Creative Brits are the talk of the town

In New York, the pre-movie hype about Woody Allen’s latest movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, had all been about the kiss between Penélope Cruz, onscreen and real-life girlfriend of male lead Javier Bardem, and America’s modern version of Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson.

So as I shovelled down popcorn at the New York premiere last week I was taken aback: who was the other female lead – the non-famous actor who plays the part of cerebral, no-nonsense Vicky, the on-screen contrast to Johansson’s mercurial Cristina? Her dark brown eyes conveyed a dismaying pain, a depth of feeling obviously at odds with her more controlled words.

At the dinner afterwards, hosted by the producer, Harvey Weinstein and his gorgeous English wife, Georgina Chapman, everyone was asking the same question. “Who was she?” Eventually I asked Javier Bardem. “She’s Rebecca Hall,” he explained in his low, gritty voice. In other words, she’s the daughter of the British director, Sir Peter. Bardem became passionate: “She is really, really talented,” he said.

Hall is not the only British actor to have excited New Yorkers this summer. Ricky Gervais is a stand-out as a British dentist in Ghost Town; Pierce Brosnan was a joy in Mamma Mia! and Christian Bale’s performance as Batman in The Dark Knight has caught the attention of directors. And as for British director Chris Nolan? With The Dark Knight he is the first director to transform a traditional blockbuster into a thinking-person’s film while breaking all box office records.

British talent excelling in Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. But as the downturn takes hold there are fewer roles and fewer quality films: that makes British success all the more striking.

I can’t explain why British people are good at acting or directing or writing or being creative – but the Americans have long accepted that they just are. The answer occurred to me as I talked to Chapman, who has broken through as a leading fashion designer: she told me with a laugh, “I don’t think I could face going to a gym” – not a view shared, I suspect, by the toned Americans in the room. Perhaps it’s that distinctively British refusal to be cloned, an insistence on being individual, that sets our creatives apart.

Whatever it is, this summer, in New York, it’s working.

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It’s official: guys can wear shorts to work

F or women, dressing for summer here is a whole lot easier (and cheaper) than in London. You know that stepping outside will feel like walking into a blast furnace, so you choose pretty light sundresses and then you buy a cardigan to battle the freezing air-conditioning inside.

But for the men? I have long pitied the sweating faces on top of summer suits and shirts (most eschew ties) who have to walk into the heat for lunch, or meetings, or the commute home.

Now, though, sartorial change is afoot, at least according to the New York Times, a trend confirmed by my own observations.

It’s official: most guys can wear shorts to work. The transition has occurred thanks to male icons like the hunky CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, who wore shorts while delivering dispatches from abroad; then there’s star hockey player Sean Avery, who is interning at Vogue this summer. He showed up there in a shorts suit.

Meanwhile our new national guru and presidential candidate Barack Obama wears shortsleeved shirts, which until recently were a major fashion faux pas but now suddenly seem cool. The new casual dress code is a mammoth transition from the days when President Nixon felt he had to keep his shoes on on the beach.

There are those in hospitals and on Wall Street who are still required to cover their knees but most don’t wear jackets and certainly not ties. New York men have worked out that the trick to looking cool is to wear tan or stone-coloured trousers and a light-coloured shirt. Pink or pale blue looks good but white is a big no-no – you can see sweaty armpits through it. Nothing is less attractive than perspiration. The French were quite right when they complained that they didn’t want to see their premier, Nicolas Sarkozy, sweating on his daily jog. (Now he exercises behind closed walls.) To be confident is to be cool.

Dressing in tune with the weather is not a superficial matter. My boss has always shown up to the office in long shorts, an Aertex shirt and loafers; he looks comfortable, casual, yet the shoes show he knows he’s not on the beach. And that’s the crucial line. Shorts are OK. Looking as if you are about to sunbathe is not. Thus, in my offices at least, there is one unwritten rule: “No sunglasses on the head.” You have been warned.
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I’ve almost put my sons on the stage

T he light-bulb went off while I was driving home last weekend. From the back seat of the car, my twin five-year-olds burst into song: “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker …”

I have no idea where they heard such unsuitable lyrics (well, actually I do – their father will be spoken to) but it occurred to me that, since they were in tune, hey, why shouldn’t they put their talent to commercial use? I could rest and they could be the family breadwinners.

