Fox searchlight pictures and bbc films present

FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES and BBC FILMS Present

A RECORDED PICTURE COMPANY Presentation

RICHARD E. GRANT

DEMIAN BICHIR

EMILIA CLARKE

KERRY CONDON

JUMAYN HUNTER

MADALINA GHENEA

NATHAN STEWART-JARRETT

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY RICHARD SHEPARD

PRODUCED BY JEREMY THOMAS

CO-PRODUCED BY NICK O’HAGAN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GILES NUTTGENS

PRODUCTION DESIGNER LAURENCE DORMAN

EDITED BY DANA CONGDON

MUSIC COMPOSED BY ROLFE KENT

COSTUME DESIGNER JULIAN DAY

CASTING NINA GOLD

Jude Law plays DOM HEMINGWAY, a larger-than-life safecracker with a cocky swagger who is witty, unhinged and full of piss and vinegar. After twelve years in prison, he sets off with his partner in crime Dickie (Richard E. Grant) looking to collect what he's owed for keeping his mouth shut and protecting his boss Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir). After a near death experience, Dom tries to re-connect with his estranged daughter (Emilia Clarke), but is soon drawn back into the only world he knows, looking to settle the ultimate debt.

Law – a two-time Oscar® nominee for COLD MOUNTAIN and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY – underwent a total transformation into the manic yet paradoxically poignant role. With a dart-player’s paunch, broken nose, lamb-chop sideburns, bad teeth and a nasty scar running beneath a blood-red eye, it is hard to believe that beneath Dom’s disheveled exterior and sportive contempt lies the same actor famed across the globe as a romantic lead.

Law spared nothing to get at the sheer, larger-than-life Dom-ness of Dom Hemingway. “He’s an explosive, poetic, scary, yet strangely funny man,” Law muses. “He’s what we all are in our essence, this sort of weird make up of good and bad, but on a more expansive level.”

The high-voltage comedy of the character first came to life in the mind of writer/director Richard Shepard, known for the acclaimed, Golden Globe®-nominated THE MATADOR, his witty, surprising twist on the hit-man thriller starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear in stand-out roles.

Once again, Shepard spins a tale of crime with a wildly original point of view: that of a chronically luck-less criminal who is audacious, violent and vengeful, yet embodies all the appetites, contradictions and frenzied angst of modern life. In a journey that careens from a British prison to the South of France to a criminal wager with his manhood on the line, Shepard explores Dom as the ultimate human paradox. For no matter how much sacrilegious mayhem he spreads wherever he goes, the audience can’t help but hope, however improbably, for his redemption.

The film was brought to the screen by renowned independent producer Jeremy Thomas, who took the script on a Christmas holiday to Australia. Thomas loved it, and when he returned, made sure he optioned the rights. Together with Richard Shepard, they made the film in twelve months. Thomas had previously produced two distinctive variations on the dark crime movie, each with ferocious and funny central characters: Jonathan Glazer’s SEXY BEAST and Stephen Frears’ THE HIT. “There’s a great tradition of smart, slightly-off crime thrillers -- movies with a criminal undertone, yet are really about fascinating human characters,” observes Shepard. “I love those movies and I hope that DOM fits somewhere in that category.”

Thomas intuited that DOM HEMINGWAY would indeed enter that territory, and then push it to the edge of a cliff. “One could easily say DOM HEMINGWAY is a genre film about a man coming out of jail, but it’s far more than that,” the producer says. “For me, it transcends that to become a story told in a very different way with extraordinary dialogue unlike anything I’ve heard. It’s entertaining in a way that is a bit shocking. That’s the sort of film to which I’m often very attracted; and I thought it could be an incredible movie.”

“Despite Dom shooting himself in the foot at every turn - you like him,” says Shepard.

“He has his own ways of dealing with things and most of the time they get him in trouble. He’s volatile and dangerous, but he’s also funny.  That combination makes for interesting cinema because while people like him, they don’t necessarily feel safe with him.  There’s a sense that he could do anything.  He could punch someone.  He could start to cry or be profane.  All of these things give the movie its energy. Dom is a devilish rascal of a man, yet deep down he has a real beating heart that starts to beat again by the end of the movie.”
WHO IS DOM HEMINGWAY?

“I did too much, Dickie. I made up for too much lost time. I f***ed myself to death.

