Emily Mortimer is feeling quite bookish.
Ive since become a big fan of hers.
I love her prose style.
Lisbeth Salas/Greenwich Entertainment
Its incredibly wry and heartbreaking without being at all sorry for itself.
She told me that Isabel wanted to send me a script.
I just felt it was really unusual.
To me, it felt like the opposite of the American-dream story.
Thats one of the first and last lines of it youre never lonely in a bookshop.
Theres a freedom that being a reader gives you that nothing can take away from you.
I just liked that.
In preparing for the role, did you do much research into Penelope Fitzgerald?Yes, I did.
I read a biography of her that was really instructive.
She herself was one.
She went to Cambridge and was very, very bright.
It wasnt until she was in her 60s that she started writing novels….
When he finally died, she came out of herself and wrote a book and became this star writer.
She was brave and determined and didnt take herself or anything much too seriously.
The most important thing was to never feel very sorry for myself.
That was something I got from reading the biography, as well as other books written by Penelope Fitzgerald.
Did your own personal love of reading or books inform your choices?Yes.
Although I feel, funnily enough, doing this movie has got me back into reading.
But there are other periods of your life when life gets in the way…. Just mounting up as this mountain of guilt.
But Im back into it now again, after a few years of having young kids.
Its an antidote to confusion about life and the world we live in.
Theres something about being able to lose yourself in a book that is a kind of medicine.
That is an especially good antidote for the modern moment.
I didnt practice selling books.
I probably should have done.
Theres an interesting push and pull between the on-the-surface propriety and the under-the-surface feeling.
Thats something Isabel really succeeded in bringing out, in a way that is quite devastating at times.
Do you have a favorite memory from shooting?Every scene I did with Bill.
I love him as a person.
I just love who he is.
Hes an incredibly elegant man inside and out, and a real gentleman inside and out.
Acting with him was so easy and fun.
That will be the great takeaway from having done the movie, as well as having discovered Isabel.
Blackwells in Oxford is really one of the great bookshops of the world.
Its really exciting going in there, and yet its not intimidating.
Somehow its very welcoming.
Its not just undergraduates [at Oxford University] that go there.
Everybody in the city goes to Blackwells to get a book.
From kids to old people to everybody and all the students.
Walking around is just incredible.
You feel a little bit cleverer and better read by osmosis from having gone in there.
Its full of curious people wanting to know more about the world.
Its a good vibe.
My dad went to Oxford, and so did my brother.
And my grandfather went to Oxford too, my dads dad.
[Mortimer herself also attended Oxford].
I like going into Blackwells with my kids.
