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THE MOVIE: Stardust

THE STARS:
Claire Danes • Michelle Pfeiffer • Charlie Cox
DIRECTOR: Matthew Vaughn

THE CONCEPT:
A fallen star that turns out to be a beautiful, imperiled woman, crashes into a magical kingdom and is chased by wicked witches, power-mad princes and flying pirates, all desiring one thing – her heart.

U.S. RELEASE: August 10 2007, Nationwide • Rated: PG-13

THE COMMENTS:

MATTHEW VAUGHN:
“I thought it was one of the most wonderful, original stories I’d ever read. And as a director, I’m mainly interested in telling stories, which seems like a forgotten art in modern movies. This was clearly a story that was meant to be made as a film.”

CHARLIE COX (Tristan):
“Because the audition process was so long, by the time we got to filming, there were certain scenes that I’d done many times. I was kind of nervous when we came to those scenes, fearing that they would clearly resemble audition scenes.”

MICHELLE PFEIFFER (Lamia):
“Lamia has been around for five thousand years. The first time we did the make-up it took six hours and it was like monster make-up. I remember calling Matthew saying, ‘I look like a monster!’ So we kept toning it down. Believe it or not, it started out much more exaggerated. We finally got it down to something that was as hideous as we could go but still looked human.”

CLAIRE DANES (Yvaine):
“Some of the dialogue is really witty and clever, full of juicy irony. I worked with a dialect coach to get the English accent down and she suggested that I watch a lot of contemporary British television comedy shows, and I did because they’re great and I had such fun with it. Then I found myself acting with Ricky Gervais – I had been an avid fan of his since The Office, he’s godlike.”

COX on working with Robert De Niro:
“It’s an experience that I think very few people are lucky enough to have, to work with someone you’ve idolized for much of your life. I can’t entirely grasp it. So it’s a memory that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life. During shooting he’d say, ‘Just call me Bobby,’ but I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”

DANES on dancing with De Niro:
“He stepped on a few toes! No, it was great. We did a version of that scene where the pirates joined in and were dancing with each other. That was finally cut out, but that was one of those pinch-myself kind of moments.”

PFEIFFER:
“I worked with Claire when she was 15, and I was so impressed with her. Then, when she was so young, she was intelligent and intuitive and I was really stuck by how grounded and mature she was, and she’s exactly the same.”

COX:
“There was a huge vase [in one of the scenes] that Michelle Pfeiffer was supposed to do magic and it was going to hit me and disintegrate. It hit me at full power, I just went flying and it broke over the camera. It knocked me out for a minute.”

DANES:
“I did acquire an injury, but in such a weird way. The scene where I was in the crater [after falling from the sky] I’m kind of twisted, I stayed in that position for a couple of days because we shot it from a lot of angles, and I pulled my muscle and I had to go to physical therapy. What a lame way to get injured!”

Written by Judy Sloane. Back to top

Visit the official Stardust site
Images above © Paramount Pictures
Feature © 2007 Visual Imagination.
Not for reproduction.

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