俄宫情怨

Julia Ormond was swept off to Hollywood to become a star - but somehow it didn't happen. Now she's in London to appear in David Hare's new play. She tells Harriet Lane why she came back
　　
　　Five years ago, the smart Hollywood money was on Julia Ormond becoming the new Julia Roberts or the new Meg Ryan. Instead, she went off at a different angle and became the new Geena Davis. Like Davis, Ormond enjoyed a spectacular launch in Hollywood, buoyed by gallons of publicity rocket fuel: a dazzling ascent swiftly followed by a tumble back to earth at the end of a blackened stick.
　　There is something rather Hilaire Belloc about Julia Ormond's story, something a little cautionary. Or rather, there would be if she would only play along with it, cast herself as The Fallen Star, or The Girl From Surrey Who Thought She Was Audrey Hepburn. But one role she's simply not interested in is that of victim. 'For sure, you don't believe the good stuff,' says Ormond, referring to the hullaballoo that surrounded her in 1995 when Legends of the Fall , First Knight and Sabrina all opened more or less simultaneously. 'I mean, the good stuff is just insane - wacky. If you don't take it too much to heart, it does help when the negative stuff hits. And you know the negative stuff is coming. It's got to! What comes up must come down.'
　　
　　
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　　And it's true: she did know it was coming. At 29, Ormond hadn't submitted rapturously to the star machine. There were sacrifices she didn't want to make. On-set admirers called her 'formidable' and 'flinty' and 'honest'; unnamed sources grumbled about 'attitude'. Looking back at her earliest interviews, conducted amid a swarm of excitable movie execs and publicists, with superagent Michael Ovitz himself on hand to fetch her glasses of water, you note a rich seam of ho-hum scepticism. 'They seem to be very sure things are going to be a success,' Ormond told Vogue in 1995. 'I'm not being negative about it, but I'm hedging my bets.'
　　Certainly, the timing was unfortunate. Legends of the Fall, where she played the love interest, was quickly followed by First Knight, a hilarious turkey in which a trumpet-sleeved Ormond was Guinevere, torn between Sean Connery and Richard Gere. Then came a remake of Sabrina, in which director Sydney Pollack misguidedly steered her into Audrey Hepburn's ballet pumps. Though she knows Sabrina was a mistake, Ormond has no regrets. 'It was a fantastic learning experience and OK, I got slammed because I wasn't Audrey Hepburn... but you could have predicted that, really, if you'd opened your eyes wide enough. But I was hungry for the learning experience and didn't feel secure enough to say no. You need to be bloody secure to say no.'