Lending Support

As impressed as Michael Fassbender was by Mia Wasikowska, there was one actor in the cast who truly knocked him back on his heels. "Well, you know – the Dame," he marvels. "To find out that Judi Dench was in the cast…! Then you feel blessed just to be sitting in the green room talking. There’s gold dust on her, and you hope that it might fall onto you when she passes by. I cherished our scenes together."

Fassbender and Dench joked around to keep spirits up while working in some of the colder and darker corridors of Haddon Hall. Wasikowska was thrilled "to get to see how Judi works."

Getting Dench to play Thornfield's housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, was a coup for the production. It was a personal letter from Cary Joji Fukunaga that persuaded her to take the role. "When she said 'yes,' it made the process even more exciting," he notes. "Especially since we were bringing on someone who amounts to a cultural institution in the U.K. She is the epitome of gravitas and the mere idea – or, rather, fear – of working with her on-set made the challenge and joy of the project that much greater. What can you really say to someone who's made more films with more talented collaborators than I could ever hope to in a lifetime?"

The Oscar winner cites having read the novel "when Charlotte Bronte had just written it" and laughs before reminiscing, "I read it at school, I think. I've always thought it was a wonderful story. It stayed with me."

Dench was therefore intrigued by the tone that the filmmakers were aiming for. She remarks, "This story has been done many times, but I felt that Cary had quite different, dark ideas about it – ones which I hope will excite people to read the book.

"The novel is quite ambiguous as to who knows what in Thornfield – does Mrs. Fairfax know the specifics of the secret of the house? There's this very romantic mystery to the story."

For the sequences revolving around romantic rivals to both Jane and Rochester, Wasikowska and Fassbender were each reunited with actors they had previously played opposite – and in even colder climates. Rising star Imogen Poots, who had shared the sole low-key scenes with Fassbender in Centurion, was cast as Blanche Ingram, Rochester's prospective fiancee; and Jamie Bell, whose character had courted Wasikowska's in the fact-based WWII tale Defiance, would now be doing so again in the role of St. John Rivers.

In-between set-ups for his scenes with Wasikowska, Bell could be found dazzling crew members with his ability to tap-dance on soggy wooden boarding that was barely keeping thick, wet mud at bay.

Wasikowska offers, "Knowing somebody who you could have a laugh with in-between scenes balanced out the intensity of some of the material that we were playing out together on Jane Eyre. I don't think that I ever have as much fun working with anybody as I do with Jamie."

Bell takes care to point out that "from rehearsal rooms to walk-throughs on the set, Mia is willing to do the work to make it better and make it her own. I knew she would do justice to the role of Jane Eyre.

"As part of this film’s exploring this story and these characters, you see the awkwardness and the energy of youth; Mia is a young person playing a young person, not a 28-year-old playing a girl. There is also some casting against the grain – especially me as a man of the cloth."

Fassbender took note of how Bell incarnated "Sinjin" Rivers; "I liked the way Jamie brought an edge to St. John. He and I talked about it. He's the character as a man who has to keep his life so strictly regimented and controlled because he is afraid of what he's capable of doing."

Bell elaborates, "My take on St. John is that he is emotionally repressed. I believe that he considers it a weakness to express emotions. He makes choices out of pragmatism, rather than emotion; he is the antithesis of Rochester.

"Charlotte Bronte describes him in the novel as 'as inexorable as Death,' and that pretty much nails it. While the story to me is about a woman searching for her own self-respect and individuality in a world with barriers, Moira Buffini's screenplay brings all of the novel's themes and undercurrents together as Jane comes to the precipice of decisions about her life."

Like Wasikowska, Poots was happy to be acting opposite a "familiar face, and Michael is so kind. I had a teacher who helped me through a big sequence, which was singing an 1830s operetta. But for me, the horse-riding was more fun."

Poots also welcomed the chance to bring different shadings to her character, knowing that viewers familiar with the story are poised to see Blanche as "the stereotypical rival. In the novel, she registers as quite conniving.

But I wanted to play her as more surprised and unsure about how things are turning out. She breaks formalities in terms of being too tactile with Rochester."

Tamzin Merchant and Holliday Grainger were cast as the sisters to Bell's St. John. Merchant notes, "I love being part of telling stories and my character, Mary Rivers, sees the story in everything. She's so imaginative. She is fascinated by Jane – and thrilled at the idea of this stranger coming in from the moors and into her close-knit family."

Grainger says, "Tamzin and Jamie and I bonded one afternoon with a guitar-and-song session. Our harmonies never really meshed, though."

Merchant clarifies, "The sisters' relationship is harmonious, but Holliday and I might have been a little off-key with our duet."

Grainger feels that "the Rivers siblings are close because their parents are gone and their home is remote, almost in the middle of nowhere. I made my character, Diana, maternal because she is the older sister. So she's sort of taken over the mothering role, and behaves that way immediately towards Jane while also being sisterly with her."

