Jeremy Northam No Villains **

Fear has helped bug actor Jeremy Northam into a career that's taken flight HOLLYWOOD -- Jeremy Northam knows something about fear. And being chased through the sewers of New York by mutant roaches in his new film, Mimic, was child's play compared to the real terror this actor has faced. Northam is the fellow who, in a famous 1980s stage production of Hamlet, had to come on stage and replace Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. Day-Lewis had a breakdown in the middle of a performance, and Northam had to step in. ''The fear engendered in taking over Hamlet, halfway into the show, when you're rehearsing the part of Laertes by day and playing Osric and a couple of other characters by night, in front of 1,300 people at the National Theatre, when you've not rehearsed the part, is a totally different kind of fear,'' he said, raising an eyebrow as he smiled. ''With bugs, you don't know what's out there. But you have a fairly good idea of what's going to happen in Hamlet. You're going to spend the next three and half hours racking your mind for the next line, and then trying to fit it into your mouth.'' He held the stage manager's hand offstage as the audience was told that Day-Lewis would be unable to finish the performance (or indeed the run of the show). Then, he came out from the wings and delivered his first line. '' 'O, all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?' A more apt line I could not have started with.'' He was playing Hamlet, the greatest role on the English-speaking stage, in front of the most demanding Shakespeare audience in the world. And he was doing it without a net. ''I take my hat off to the audience who stayed behind. Of course, they must've had a cruel streak; the sort of people who might stay behind and watching a rather one-sided boxing match. I was pinned against the ropes. The referee wasn't going to stop it. And they stayed to watch.'' He cherishes this memory, and not just because he can conjure it up any time he needs to show absolute terror on the screen. It was his big break. ''A few nights later, I started to get a handle on it,'' he recalled. He certainly did. Hamlet led to other starring roles. He later won an Olivier Award for his stage work. He went to Hollywood, where he played a slick English villain opposite Sandra Bullock (The Net) and a smooth, lovesick English gentleman opposite Gwyneth Paltrow (Emma). He has used his rising fame as a means of never repeating himself. Other actors may pay lip service to ''never getting type-cast.'' Northam, 35, is doing it. ''When I did The Net, I knew I wouldn't play another villain for a long time. When I did Emma, I knew I wouldn't be in period costume again for a while. After Emma I did this little, offbeat English film, The Tribe. I play a property developer's henchman who tries to move this cult out of a housing complex. And in Mimic . . . the main thing I wanted to do was play a male protagonist in an action film, someone who's cerebral and quite incapable of dealing with these physical things he finds himself doing.'' In Mimic, Northam plays a scientist who marries another scientist after they team up to find a way to end an epidemic. Years later, the results of their first success come back to haunt them in the form of genetically altered super-bugs. The bugs mimic humans in order to succeed in a human-dominated world. It's a stretch to say so, but that's not terribly unlike what an actor does. ''The only ambition I have is to do the most varied work I can, while enjoying the process I go through with each new part,'' Northam said. ''I enjoy acting a little bit more than being an actor.'' He followed that by donning a period costume to do a few days work on Amistad, Steven Spielberg's film about the 1839 uprising on board a slave ship bound for America. He plays an American judge in that one. ''Small part, interesting though, with a great script, great cast and Steven Spielberg,'' he said. And he has just done an offbeat romantic comedy, The Misadventures of Margaret, opposite Brooke Shields and Parker Posey, an alumna of the N.C. School of the Arts. ''You know, I'm just trying to avoid doing what Hollywood wants all we Brits to do. Villains. That's all we're good for, you know.''
By Roger Moore, Journal Arts Reporter - Published Aug. 21, 1999