Emma Watson has graduated from Hogwarts and landed her first post-Harry Potter grown-up role.
The actress, 20, who has played Hermione Granger in eight movies, including the much-anticipated two final Deathly Hallows instalments, has won a part opposite Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Dominic Cooper and Judi Dench in the movie My Week With Marilyn.
The film tells the story of Colin Clark (Redmayne), who worked as Laurence Olivier's assistant on the picture The Prince And The Showgirl, which starred bombshell Marilyn Monroe (Williams) and Olivier ( Branagh), who also directed.
Clark penned a diary that charted nine days of close contact with Monroe, with whom he was smitten. He included tales about skinny-dipping with her in the Thames and taking her to visit his godfather at Windsor Castle.
All grown up: Emma Watson has landed her first post Harry Potter grown-up role
Lucy and Clark had a few dates which, according to his book The Prince, The Showgirl And Me (a precursor to My Week With Marilyn), usually involved Clark whizzing her up to London in his Bristol sports car, visiting a club and going on to his parents' 'set' at The Albany, where 'she kisses like an angel'.
It's not a huge role, but it's an astute pick for a young actress making the transition from school-girl ingenue to adult parts.
She can probably shoot her scenes in a few days, meaning she won't require too much time away from university in the U.S. Her deal for the film is in the final stages of negotiation
The main shooting schedule at Pinewood studios begins on October 4. But Judi Dench, portraying Dame Sybil Thorndike (who played the Queen Dowager in The Prince And The Showgirl), has been filming her scenes this week because she has to scoot over to India to work on John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with her pal Maggie Smith, and Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie and Dev Patel.
Philip Jackson will play Monroe's private detective; Zoe Wanamaker is Monroe's acting consultant Paula Strasberg, who drove Olivier into a fury whenever she appeared at the studio; and Richard Clifford is Richard Wattis, the gifted actor who played an officious courtier in Showgirl.
Dominic Cooper portrays Milton Greene, Monroe's snazzy business partner and a co-producer of The Prince And The Showgirl.
He will shoot his scenes in between working on Captain America: The First Avenger, which is occupying sound stages over at Shepperton studios.
Emma Watson has grown up in the public eye since landing the role of Hermione Granger in Harry Potter, right
Smash and grab raid on Affleck's film
Jeremy Renner got a masterclass in the art of robbing banks when he worked on his new movie.Ben Affleck hired Renner - who was Oscar-nominated for his role in the award-winning film The Hurt Locker - to star with him, Rebecca Hall and Jon Hamm in the caper thriller The Town, which opens today.
Smash and grab: Actor Jeremy Rennerhung out with real-life bank robbers for his new film The Town
The 39-year-old arrived on location two weeks before filming so he could hang out with locals and meet a few career professionals. 'I had no experience of robbing banks or that lifestyle,' he joked, 'so I had to find out from the experts.'
He met several guys just out of prison and they were candid with their stories. 'It was so foreign to me, but for them robbing banks is an occupation. This is their job, and they take it very seriously.
'A lot of planning goes into it because, believe it or not, they don't want people to get hurt. It was really strange. One of them told me that they took the view that "that's our money in the bank and we just gotta go and get it".
'I couldn't wrap my brain around that, but those conversations gave me a sense of that life.' His homework paid off because his performance steals the picture.
The thing about Renner is that he has no vanity. I met him in Toronto two years ago when The Hurt Locker was first shown, and the success of that film has brought enormous opportunites - but he takes it all in his stride.
Next, he's shooting Mission Impossible 4 with Tom Cruise (he's one of the operatives).
'The studios kept trying to get me to do a romantic comedy and, in a way, Mission Impossible is my version of romantic comedy - it's some fun. I've played so many heavy twisted characters that this should be light by comparison.'
Filming will begin in Prague and continue in Dubai and Vancouver until next year, when Renner moves on to the superhero film The Avengers.
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At one point, the BBC considered fast-tracking its new drama, Upstairs Downstairs, to compete with ITV's Downton Abbey. That show, created by Julian Fellowes, follows relationships between a titled family, who reside in a grand house, and the staff who look after them.
The Corporation thought better of it - and just as well, because their series would have to be pretty damn good to top Downton Abbey, which stars Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Elizabeth McGovern and Siobhan Finneran (who plays a maid who does something so malevolent in the first episode, broadcast on Sunday, that I found myself shouting 'you cow!' at the screen). Gripping stuff.
A Brylcreem boy gets Rachel's engine running
Rachel Weisz has been introduced to the new men in her life: Simon Russell Beale and Tom Hiddleston, two actors who will explore aspects of love with her on the screen. They will play, respectively, her estranged husband William Collyer, a high court judge, and her lover Freddie Page, a former RAF World War II fighter pilot, in Terence Davies's new screen version of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea.
As Rachel (right) put it to me: 'It's about Hester, a woman who, to put it bluntly, had never experienced good sex until she met Freddie.'
