Downton Abbey star debuts with Winter’s Tale

MANILA, Philippines - British actress Jessica Brown Findlay, best known for the acclaimed BBC series Downton Abbey, gets to star opposite Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe in her first Hollywood film with Warner Bros. Pictures’ love story Winter’s Tale.

Set in a mythic New York City and spanning more than a century, Winter’s Tale is a story of miracles, crossed destinies and the age-old battle between good and evil.

Peter Lake (Colin) is a master thief, who never expected to have his own heart stolen by the beautiful Beverly Penn (Jessica). But their love is star-crossed: She burns with a deadly form of consumption, and Peter has been marked for a much more violent death by his one-time mentor, the demonic Pearly Soames (Russell). Peter desperately tries to save his one true love, across time, against the forces of darkness, even as Pearly does everything in his power to take him down — winner take all and loser be damned. What Peter needs is a miracle, but only time will tell if he can find one.

Below are excerpts from the interview with Jessica.

Can you talk about the connection your character, Beverly, forms with Peter Lake (Colin), and how they’re drawn to each other?

“She meets Peter in a really bizarre way, and I suppose it’s a test of his character. She sits down and has tea and just talks and doesn’t take any liberties of any kind, and he just sits and talks, opens up and then leaves. I suppose the first time she meets him, she thinks, ‘This is the only time I’m going to see him, so I’m going to talk to this person and say hello, and exchange some stories and then I’ll have another wonderful memory to have.’ And then I suppose he, who is not open to the idea of the rest of his life, decides that she is a person he’s drawn to.

I think Beverly is someone who will take an experience, keep it and treasure it forever, and he allows her to take one experience and to let it keep growing. I think he makes her forget the reality of the situation that she’s in and allows her to give in to the magic of the beautiful, mad, ridiculous thing that love is.”

Can you talk about working with Colin? How did you get along and how did you develop the onscreen rapport you have in the film?

“Working with Colin was fantastic. It was wonderful. What was so nice and so wonderful is that on the first day, I mean, I’m just some girl who grew up in a tiny place just outside London and this kind of thing just doesn’t happen to anyone. It’s a bit weird. And I suppose maybe he himself had felt like that at times in his life, so he was just wonderful. He came in and just said hello and, you know, poured out coffee and we just started chatting.”

How about working with Russell Crowe and William Hurt?

“William Hurt is someone that is… I just felt very honored to be working with him. He’s extraordinary.

He was really warm. There was a scene that we did and he was basically mute for the entire thing, but his presence was incredibly felt. I’ll never forget that. And Russell Crowe is someone that not a single inch of me imagined that one day I’d be doing a film with that man. He’s done a lot of work. But I had this moment when I met him: I had a flashback of me when I was however old, watching Gladiator, and that was a bit of a mad moment. But he was great, and really embodied this terrifying creature, Pearly Soames. It was fantastic.”

Can you talk about how the film differs from a traditional love story, and how the themes of love, destiny and miracles weave into that?

“I suppose that love comes for Beverly in a way that’s an unforeseen moment. It just happens. That’s pretty much what always happens with love. But it’s different in the sense that you see these characters fall in love and give themselves to each other, heart and soul, and then one person disappears, and you follow the other person and see how that moment — one moment of meeting someone and saying hello—can affect the rest of his life.”

Winter’s Tale opens today in theaters.