Neither can be said of Jane's aunt, Mrs. Reed. Golden Globe Award winner Sally Hawkins, who accepted the role, muses, "I think the most chilling people are the ones who wear the mask of a demeanor of niceness. Cary and I spoke about that early on, about how to make it unnerving with this character. I don't get to play the evil parts much, so this was a good opportunity for me as an actor.

But Mrs. Reed is full of contradictions, and I feel sorry for her. Her anger and hatred come from feeling threatened by this little girl. There's a fire and intelligence in Jane that scares her aunt. However much Mrs. Reed tries to knock it out of her, Jane has more in her. Cary was very good at subtly ratcheting that up by degrees."

Hawkins took the initiative on research. She says, "I went to the National Portrait Gallery and looked at paintings from the time, studying the way women held themselves or sat, and what they did with their hands. I wanted to absorb the etiquette of the day."

Hawkins praises Amelia Clarkson as "brilliant, and able to summon real force in her emotions." Clarkson, along with Freya Parks and Romy Settbon Moore, is one of a cadre of child actors in the cast.

Fukunaga remarks, "They may have had classical training or attend acting schools, but I found these U.K. child actors to be quite natural."

The director had worked with children before, and with non-professionals. Settbon Moore, who had never acted prior, was both. Fukunaga took it all in stride, noting that "whether it was Romy or one of the older girls, it was about letting the kids play out scenes and then also giving them a little bit of direction."

Settbon Moore explains that she came to be in Jane Eyre as Adele, the orphan girl who takes to Jane being her governess, because "the casting agency sent an e-mail to my school looking for an 8-year-old girl speaking English and French. I did the audition with my friends, and I got called. Then I auditioned for young Jane. They found that I was a bit too young for that, so they chose me for Adele.

"Before every scene, Cary was really clear with me. I went over the movements, and I memorized the words, and I would do it. If Cary didn't like it, he would say, ‘Actually, do it that way...' Mia and Michael were like new classmates. I would like to search for more roles in films."

Although too young to have read the book, Settbon Moore familiarized herself with the story in another way before the film shoot; "I saw the [Franco] Zeffirelli film [version]," she offers.

Parks and Clarkson are at the age where the story of Jane Eyre speaks directly to them. Cast as Jane's friend and inspiration Helen Burns, Parks sees her character as central "to the story's message of how things can change in life, and you must overcome them."

Clarkson, cast as Jane Eyre at age 10, says, "As a child, Jane goes through a lot. She has no deviousness in her at all, but she gets through everything. I tried to let all the emotions that Jane feels build up.

"When I got the script, I went through it with my grandma. I did Jane, and she did the other parts. I would read the script before going to bed, and go over how I would react in a situation and how to say the lines – what they meant, where to put the emphasis, and with the right Yorkshire accent."

Parks also worked on getting the right accent, and read through parts of the book with her grandmother. Her take on Helen was that "she is strong. Even when she is dying and I had to act weak, I knew that Helen would not cry. I cried afterwards.

I also thought of all the gunk she would have in her lungs, and from pretending to cough as Helen I developed a cough myself."

Parks also reports that "when Amelia and I would rehearse she would put all the emotion into it, which was doing it right. [On the set,] Cary would tell us what he wanted to see, and have us say our lines in different ways."

Having spent time rehearsing and on-set together, Clarkson and Parks forged a close connection paralleling the one that sustains Jane. "Freya and I became close friends," reveals Clarkson. "Meeting her was the highlight of the shoot. So the toughest scene to do was the one where Helen dies."

"Those bonds that are created off-camera play out on-camera," notes Fukunaga.

Along those lines, at Pinewood Studios before shooting began, Clarkson sat with Fukunaga and Wasikowska so that the actresses could discuss their shared character with the director. "We went through my scenes," remembers Clarkson. "Mia played Aunt Reed, which was fun! She and I then walked around Pinewood and talked about what Jane goes through, and how lines would relate to different times in the story. It was like Mia had memorized the script."

Eyeing the bigger picture in another regard, Wasikowska was inspired by the company and the locations to follow in the footsteps of such actors as Jeff Bridges and Peter Sellers by exercising photographic skills; she would have cameras on hand to avidly grab shots between scenes and set-ups.

She explains, "My parents are photographers and I grew up around cameras. I never thought it would be anything that I'd do, but in the last few years I've become interested in it – and I really love it. As an actor, you're constantly waiting until they’re ready to shoot, so this is a release for me.

"I'd notice that we were on a period-set film, and there would be all this modern-day equipment trucked into a historic mansion."

That motif became one of the themes of her photographs; another was the concept of asking the subject to jump up in the air. Time and again, Wasikowska captured cast and crew members seemingly suspended in mid-air, flying away from the surroundings and costumes.

So, who leapt best? No surprise; the onetime Billy Elliot did. Fassbender reveals, "Jamie Bell gets five stars. His body control is pretty impressive."


The Source