But in the beginning, they could not have foreseen that Jude Law, the English leading man who has been listed on multiple “beautiful people” lists, would be that actor.

Ultimately, Dom and Jude would seem to have been fated for each other. But in the beginning, Dom was just a flicker in Richard Shepard’s imagination as he sat down to write a scene in which a man is about to be released from 12 years of prison after not ratting out his boss – and is already gung-ho to get every last delicious drop of what he has coming. The scene would become the film’s bold and literally naked opening, and set the character off and running.

“It was a very shocking and, I would hope, funny sequence. As soon as that came out of me, I wrote the rest very quickly,” Shepard recalls. “I loved Dom and I wanted to see what was going to happen to him.”

His story came reeling onto the page. To a certain degree, Shepard tapped directly into the gritty, gangster zeitgeist of London’s East End, which since the 17^th Century has been explored as a den of crime, sexual deviance and human vice. But there was more to Dom – a transcendent quality that made him emblematic of anyone anywhere who can’t stop their mouth, their mischievousness or their tendency to screw up the very things that matter the most.

Even the name came organically. “I liked the name Dom. It seemed interesting,” Shepard reflects. “And Hemingway had allusions to something macho.”

But what actor would go to the lengths of macho mayhem necessary for the character? “I didn’t think about Jude while I was writing it,” the writer-director states. “But now I would say that if Jude Law didn’t play Dom then there’d be no movie. Now there’s no way to imagine any other actor playing him.”

It all gelled when Shepard and Law met in a West London pub where they discussed Dom and his many foibles, both alluring and frightening. “I knew from those first few pints with Jude that his vision of what Dom should be was exactly what I wanted,” Shepard explains. “He became a collaborator. It was the first time I’ve ever had a leading man come and read for all the other auditions – he was very motivated to make sure that we got the best cast that we could. And then we got to a point where we were reading each other’s minds about what would make sense for Dom to do and it was incredibly fun to be part of that.”

Law knew there was only one way to come at Dom Hemingway: full tilt. “As an actor you look at this character and think: there are loads of elements to this guy I’ve never tapped into before, or been allowed to,” Law explains. “There was something incredibly scary about taking that on and also something completely unavoidable. A part of me knew deep down that I had to play him. Dom is an original and Richard Shepard made him. He wrote him, and I don’t think I’ve come close to playing anyone else who contains all those colors at such a high volume.” In fact, Law became so enamoured with his Dom that he decided to bid farewell to his character following completion of the film in a decidedly cheeky way. Surrounded by fellow cast and crew members, Law held a burial for Dom’s unforgettable prosthetic teeth. “It was an ideal way to close out this loud mouth,” says Law.

For Law, the key was tapping into was Dom’s perilously uncalled-for self-belief, a confidence that never wavers even when it should – and then revealing that behind that, there’s a man going through a storm of mixed-up emotions. “He’s a car-crash of a man really,” remarks Law. “He’s ultimately a decent guy but he’s abusive to himself and others. Part of it is being aggressive, and part of it is soaking himself in alcohol and drugs so he doesn’t feel anything. He’s got all of these puffed-up layers . . . but eventually you start to see there’s more to Dom than meets the eye. To me, it’s not a story so much about Dom’s revenge. It’s about a guy who’s a mess, who then takes one little step towards grace.”

Shepard and Law worked closely to hone Dom’s dialogue which Shepard wrote to veer between foul-mouthed and semi-profound, with ranting soliloquies. “The idea for me was that Dom uses language as much as his fists to gain attention,” Shepard says.

Law and Shepard agreed that the opening scene would be the marker by which the actor could set the tone for Dom across the rest of the shoot. With its explicit yet poetic bombast, it’s a moment that captures everything eloquent, eccentric and menacing about Dom.

“I said to myself, ‘If I’m going to do this role, I’m going to walk on set naked and do that first scene, and then I’ll know I can do the whole thing,’” Law recalls. “That was a great start.”

Law’s intensive physical preparation came from the idea that Dom’s poor diet and lack of exercise would have taken a terrible toll over 12 years in prison. He refers to the process as Dom’s “unhealth.” “Looking at Dom’s lifestyle and how much he drinks, I realized it was probably wise to bulk up a bit,” he explains of his decision to put an extra 20 pounds on his usually athletic frame, along with some authentic beer-guzzling bloat. “I exercise quite a lot normally, and I’m someone who doesn’t eat very much, so I just stopped and ate absolute rubbish, a lot, all day long. Then I started to worry that I hadn’t put on enough, because I wanted to have a combination of bulk and flab. Cola really helped.”