So within days I was sitting in a windowless room in Astoria, Queens, in a casting session for the US remake of the British TV series Life on Mars.

I’d already been faxed through the three pages of lines for the part of “young Colin” (Colin has a twin brother, apparently). We’d rehearsed in the kitchen the night before and, I must say, I was quite taken aback by how much they enjoyed themselves.

But in the audition waiting room the atmosphere was deadly serious.

My two wanted to talk to the other kids. But they were practising their lines with their parents. “Hey,” said one of mine,”I say those sentences too.” His rival’s mother gave him a death stare.

Soon came our turn. In went the first twin. I thought it a bit odd he was away for 15 minutes. He only had four sentences to say. Then his brother went in. Then I was called. More death stares.

“Have they ever done this before?” the casting director, a nice brusque woman, wanted to know. “Er … no,” I stammered.

“Could they stay and meet the director in two hours?” Two hours?

“Absolutely not,” I said thinking of all I had to do that day. She looked a bit surprised. We settled that they’d return during lunch hour in the next week.

The boys never met the director. The casting director now says she needs much older boys – but I was told she will want mine for other projects.

Had my unaccommodating attitude ruined it for the offspring, I asked their “agent”. I was assured, no. She added: “Most mothers call every morning wanting to know if jobs are available, and their children are utterly obnoxious. Until they are 10 this doesn’t hurt the kid’s chances, but generally casting directors don’t want nuisances on the set.”

It’s a relief: I’m not a “stage-mother”. Except I am still working – and the boys are still singing inappropriate songs in the back of the car.

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Divorce is Up, Personal Trainers Down

L ast week, in the wake of the near-implosion of mortgage insurer Fannie Mae, and with rumors swirling about the fate of Lehman Brothers, where the stock has plummeted 70 percent, I got an email from a friend. Instead of his usual pithy jokes — he sent me his investment fund’s second quarter report.

He wrote:

“Even as skeptics, we were amazed that the Federal Reserve kept interest rates so low for so long, that Congress and the Administration spent money so flagrantly, that lenders reduced their credit standards to such lax levels, and that consumers continued spending as their economic prospects dimmed.”

The world is now feeling the downside of such profligacy, and there is likely more bad news to come.”

The pressing question, as I look around, is at what cost to us is this bad news – not just in economic terms?

Bruce Yaffe, MD, who has a practice at Lenox Hill hospital, notes that he is seeing a surge in stress-related illnesses – from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, to acid reflux, to headaches, to musculoskeletal symptoms and sleep disturbance.

Dr. John Ryder, a New York stress management specialist says he is seeing more people resorting to pills and alcohol.

These findings do not surprise me.

Financiers tell me they spend their days looking at screens reflecting market movements, unable to work.

Worst affected are former middle-aged employees at Bear Stearns, which collapsed in March. They saw a lifetime’s savings in stock wiped out and are forced to consider taking salaries they would have sneered at a year ago from the few banks now hiring – British brokers Collins Stewart – or Australia’s Macquarie.

But people in every sector fear they could be laid off at any second.

Friends at Paramount suddenly got axed when Deutsche Bank pulled its film financing last week. Film-making is a risky business. Advertising revenues are down. “Flat is the new up” is the new joke in publishing. It’s not really that funny.

College graduates are being told they no longer had the job they thought they had locked up for September.

One person took a job with drug-makers Pfizer only to be told he’d be laid off within a month.

Small wonder that walking down Madison Avenue is like being in a ghost town, and that sales assistants are prepared to make house calls with designer clothes marked down by 80 per cent.

Divorce rates are up; personal trainers are losing their clients. No one has the time or inclination to work out.

The toll of all this is unguessable. Physical breakdown occurs after two years of major stress, according to the sociologist Alvin Toffler.

Two years…by then George W. Bush – whose “flagrant spending” my friend wrote about – won’t be in office to be held accountable.