The Oscar-winning actress met her leading men at the Union club in Soho where they joined Davies in studying the text in preparation for shooting in November.
The project is being supported by Film 4 and the UK Film Council and should officially receive the green light in the next few days.
Rachel has carved five weeks out of a crazy schedule, which finds her with several movies ready to film back-to-back, in order to do the picture.
Last week, she attended the Toronto International Film Festival for the world premiere of The Whistle Blower, in which she gives a performance of major award calibre.
Davies remembered seeing Rachel in Beeban Kidron's Swept From The Sea. 'I fell off the sofa when I saw her,' he says. 'She has the kind of luminosity that will last till she's 90. When producer Sean O'Connor suggested we do The Deep Blue Sea I said: "Offer it to her!" '
On-screen love: Rachel Weisz will team up with Tom Hiddleston in a new screen version of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea
'Basically, Hester's a conventional woman, but she does something deeply unconvent ional simply because she falls in love and has proper sex for the first time,' says Davies.
'As soon as it happens, it changes her profoundly. She finds this carnality, she finds her voice, she finds her rage!'
But while Freddie provides Hester with a shot of vitality, he can't give her emotional love.
Hiddleston's pretty hot right now, having spent six months in Hollywood filming Kenneth Branagh's feature Thor and is now shooting War Horse for Steven Spielberg.
He explained that Freddie never came to terms with the loss of so many of his friends in the war. 'As a result, he lives for the moment - for his kind of love, luck, golf and Guinness. He's drawn to Hester ' s soul and warmth.'But when he ' s confronted with the realisation that Hester might do something drastic, he can't cope with the thought of more loss.
No wonder Davies describes the story as being about 'the mystery of love'.
But the director also sees other layers in The Deep Blue Sea that are a commentary on society then - and now. He explained that, once upon a time, there was a quality in British life - 'that quiet thing that we don't have any more. It's that sense that you carry on because you've got to'.
But he will hope to recreate that mood when The Deep Blue Sea hits our screens this time next year.
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The Dagenham Girl Pipers celebrate their 80th anniversary on October 2 with a party. There are few of the bagpipers left, so they've gone into semi-retirement but still perform the odd show, and they're doing something with Eric Idle.
The producers of the film Made In Dagenham wanted them in the movie, but there weren't enough of them to play their pipes on a march. The DGPs have always been the butt of jokes; Eric Morecambe used to enjoy ribbing them, but I wish them many happy returns.
Watch out for...
Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield (giving the performance of his career so far) and Justin Timberlake, who star in David Fincher's scorching new film The Social Network.
Andrew Garfield
The movie critic Pauline Kael used to say that certain pictures left her giddy with excitement, and after seeing The Social Network - and absorbing Aaron Sorkin's machinegun dialogue - I know what she meant. It's seriously cracking stuff.
The film is one version of how the networking site Facebook was founded. Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the socially inept Harvard student, hopeless at connecting with people himself, who links them via the internet.
It's an awesome story about the nature of betrayal. Zuckerberg froze out his one-time friend Eduardo Saverin (Garfield), and others who may, or may not have, helped to create Facebook. Much of the film concerns the legal fallout that ensued and it makes for riveting cinema.
Zuckerberg's a fascinating character and Eisenberg nails him, but I think Garfield's take on Saverin is a masterful piece of acting.
Garfield's at the top of his game just now, what with his performance in Never Let Me Go, the movie that opens the BFI London Film Festival on October 13, and Spiderman, which he films at the end of the year.
The Social Network will be a major Oscar contender in several categories, and its major rival will be The King's Speech about the man who became George VI after the abdication of his brother.
Penelope Keith
Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles, who will bring Peter Hall's production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals into the Theatre Royal, Hay-market, previewing from November 10 and running through till late February 2011.
Hall will celebrate his 80th birthday on November 22 and will then direct his daughter Rebecca in Twelfth Night at the National Theatre from January 11 opposite Simon Callow and Marton Csokas.
John Owen-Jone, who lifts the 25th anniversary concert production of Les Miserables, on now at the Barbican (where the original show began).
This isn't Trevor Nunn and John Caird's electifying original version. It's very different, with new orchestrations, sets and staging, and it took me a while to get used to it.
But Claude-Michel Schonberg's score is still heartbreaking, and one of the most powerful written in the past quarter of a century, and Owen-Jones sings his numbers - particularly Bring Him Home - beautifully.
Cameron Mackintosh is also presenting a mammoth spectacular Lez Miz show at the 02 Centre on October 3. There'll be scores of stars on stage, but I will be training my eyes on Anita Land in the chorus.
Ms Land is an agent (her clients include Jeremy Paxman and John Sergeant) and she is so obsessed with Les Miz she took singing lessons to perform at the 02.
Give her a show of her own, I say! After all, her brother Michael Grade is about to buy up loads of West End theatres.
