The tall, fresh-faced and very British Hugh Dancy has hit Hollywood hard. He’s stepping into the space vacated by Hugh Grant with a crafty elegance that makes him seem like a distinctive, mercurial yin, to Daniel Craig’s potent, earthy yang.

Evening features a dazzling cast headed by Claire Danes, with Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, Glenn Close and Meryl Streep. It’s preceded by The Jane Austen Book Club where he raises the pulse of a bunch of lonely single and divorced women.

Dancy started his career as a model, but before that, he studied English literature at Oxford, following in the footsteps of his distinguished father, who is a professor of philosophy.

“I tripped into acting, really. I arrived at boarding school when I was 13 and I didn’t particularly want to be there. I missed home, so I went a little bit off the rails. One time, as a punishment, somebody sent me to the theatre . This was an all-male school, so the theatre was the only walk of life where the local girls got involved,” Dancy says.

“I was roped in to acting, and it was a great way to get exposed to something that I normally would never have done in a million years,” he says.

From his first TV role, playing David Copperfield in a BBC version of the Dickens novel, Hugh went from one costume drama to the next, collecting raves every time.

“I was beginning to wonder if I would ever make it into this century with a role in which I wore trousers and not tights or suits of armour that are a constant threat to your manhood,” he says.

The decisive modern break came when he landed a key role in Evening, a romantic melodrama set in the 1950s. When asked about being called “the next big thing”, Dancy shifts uncomfortably and his already ruddy cheeks flush a deeper red.

“I hear people saying things like I’m the ‘phenomenon of the moment’ but what does that mean? I’ve just got more work to talk about than usual,” he says.

“The heat — or lack thereof — is a completely external factor. It’s invented by the media, to the point it seems true, but it’s dangerous when people become bigger than the work they do ,” Dancy says.

Nonetheless, the women who loved Evening feel the heat and when he makes his entrance in The Jane Austen Book Club wearing skin-tight, blue Lycra cycling shorts, temperatures will rise again and confirm that Hugh Dancy really is “the new big thing”.

The Jane Austen Book Club opens on January 4 and Evening opens on January 11.

Source: The Times (New Zealand)

Posted on December 30, 2007 by Anna
Filed In News