This article was originally published, in slightly different form, by the London Evening Standard

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Divorce is up, personal trainers down

Last week, in the wake of the near-implosion of mortgage insurer Fannie Mae, and with rumours swirling about the fate of Lehman Brothers, where the stock has plummeted 70 per cent, I got an email from a friend. Instead of his usual pithy jokes, he sent me his investment fund’s second-quarter report. It read: “Even as sceptics, we were amazed that the Federal Reserve kept interest rates so low for so long, that Congress and the Administration spent money so flagrantly, that lenders reduced their credit standards to such lax levels, and that consumers continued spending as their economic prospects dimmed. The world is now feeling the downside of such profligacy, and there is likely more bad news to come.”

The pressing question, as I look around, is at what cost to us is this bad news – not just in economic terms? Bruce Yaffe, MD, who has a practice at Lenox Hill Hospital, notes that he is seeing a surge in stress-related illnesses. Dr John Ryder, a New York stress-management specialist, says he is seeing more people resorting to pills and alcohol.

These findings do not surprise me. Financiers tell me they spend their days looking at screens reflecting market movements, unable to work. Worst affected are former middle-aged employees at Bear Stearns, which collapsed in March. They saw a lifetime’s savings in stock wiped out. But people in every sector fear they could be laid off at any second.

Friends at Paramount suddenly got axed when Deutsche Bank pulled its film financing last week. Advertising revenues are down. “Flat is the new up” is the new joke in publishing. It’s not really that funny. College graduates are being told they no longer had the job they thought they had locked up for September. Small wonder that walking down Madison Avenue is like being in a ghost town. Divorce rates are up; personal trainers are losing their clients.

The toll of all this is unguessable. Physical breakdown occurs after two years of major stress, according to the sociologist Alvin Toffler. Two years … by then George W. Bush,whose “flagrant spending” my friend wrote about, won’t be in office to be held accountable.

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Tough times, but still they keep giving

New York’s billionaires, it seems, have not really noticed the downturn. They still spend their summers on lavish yachts in Europe, and are still flying in their own planes. Hearteningly, they also continue to give philanthropically on a vast scale.

Earlier this year, Blackstone Group chairman Stephen A Schwarzman gave $100 million to the New York Park Library. Last week, this town’s richest resident, David H Koch, 68, gave $100 million towards the renovation of the New York State theatre, at the Lincoln Center, where the New York City Ballet and City Opera performs.

In return for their generosity, both men get buildings named after them. But before you scoff that philanthropy is just a means to social climbing and tax-saving – I have heard plenty of withering criticism on the subject, always from friends in Britain, where philanthropy exists on a much lesser scale – consider this story.

Last summer my sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis: she is a young mother and was a first-rate athlete. I heard the news as I was jumping on the shuttle flight to Washington DC. By the time I got to the other end, and through an interview, it was too late to call the UK.

So, alone in my hotel room, I called around my New York girlfriends and, in tears, told them what had happened. They were amazing: uplifting and encouraging.

Fast forward to last week. My sister emailed to tell me that she, her children and husband would be doing a walk at the weekend in Windsor Great Park in aid of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and that she was seeking sponsorship. I emailed the same New York girlfriends and told them. Last Thursday, the day David Koch gave his millions to the Lincoln Center, my sister emailed me from London. “Who are ..?” She reeled off a list of names. They had all given her rather large sums of money. For my friends there is no tax benefit and no social advantage. “I can’t believe it,” my sister wrote. “They haven’t even met me.”

I spent the rest of the day whistling. It didn’t matter that the market bounced around like a yo-yo or that stores where I once shopped years ago were desperately calling because everything was now reduced to 80 per cent off.

Yes, these are dire economic times. But, just as our billionaires still go on their boats, so also, in this city, often criticised by outsiders for its shallowness and greed, authentic gestures of friendship and generosity endure.

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Time for Obama to Grow Up

A few months ago I went to a luncheon on New York’s Upper East Side and saw Michelle Obama speak, without notes, without hesitation.

Her husband was at that point still the underdog in the Democratic primary race, but the excitement in that room was palpable–and his wife lifted it further. She talked for almost an hour. You could have heard a pin drop. She concluded with the line, “Dream with me,” and you know how the story ended.

So imagine the excitement of many of those same people when they heard that Barack Obama would be appearing in New York next week–until, that is, the arrival of an email headlined “Exciting New Guest Next Week!”

Ooh, I thought. Al Gore?