Later, Law’s metamorphosis into Dom’s skin was completed with creative hair and make-up, including a special fixture inside his nose to give it a broken kink and dental fixtures that darken and disfigure his mouth. He also grew a styled beard that he and the crew lovingly referred to as “Dom Chops.” But the real transformation went past the character’s look, to the nooks and crannies of his inevitably explosive psyche.

At times Law went so far into the character, it stunned the cast and crew. “When we started the film, none of us had really taken on board how much Jude had buried himself in the role. I don’t think even Richard could have imagined how much he was going to give physically and emotionally,” says director of photography Giles Nuttgens. “He had no absolutely no fear.”

“Jude changed himself for this role,” concludes Jeremy Thomas. “Dom is a man who has been in jail for 12 years, he’s a man who can handle himself in a fight, he’s cock of the walk, he’s a very charismatic character. And Jude really entered into the idea of being Dom Hemingway for us. It’s great when you find an actor prepared to go that far into finding a wonderful character.”
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MEET DICKIE

“Jesus, Dom, you’re like a wild boar wandering demented around the olive grove.

Shepard wrote the role with Grant in mind. “I’ve been a fan of Richard E. Grant’s forever,” he says. “And I wanted Dom to have a friend who was the only person who could talk back to him. When Dom gets out of jail, his wife is dead and his daughter isn’t talking to him, so Dickie’s his one friend in the world. I’ve always been interested in male friendship, the unspoken way men behave with each other, and Richard and Jude developed a great chemistry.”

Grant was intrigued right away when he read the script, especially by the radically opposite natures of Dom and Dickie. “Richard had written such strong, clear characters. While Dom is a motor mouth who is uncontrollable, he provides my character with a kind of release. Dickie is a low sleaze version of Robin to his Batman. Laurel to his Hardy. It’s a sort of double act,” he observes.

He was also drawn to the script’s heightened, uncensored, impudently poetic language. “Something that so surprised me were the operatically Baroque speeches that Dom gives,” he comments. “I can’t think of another American screenwriter who has written a movie where somebody is as verbose as this guy. It seemed so quintessentially in the vernacular of Britishness. Richard obviously did his research and all the characters sound completely British, so that was even more impressive.”

Once Law was cast, Shepard gave the duo room to get to develop their rapport. “At a certain point a real friendship started to form between them,” the director notes. “You can feel it. You can just sense it. They both came in incredibly prepared, they rehearsed a lot together, and it all paid off.”

Law says that Grant helped to open up his character’s freewheeling ego even more. “Dickie’s love of Dom, and Dickie’s forgiveness of Dom is a very important element to the story. Richard brought a wonderful compassion that helps the audience understand Dom better through Dickie’s eyes,” says Law. “When Dom bowls into a scene drunk and fearless, working his way towards a rant, it is Dickie who recognizes the danger.”

Grant came to see Dickie as not only Dom’s solidly loyal friend but also the touchstone for his wavering conscience. “Dickie is always trying to pick up the mess that Dom smithereens in all directions,” Grant laughs.

“For Dickie, I think Dom is exciting, frustrating, infuriating, and an absolute adrenaline rush,” sums up Grant. “He’s irresistible to someone who is much more low-key, like Dickie is. I’m like the Charlie Watts to his Mick Jagger. That’s how I see it.”

Like Dom, Dickie has his own distinct look: that of a man still clinging to the glory days of his past, with his long, stringy hair, 70s glasses, a wardrobe that might resemble Peter Fonda’s eccentric uncle . . . and his one black leather glove.

Shepard’s idea was that Dickie should resemble a British riff on Hunter S. Thompson, the legendary Gonzo journalist renowned for his mismatched outfits that defined the term counter-culture. “I haven’t got the Hunter Thompson hat and I’m not bald yet, but they did find these yellow glasses that nailed it,” Grant laughs. “I think Dickie’s best years of his life were in the 1970s, so his feeling is why change your clothes and try and be somebody living in the 21^st Century? Keep all your gear from your best days. That’s his theory.”

