Speaking of his latest collaboration with Elizabeth McGovern, Julian Fellowes reveals that people often mistake his mother for silent film star Louise Brooks who is the central character of the movie.
- Mar 27, 2019
AceShowbiz - "Downton Abbey" creator Julian Fellowes jumped at the chance to adapt a story that imagined silent screen star Louise Brooks' first trip to New York into a film, because his mother was often mistaken for the actress.
Fellowes was still working on the "Downton Abbey" TV series when his leading lady, Elizabeth McGovern, brought him Laura Moriarty's book, "The Chaperone", and asked if he would be interested in developing it for the big screen with her.
"At the time, I was fairly buried in Downton," he tells WENN, "but I am very interested by Louise Brooks, who is the central character in both the book and the film.
"She was a silent film star and rather unusual in that she was also very prominent in the German film business at the time. She wasn't just a kind of Hollywood cutie. She was rather more than that. So, I became very intrigued by this idea of tracing her origins.
"When my mother was a girl, she used to be mistaken for Louise Brooks, because, in those days, with silent pictures, nobody knew what their voices were like. So, the fact that my mother was English didn't put fans of the real Louise Brooks off."
Fellowes' mum was mistaken for Brooks so often she started signing autographs as the actress.
"Presumably, her signature is in some movie museum at this very moment," the writer chuckles.
McGovern, who plays the title character in "The Chaperone (2019)", reteamed with Fellowes for the "Downton Abbey" movie, which is released later this year and she admits he was the only person who could adapt Moriarty's book: "Julian has an uncanny ability to tell a story incredibly economically."
"He writes in a very kind of spare way, but they are words that spring to life. I've found it time and time again, over the years working with him, that I'll read something he's written and not quite understand what he's up to until I read the words aloud with other actors and it's suddenly completely clear."