I read on. “Senator Clinton” is to be the “exciting new guest” at the “Victory Fund” dinner and a Women’s Unity breakfast.

I wanted to vomit.

I thought the Unity stunt had ended, thankfully, in a painfully stilted mangle of matching blues last weekend in Unity, New Hampshire. Obviously I was wrong.

Actually, Barack Obama is also wrong, and someone needs to tell him so. Now that he’s got all those seasoned Clintonites on deck, maybe one of them can deliver the news: He doesn’t need to be entouraged–especially by the woman who went on 60 Minutes and said he’s not a Muslim, “as far as I know.”

America knows that in front of the cameras the Clintons and the Obamas have kissed and made up, but America is not stupid. We know this is performance politics and that Hillary, ultimately, had no choice but to endorse and commend the candidate who beat her.

For her, appearing with Obama is the beginning of her third political act, but also a reminder that, in her mind, her second act never really ended. It’s still her party and she’s still crying and she can if she wants to…

But for him?

Isn’t it time that the guy who suddenly seems to be shifting positions, who has seemed to have lost direction and his sense of self in recent days, re-found his voice, marched to the center stage, and belted out a monologue–alone?

If ever we need to be reminded why Barack Obama is the nominee, who he is, what he is capable of, and what he is capable of making us be, that time is now. He needs to grow up fast into the position he fought for.

Only an adolescent needs “mama” Hillary Clinton by his side.

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Good Luck Angelina!

As Angelina Jolie bravely brings twins into this world, she has my good wishes—and encouragement, since raising twins, as any parent of multiples knows, is something completely different from raising siblings one at a time.

Before I gave birth—somewhat dramatically and very prematurely—to my twin sons, one cold February morning five years ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about raising twins: After all I am the older sister of twins, one of whom has her own set of twins.

Like all new parents, I was determined not to replicate my own parents’ behavior. I knew my sisters hated being lumped together and always being referred to as “the twins” instead of by their names. I also remember overhearing my mother on the phone telling people she needed to behave like a drill-sergeant at home to keep us all in line.

I was determined not to be a military mother.

And I wasn’t—certainly not when my newborn sons were teeny tiny, and hospitalized. I was, instead, a completely helpless mother. One baby was small—three pounds—but healthy, while the other weighed two pounds and was very sick. They were in different wards of New York Hospital’s newborn intensive care unit.

How to be fair to both? Spending time with the smallest as he fought for his life seemed imperative. Yet it would have been totally unfair to his brother to have left him alone in a strange place with alarm bells from other isolettes going off.

Thus was my swift, harsh introduction to a life where you feel you never have enough arms and legs; there is never enough time to hug one person at a time, to put Band-Aids on two different sets of scratches, to tell two separate bedtime stories, to manage it so that one boy gets the golf lessons he craves, while the other plays soccer.

Then there are the screeching volume-levels. Listening to two children shouting to you simultaneously about their day, as they fly through the door, shedding outer clothing on the floor before being told to put it away, then heading like missiles toward the food in the kitchen, makes you very cheerful—but also makes you wish sometimes you could get on a magic carpet and levitate above the madness.

And then there’s the guilt over the fact that they have to share toys, rooms, clothes, food, everything: “Why does Lorcan get to spend longer on the computer than me?,” his brother, Orlando, asked the other night.
The real answer is: “because Lorcan is more manipulative than you are.” But do you really want to say that to a five-year-old?

The plus side is that, for life, these two children have a friendship and a bond that other siblings envy. My two never stop talking to one another and inventing games—even if some of them are somewhat unfair. Orlando once suggested to Lorcan: “Hey, let’s play dinosaurs. I’ll be the dinosaur. You’re food.”

Small wonder Lorcan told his granny on the phone that his brother was “bossy.”

Yet they are in effect learning ahead of their time the rules of negotiation, as well as the boundaries of the individual.

As for me? I’m learning not to break out in a panic attack when I hear what sounds like an entire army platoon hurtling up the stairs towards my peaceful office.

After all, they fought for their lives. And this is living—times two.

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The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Supermodel

I know what it’s like to face a birthday and ponder the meaning of life. This Thursday is my birthday, and thinking about turning a year older has been keeping me up at night.

