IMDb > Stage Beauty (2004)
Stage Beauty
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Stage Beauty (2004) More at IMDbPro »

Videos (see all 11 NEW)
Stage Beauty (2004) -- A female theatre dresser creates a stir and sparks a revolution in seventeenth century London theatre by playing Desedmona in Othello. But what will become of the male actor she once worked for and eventually replaced?
Stage Beauty (2004) -- A female theatre dresser creates a stir and sparks a revolution in seventeenth century London theatre by playing Desedmona in Othello. But what will become of the male actor she once worked for and eventually replaced?
Stage Beauty (2004) -- A female theatre dresser creates a stir and sparks a revolution in seventeenth century London theatre by playing Desedmona in Othello. But what will become of the male actor she once worked for and eventually replaced?
Stage Beauty (2004) -- Trailerfan.com - Trailer (Flash)
Stage Beauty (2004) -- Sinematurk - Trailer (Flash)

Overview

User Rating:
7.1/10   5,267 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 1% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Richard Eyre
Writers (WGA):
Jeffrey Hatcher (play)
Jeffrey Hatcher (screenplay)
Contact:
View company contact information for Stage Beauty on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
3 wrzesieñ 2004 (UK) more
Genre:
Drama more
Tagline:
She was the first of her kind. He was the last of his.
Plot:
A female theatre dresser creates a stir and sparks a revolution in seventeenth century London theatre by playing Desedmona in Othello. But what will become of the male actor she once worked for and eventually replaced? full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
Awards:
3 wins & 1 nomination more
User Comments:
Seventeenth-century Stanislavsky more (88 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)
Derek Hutchinson ... Stage Manager
Mark Letheren ... Male Emilia / Dickie

Claire Danes ... Maria

Billy Crudup ... Ned Kynaston

Tom Wilkinson ... Betterton

Ben Chaplin ... George Villiars, Duke of Buckingham

Hugh Bonneville ... Samuel Pepys
Jack Kempton ... Call Boy
Alice Eve ... Miss Frayne
Fenella Woolgar ... Lady Meresvale

David Westhead ... Harry
Nick Barber ... Nick

Stephen Marcus ... Thomas Cockerell
Richard Griffiths ... Sir Charles Sedley
Zoe Tapper ... Nell Gwynn
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Additional Details

Also Known As:
Compleat Female Stage Beauty (UK) (working title)
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MPAA:
Rated R for sexual content and language.
Runtime:
106 min
Country:
UK | Germany | USA
Language:
English
Color:
Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
DTS | Dolby Digital
Company:
Qwerty Films more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
While the movie does not claim strict historical accuracy, it features many characters based on actual personalities from the seventeenth-century stage. Ned Kynaston did play female roles, but also played male roles before and after women were allowed on stage. He would have been 20 in 1660, when the first woman appeared on stage. Margaret Hughes (Maria) is supposed to have been the first woman to appear in a stage production, aged 30. She did appear as Desdemona in Othello, on December 8 at the theater on Vere Street operated by the King's Company, whose manager was Thomas Killigrew, not Thomas Betterton as the film shows. Betterton was a successful theater manager later, but was only 25 in 1660. Other characters also were not historically the age that they appear to be in the film - Nell Gwynn would have been 10. more
Goofs:
Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Pepys is telling Kynaston to play a man's role, Kynaston's lips are out of sync with his speech in some shots. more
Quotes:
Samuel Pepys: Tell me about your parentage, Miss Gwynn.
Nell Gwynn: My mum was a whore, my father was in the navy.
Samuel Pepys: I see.
Nell Gwynn: That's why I don't never do sailors.
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Movie Connections:
Referenced in "The Daily Show: (2004-10-21)" (2004) more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
21 out of 29 people found the following comment useful.
Seventeenth-century Stanislavsky, 19 listopad 2004
Author: livewire-6 from Ottawa, Canada

"All the world's a stage," wrote the Bard, "and all the men and women merely players that strut and fret their hour upon the stage."

"Stage Beauty" is set in the world of seventeenth-century Restoration theatre, but the stage serves as a microcosm for life itself, and the roles played by the actors before the public mirror the roles they play in their private lives. The question is, do they create their roles, or do their roles create them?

Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is an actor who takes on women's roles, since real women are not permitted to do so. He has been thoroughly trained and schooled in the then highly stylized technique of portraying women -- to such an extent that any trace of masculinity seems to have been drummed out of him.

His dresser Maria (Clare Danes) yearns to be an actress herself, but is prevented from doing so by the narrow conventions of Puritan England -- until Charles II is restored to the throne and decrees that, henceforth, real women shall play women's roles on the stage. A whole new world opens up for Maria, but it looks like curtains for Ned.

What happens next is pure anachronism: Ned and Maria are able to rise above the limitations and constraints of their era. Not only do they transcend their gender or sex roles, but they overcome their classical training and, in effect, engage in Method acting, a technique still three hundred years away in the far-distant future. When he teaches Maria how to break the mold and play Othello's Desdemona in a whole new, natural way, Ned becomes a seventeenth-century Stanislavsky.

But, by George, it works. Their performance of the celebrated death scene from "Othello" sends shock waves through an audience accustomed to pantomime and exaggerated gestures -- and it electrifies us as well.

Not since Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love" have an actor and actress so shimmered and shone simultaneously on stage and screen. One hopes that Billy Crudup and Clare Danes will be remembered for their luminous performances at the 2005 Academy Awards.

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Message Boards

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Recent Posts (updated daily)User
Samuel Pepys' character frogca
Girl in Carriage brunette_hobo_2
One liner that made me have a laughing fit rdswords
Anyone else relate personally to this movie? dazzlindancer
Oscar Nod for Crudup? HappyGuy779
So....do you think Ned loves Maria in the movie? instyleprincess
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