James Purefoy: he's the man who puts the oomph in this month's movie adaptation of the literary landmark Vanity Fair. Here, his co-star Reese Witherspoon takes off her crinoline and corset, puts on her reporter's hat, and gets the goods

Interview, Sept, 2004 by Reese Witherspoon

The league of extraordinary British stage actors teems with fierce talent and fiery nerve, and in no one is this more evident than in James Purefoy. The 40-year-old actor's boyhood in the bucolic English countryside of Somerset led to three years as a principal player with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a succession of minis, West End theater productions, and roles in period films such as Mansfield Park (1999) and A Knight's Tale (2001) that constitute the life of many a working bloke. But all that is about to change with his commanding performance in director Mira Nair's new film, Vanity Fair. Adapted from the William Makepeace Thackeray novel and redolent of Nair's love of her native India, this very modern meditation on the nature of ambition offers a searing look at the draconian social politics of early-19th century England, with Purefoy's brash, bemused Rawdon Crawley falling head over heels for social-climbing conniver Becky Sharp, played by Reese Witherspoon. Taken in turn with his upcoming role as Marc Antony in HBO's gargantuan new series, Rome, the world is about to awake to Purefoy's vast stores of cinematic charm. Here, the seasoned stage thesp gives Witherspoon a taste.

REESE WITHERSPOON: I'm actually excited, James, because I don't know much about your family background. All I know is that, like your character in Vanity Fair, you grew up very posh.

JAMES PUREFOY: Yes, I did grow up quite posh-ish.

RW: Posh-ish?

JP: Well, I'm not titled.

RW: But you could be if you really worked on it, right?

JP: I was titled once on my passport. There was a question on the form that said, "By which title would you like to be known?" And I thought, That's just a lethal question to ask, isn't it?

RW: Lord! You should have put "lord"!

JP: I think I put "marquis."

RW: What is a marquis? Can you give me the hierarchy of title-dom?

JP: So, there's king, queen, prince, duke--

RW: Duke.

JP: [laughs] No, not "dook" like John Wayne. Just "dyook"!

RW: Okay. Sorry. [with English pronunciation] "Dyook." Carry on.

JP: So, marquis, earl, lord, baron, and sir.

RW: And "sir" is the bottom rung?

JP: I think it goes just down to there, yeah.

RW: The fact that you know that just screams to me that you're posh. So, we had a really good time doing Vanity Fair, didn't we?

JP: Yeah. By the way, I haven't even spoken to you since I saw the film. You are magnificent! Your accent is flawless. I didn't pick up any mistakes at all.

RW: Oh, I heard a few clangers in there. But I thought the movie as a whole came off really well. It is such a performance piece where every character, even those that could have come off as very arch or one-note, end up being very multidimensional.

JP: Well, I love what Mira did with the story. So often with adaptations of great novels, especially with English directors, the film becomes just another telling of the story, and there's nothing new about it. But this is a really theatrical interpretation of the book, rather than a straightforward adaptation. Mira has put a lot of this Indian stuff in it, and I gather that the costumes aren't exactly right; I think, Well, hang on, do you say that when you go to see a modern-dress production of Hamlet? No, you don't. This is just her interpretation of this book.

RW: It's definitely an example of someone taking something and turning it on its ear. I think that if I was a writer, and it was 100, 200 years from now, and people were trying to interpret my work, I'd want them to bring it to a modern audience. That does honor to the writer, rather than saying, "Here's the same stuff. We're so reverent of the material that we're afraid to manipulate it." Did you cry when you saw the film?

JP: Yeah, two or three times. But then, you know, I'm a terrible blubberer, I'll cry at the drop of a hat. I'll cry at commercials.

RW: I know--you're kind of a softy like that. My favorite scene in the whole film is when my character tells your character we're having a baby. I just thought that was so real--I guess because I was having that happen in my own life at the time.

JP: That's the other thing I was thinking when I was watching the movie: She was seven months pregnant! You were so brave.

RW: Well, you were brave to have worked with a pregnant woman--you know, with the hormones.

JP: Well, being pregnant made your bosoms look magnificent!

RW: Well, thank you, James! My bosoms must look good--that's just sort of a rule I follow in life. [laughs]

JP: There is that wonderful shot of your bosoms in the carriage.

RW: Oh, my God! You're embarrassing me.

JP: But they really do heave.

RW: [laughs] That's enough.

JP: Seriously, you were so cool, so placid, so irritatingly nice. I wish I had something nasty to say, but I just don't.

RW: It would be so much better if you did.

JP: [laughs] Wasn't filming in India great?

RW: Oh, yeah! All 48 hours of it!

JP: I was there for a couple of weeks. Your stand in, the Swedish backpacker, was terrific.

RW: What do you mean?

JP: When you had to get on the plane and go back to Los Angeles, they pulled this poor girl off the streets of Jodhpur who had to stay and pretend to be you.