Free Making Priscilla by Al Clark Page B

playing supporting roles, usually villains, in big-budget studio pictures, he has retained his star aura, his looks and his heterosexual charge, which will make his transformation into a transsexual all the more startling. Adding resonance to this, and blurring the lines in a way that will make them more interesting, is the sexually ambiguous air he carried in some of his ’60s roles, notably in Ustinov’s Billy Budd (which earned him an Oscar nomination in his first film) and Pasolini’s Theorem.
    While aware of the need for a change of gear in his life, Stamp’s first response to reading the script is a wary one. He has never appeared in a comedy, unless one counts his star-billed but essentially supporting turn in Joseph Losey’s ill-fated Modesty Blaise. He has never been in a musical. And he has never played a woman. On the other hand, he has been to Australia — accompanying Jean Shrimpton to the Melbourne Cup in 1965 — and he did not enjoy it, to the extent that he has left a standing instruction to his agent over the years not to consider film offers from there. But his agent is also Michael Hamlyn’s assistant’s brother’s agent, so this one has slipped through the net. Michael himself is on holiday in the south of France, and is spending so much time on the phone to London he may as well have stayed behind.
    Stephan calls after his meeting with Stamp, who has impressed him. ‘He fills up the room as soon as he walks into it,’ says Stephan, ‘then he starts leaving you space.’ Stamp is naturally anxious about his hair, make-up and wardrobe if he is to succeed in a role so hazardous that failure, he feels sure, will lead to ridicule. He is also concerned about his co-star. Not about the two other leading actors with whom he will spend the majority of his screen time, but about who will play Bob,the outback garage mechanic who develops an attachment to Bernadette, and with whom he ends up, as the script so poetically calls it, ‘playing hide-the-sausage’.
    Aware that the other actors have to be Australian, Stamp suggests Bill Hunter, with whom he appeared in Stephen Frears’ The Hit nine years earlier. They have barely seen each other since then, but Stamp remembers him with fondness and feels that an existing rapport between himself and the person playing Bob will bring a vital conviction to their scenes together. I call Bill Hunter’s agent and inform her that Terence Stamp has specifically requested him as his ‘love interest’ in the film. When she speaks to him, Hunter laughs in disbelief and says he will accept the part without even reading the script.
    By the end of the following day, Stamp has agreed to travel to a country he dislikes, Australia, to play a role that unnerves him, a woman, in a genre he has never attempted, the comedy-musical.
    *
    The faxes from Terence Stamp begin to arrive the day after Stephan’s return. Several of them are about his feet, which fortunately have not become cold. First an enquiry about what kind of shoes he will be wearing in the film, as he is going to have a practice pair made by Anello and Davide. Then his tailor’s measurements, with illustrations in the style of a vintage men’s-wear catalogue. Finally, immaculately detailed drawings of his right foot, then his left — each faxed foot transmitted at a different time — revealing one bottom instep marginally smaller than the other.
    With Stamp on board, we can start the engines. We will cast Hugo Weaving as Tick if he can find a way of attending our rehearsals as well as fulfilling his contract with the MelbourneTheatre Company to appear in Much Ado About Nothing in Melbourne and Hobart. Stephan travels to Melbourne to screen test Guy Pearce — a young actor best known for his long residency in the Australian soap opera Neighbours — for the role of Adam. As we are unable to afford a rehearsal room in which to film, it is done in the local offices of the FFC.
    The crew is coming together in