funds for its rebuilding.

Next came Cold Mountain, directed by Anthony Minghella, with whom he'd worked on The Talented Mr Ripley.

But there was also trouble in store. Though son Rudy would be born in 2002, Law’s relationship with Sadie Frost was already on the rocks, and all efforts to save it were stymied by a quite frightening media intrusion, as well as pressures of work. Law had only four days away from the set of Cold Mountain to spend with his wife and new-born. Rumours flew worldwide that Law had engaged in an affair with Kidman, then fancy-free after her split from Tom Cruise. Both parties denied it, indeed Kidman successfully sued the Sun newspaper for libel. Nevertheless, Law and Frost were divorced in 2003, Frost citing Law’s “unreasonable behaviour” which, she claimed, had worsened her post-natal depression to the extent that she’d had to seek medical aid. Matters had not been helped when, at a kids’ party at London’s Soho House club, daughter Iris had eaten an ecstasy tablet she’d apparently found on the floor and been rushed to hospital.

Throughout 2003, Law would remain a tabloid favourite, partly for the divorce proceedings, and partly due to a new relationship with actress Sienna Miller, to whom he'd become engaged on Christmas Day of 2004.  He’d met her on the set of Alfie, a remake of the Michael Caine classic, in which Law starred as the cockney Lothario, this time working as a chauffeur in Manhattan, his coterie of lovelies including Susan Sarandon and Marisa Tomei. Before this, Law had been careful to avoid romantic roles, not wanting to play upon his looks. But Alfie, charming but deeply lonely, alienated in New York and spiritually empty, was a role he could not turn down.

Alfie would not be the first in a sudden burst of releases reflecting Jude’s immense work-load over the last couple of years. Indeed, over 2004 he would be near ubiquitous. He’d put in a cameo as Errol Flynn in The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s bio-pic of Howard Hughes. He’d appear as the titular Sky Captain in the cartoonish but impressive Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, aiding journalist Gwyneth Paltrow  (his girlfriend in The Talented Mr Ripley)and adventuress Angelina Jolie in 1939 New York as they attempt to foil a mad scientist’s fiendish plot to rule the world with giant robots.

After this there’d be I Heart Huckabee’s where Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin played “existential detectives” who dig into the meaning of people’s lives and relationships. Taken on by Jason Schwartzman to unravel a conflict he has with Jude, an upcoming executive at the Huckabee’s retail chain, they’re drawn into confusing areas when they’re also hired by Law to pry into Schwartzman’s perfect life with Naomi Watts. Following this would come the first film adaptation of the bestselling Lemony Snicket novels, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, with Jim Carrey as the wicked Count Olaf aiming to cheat three orphans of their inheritance. Jude would play Lemony Snicket, acting as narrator.

There was supposed to be even more 2004 action with Tulip Fever, adapted from Deborah Moggach’s novel and directed by John Madden. This was to have seen Keira Knightley as a penniless peasant in 1600s Amsterdam, marrying wealthy merchant Jim Broadbent to avoid starvation, but then losing her heart to Jude, a poor artist hired to paint her portrait. The young lovers’ only hope of escape is to make a killing by speculating in the crazy tulip market of the time. Unfortunately, Chancellor Gordon Brown's decision to close a tax loophole in the law surrounding British film productions caused the project to be shelved.

But still 2004 was not finished, as Law also took on Mike Nichols' version of Patrick Marber’s stage hit Closer. Here, a rather unpleasant Jude would set his friend Clive Owen up for a bad time with photographer Julia Roberts, only for the two to enjoy a relationship. Later, Owen would also form a bond with Law's own girlfriend, a self-destructive stripper played by Law's Cold Mountain co-star Natalie Portman. It was harsh but rewarding stuff.

Where 2004 saw Law seize the public's attention with his work, the next year would bring a tabloid frenzy over his private life. Firstly his divorce from Sadie Frost would be difficult, financially at least, with Frost taking possession of a big house in Primrose Hill and several million pounds. Then his relationship with Sienna Miller hit the rocks when it was revealed that he'd cheated on her with nanny Daisy Wright, Law deciding to offer a public apology to Miller in July of 2005. He and Miller would soon reconcile, but their relationship would naturally be far more volatile than before, a situation not aided by the couple's work schedules as Miller rose to cinematic prominence. They wouldn't last beyond 2007. Unfortunately, this continuing bad coverage would cost Law a good deal of his credibility with the general public and draw attention away from the strong CV he was producing.

2006 would bring Law back to the screen, first in All the King's Men, based on the famous novel by Robert Penn Warren and earler filmed, with Oscar-winning success, in 1949. This would see Sean Penn as a Louisiana farm boy who would first bring decency and truth to state politics, then gradually succumb to corruption, his story being told by Law, as Jack Burden, a journalist who's followed Penn's career. Burden's life would be further complicated by his relationship with the ex-Governor's daughter (Kate Winslet) and Penn's request that he dig the dirt on judge Anthony Hopkins, a good man who once raised Law as his own son. It would be Law's tortured research that brought tragedy and death to an already hard-hitting tale.

Following this would come Breaking And Entering, uniting Law for the third time with Anthony Minghella. This would see him as a London architect whose relationship with Robin Wright Penn is in crisis, the couple struggling to cope with an autistic daughter. When Law's Kings Cross offices are continually burgled by daring young free-runners, though, he keeps watch, follows one of them home and meets the crim's mother, Juliette Binoche, a Bosnian refugee and former pianist. Law rashly begins an affair with Binoche, creating a host of legal, ethical and emotional difficulties. The same year he'd appear on BBC Radio 3 in Eyes Down Looking, written and directed by Minghella to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Beckett. Here Law would play the son and David Threlfall the husband of Juliet Stevenson, the pair remembering their dead mum and wife. Law would stick with Minghella for a further Beckett reading, this time at Reading Town Hall.