Someone once said to me, “You’d better know where you are going when you reach your mid- to late-30s—otherwise it’s a catastrophe.”

If that’s true, then I’m a catastrophe.

Recently, I’ve even been playing Diana Ross’s “Theme From Mahogany (Do you know where you’re going to?)” on my iPod, just to make myself feel doubly bad. (In truth, I hate the song, as well as the lyrics.)

I go over and over in my head the various crossroads and signposts I’ve seen over the years and second-guess the decisions I made, flagellating myself for taking routes that were, in hindsight, wrong.

Not that you’d be able to tell any of this from looking at me. I have a great job, wonderful family, all the luck in the world. But life is never really as other people perceive it.

So, knowing something of the modeling world, I can comprehend how poor Ruslana Korshunova, the beautiful, fast-rising young cover girl from Kazakhstan, could have thrown herself out of the window of her Manhattan apartment on Sunday, just as her 21st birthday was approaching.
Reports said she “busy, busy,” doing a lot of traveling. Well, as someone who is “busy, busy,” I can tell you that “busyness” is often a form of distraction, keeping you from mulling the important things.

It may be easier to fly to Milan, London, or Tokyo and strut along a catwalk than it is to sit on your own, with your family many miles away, and ponder whether what you are doing to earn a living is making you happy, or whether it’s actually what you wanted to do with your life.
Sometimes seeing so much of this strange world only makes you want to stop what you’re doing, escape your groove, and do something radical: save the rainforests, work in an orphanage, do something to lessen the world’s unhappiness.

Yet if you are only 20, you need the paycheck to send home to your family. Then there are the professionals who exert so much influence over you; many times they are more invested in securing the next glossy cover than in ensuring your welfare.

Korshunova has been compared to Kate Moss, but Moss, 34, has been around long enough to have friends outside the modeling world. When she went into rehab for cocaine addiction and thought her career was over, they were there for her. One told her, “Remember the importance of humor. If you can laugh, then you’ve got a sense of perspective.”

By contrast, young, overworked Korshunova seems to have faced her tribulations alone. When I read about her death, I wished I had met her. We could have talked about birthdays and the meaning of life. Maybe we could have done something radical together.

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Oh, for the days of divorce with dignity

The headlines here recently seem to have all been about sex – and costly, illicit sex at that.

First there are the lurid details exposed in the divorce trial between model Christie Brinkley, 54, and her fourth husband Peter Cook, 46, who allegedly cheated on her with an 18-year-old and had a penchant for looking at pornographic websites. We now know everything about life in the Brinkley-Cook household, from what they ate for breakfast to what happened when Alexa Ray, 22, Brinkley’s daughter from her marriage to Billy Joel, flooded the shower.

Then we get headlines about Madonna receiving New York Yankees star player A-Rod (real name Alex Rodriguez) late at night, while her husband Guy Ritchie is far away; meanwhile, A-Rod’s wife, Cynthia, is off in Paris with Lenny Kravitz.

The salaciousness has reached a level where I feel I need to wash my hands after reading the papers. What is actually more interesting is the financial repercussions. The Cook-Brinkley case is in court because, rather than settle privately, which most people do, Cook is contesting their prenuptial agreement. This, we are learning, is something you can do quite successfully.

For example, if one of you is a better parent, that turns into a major bargaining chip (Cook claims Brinkley was a self-obsessed mother, primping instead of ironing); also, if the pre-nup was signed in a hurry, that’s a problem. And so forth.

Reportedly Madonna and Guy Ritchie did not have a pre-nup; if it comes to divorce for them, she will be sweating at the thought of what could happen to her estimated $846 million fortune. Also, if it is proven that she’s had an affair, and if he did not, that will almost certainly cost her. Small wonder that she is reported to have hired Fiona Shackleton, who successfully saved Paul McCartney from halving his $1.5 billion fortune with his ex-wife Heather Mills.

Yet the process of going to trial is so undignified that you have to wonder why these people can’t sit down with a mediator and work it all out.

Everyone knows that when marriages break down, tempers flare. But these couples have children old enough to read the headlines – or hear their friends talk about them at school. Shouldn’t any divorcing couple be thinking of their children’s welfare first and foremost?

If they were, they wouldn’t be in court – and I could read about more important things in the morning papers.

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