Law would remain in London for Nancy Meyers' rom-com The Holiday, where Brit journalist Kate Winslet, his All The King's Men co-star, would suffer pain at the hands of super-cad Rufus Sewell and, seeking solace on the 'Net, bump into go-getting and equally loveless LA film trailer-maker Cameron Diaz. Swapping homes to save on vacation expenses, Winslet takes off for California while Diaz arrives at Winslet's snowbound country cottage where she quickly encounters and seduces a drunken Law, playing Winslet's brother. Law's a widower and single dad, a decent cove looking for a decent girl, and what might have been a standard Meyers slush fest is kept from gagging-point by his genuine performance and the charm he generates with Diaz. Following this would come Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights, where debutante Norah Jones, dropped by her lover, would relieve her suffering by binging on sweeties at her local cafe. The proprietor is Law, sensitive and eager to please, who looks after her and falls for her, romantically kissing cream from her lips when she falls asleep.

Aside from My Blueberry Nights, Law's other film of 2007 would be a real challenge. This was Sleuth, a project he'd been working on for several years via his Riff Raff production company.  Sleuth was originally a play by Anthony Shaffer, then a 1972 film starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Now Law would persuade Harold Pinter to rewrite it and Caine to come onboard again, this time taking the Olivier role. The basis would stay much the same - young man Law visits the home of rich writer Caine to explain that he's conducting an affair with Caine's wife and wants to marry her. However the dialogue would be far more vicious than the original, with Pinter, as ever, fascinated by the situation's capacity for humiliation and revenge. Though smartly directed by Kenneth Branagh, the film would not be a commercial success, the second time Law had failed when taking Caine's place in a former hit.

2007 would be a busy year outside of film, too. Law would involve himself in a project by Polish artist Pawel Althamer where he'd star in a trailer set in Borough Market and shown on cinema screens across the country then, on a specified date, recreate the trailer live in the same market. A conscientious worker for charity, he'd also continue his efforts with Jeremy Gilley, a former RSC actor and friend of Law's for 15 years, who'd earlier persuaded the UN to adopt his notion of a World Peace Day every September 21st. This time Law would travel with him to film a documentary in Afghanistan, yet again vastly boosting the project's profile with his involvement. Two rewards would now come his way, the French presenting him with an honorary Cesar and making him a chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Another maverick film-maker, George Clooney, would receive the latter honour at the same time. Mind you, they'd make Kylie Minogue a chevalier the next year so one has to question the award's seriousness, if not that of the French in general.

Law would spend much of 2008 filming and socialising, being connected to the actress model Lily Cole as well as Rod Stewart's daughter Kimberly. More seriously, around Christmas that year he'd enjoy a short relationship with model Samantha Burke that would lead to the birth of daughter Sophia in September of the next year. 2009 would also see a glut of Law releases.

Coming up next would be Guy Ritchie's hi-octane update of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr as a new, buff, all-action version of the great detective and Law as a new, buff, all-action version of Watson. The main story would see the dynamic duo deal with revenant Satanist Lord Blackwood, but there'd be further complications due to Law's forthcoming marriage to Kelly Reilly, a coupling that causes much bickering between our two really rather gay cavalieros. Released at Christmas, 2009, the film would be a surprisingly enormous hit, climbing towards the $200 million mark in America despite being released a week after James Cameron's audience-swallowing Avatar. Also released at Christmas, but only to a limited number of cinemas, in order to qualify for Oscar consideration (its real release would come the next January) would be Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus.  This would see Christopher Plummer as a thousand-year-old man running a travelling theatre boosted by a genuinely magical mirror. Plummer has dealt with the Devil in the past and now the Lord of Misrule returns to claim his payment, Plummer's daughter (Lily Cole again). New deals must be struck and many dangers overcome, Plummer being aided by a stranger found hanging from a bridge in London who travels several times through the magic mirror. Originally, this character was to be played solely by Heath Ledger but, following his overdose in January, 2008, a different approach was taken. Gilliam would use the footage he'd already shot of Ledger but have him change radically when he stepped through the mirror, thus the part could be played by other actors. Gilliam's past star Johnny Depp would be one, with Ledger's friends Law and Colin Farrell also stepping in. Briefly, Law would appear attempting to escape Russian gangsters in the bizarre Ladder World, a short but wonderful excursion.  Like Depp and Farrell, he'd donate his fee to Ledger's daughter Matilda.

Also in 2009, Law would make a high-profile return to the stage, taking on the prized and problematic role of Hamlet. This had been suggested to him by Kenneth Branagh during the filming of Sleuth, with Branagh due to direct. He, however, was forced to drop out when offered the director's chair for the blockbuster Thor.

2010 would begin with Law in a very rare role, as a pumped-up action hero. This was in Repo Men, based on Eric Garcia's novel The Repossession Mambo. Set in the future where people can buy transplant organs on credit, Law would play a merciless operative who takes bodyparts back when their new owners can no longer pay. After an accident, Law is given a new state-of-the-art and mightily expensive heart and soon finds himself pursued by his own agency, including a cruel Liev Schreiber and Law's childhood friend Forest Whitaker. It would, naturally, be very bloody, indeed.

Onscreen, Jude Law now appears with the greatest stars of the age, but he claims he’s not tempted by the superstar lifestyle. Were it not for the paparazzi, we would seldom hear from him at all. His work-rate is phenomenal, though he’s clearly picky in selecting his roles, nowadays taking only the classiest of projects to fit in amongst his extensive charity works. This will serve him well in years to come - major awards are surely on the way.

Dominic Wills