“I was a stupid fool. I lost you. I lost out on Evelyn’s childhood. I lost the two most important things in my life. And now you’re gone, my love. And our Evie...

Shepard knew that casting was going to be half the battle in a story this full of unusually out-sized people. “A lot of my directing is about ‘this feels real’ or ‘that feels right.’ Actors can smell when there are other good actors around, and no one wants to be blown off the screen. Jude came ready to win in this performance, so I think all the other actors thought, ‘Well, I’d better do a good job!’” he says.

When Dom gets out of jail, he heads for the countryside . . . the countryside of France and the villa of the mysterious Mr. Fontaine, aka “Ivan Anatoli,” the fabulously wealthy crime boss who was relishing his riches while Dom languished in jail. To play Fontaine, the filmmakers needed equal parts charm and menace, a mix Shepard found in an actor who has been making a rapid ascent in Hollywood. Born and raised in the barrios of Mexico City, Demian Bichir was recently nominated for an Academy Award® for his lead role in Chris Weitz’s immigrant drama A BETTER LIFE and is currently starring on FX’s new television series “The Bridge.”

“To get an actor of Demian’s calibre for this part was fantastic,” Shepard says. “He is not only an incredibly good actor, but he also has the charm of Mr. Fontaine. We went after him very aggressively.”

Bichir was lured by the sheer fun of Mr. Fontaine – and by Shepard. “Richard is so clever and so very intelligent,” the actor says. “He wrote a magnificent script and a beautiful character in Dom. It’s a script that gives actors the chance to go in so many directions, so it’s a joy. And I had the best seat of the house to watch all these performances.”

A very different kind of character comes in the form of Dom’s daughter, Evelyn, who is decidedly not amused by her father’s hijinx or his total absence from her life. Taking the role is one of today’s most intriguing actresses, Emilia Clarke, who has been riding high on the success of her powerful performance as Khaleesi in HBO’s major TV series “Game of Thrones.”

Clarke fell in love with the script and, she admits, with Dom. “Despite all the abhorrent, horrific acts Dom commits throughout the film, I think you still believe that there’s hope for him, that there’s a light at the end of his tunnel,” she says. “I think that as an audience you just keep waiting for that to happen, so you’re invested in him from minute one. There are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t love him, but you just can’t help it.”

For Evelyn, however, Dom has a huge barrier to break down: her entirely logical lack of trust that he’ll ever do the right thing. “She’s a tough girl,” Clarke says of Evelyn. “She’s hardened by life and she’s had to fend for herself. It’s only when Dom loses everything that he decides to come knocking on her door and he has an awful lot to answer for. Her mum died while he was in prison and she was basically an orphan. He could have not taken the fall, and been a dad instead.”

A big pleasure for Clarke was playing against Law. “He gave so much energy and was so engrossed in this glorious character he created,” she muses. “He was utterly magnetic.”

An accomplished singer as well, Clarke had a chance to use that skill for an evocative scene where Evelyn sings with her band, covering Fisherman’s Blues by The Waterboys. “Emilia blew me away,” says Shepard. “And then her singing voice. Wow. The girl can do anything.”

Another unusual character comes in the form of Lestor, the youthful, new crime kingpin Dom is forced to beg for a job when he hits rock bottom. The role was won by Jumayn Hunter, a young British actor who riveted Shepard in his audition.

He recalls, “I originally wrote the part of Lestor for an older actor, someone in their forties, and Jude said, ‘You know, we should think about casting this character’s son. It’ll be a more interesting dynamic if Dom has to beg for a job from someone significantly younger than him.’ We started auditioning and Jumayn came in and was extraordinary, he’s got an amazing quality. You just can’t take your eyes off him.”

Hunter was delighted to take the role. “Like a bolt of lightning, Dom lands right on Lestor’s lap. How he deals with the situation is kind of colorful to say the least, but their history is not friendly. Lestor has nothing but contempt for Dom and everything he remembers about him,” he says. “Dom’s from an era where everything was done face to face. Lestor’s from the 21^st century, where everything’s done electronically. When these two get in each other’s personal space, a clash of eras comes into effect.”

Like his cast mates, Hunter was awed by Dom. “Anything that comes out of Dom Hemingway’s mouth is either gold for the mind or destruction for the soul, and you get them both at the same time so it’s quite fun,” Hunter says. “He speaks not only his mind, but the subconscious, that’s how I’d describe it. He’s got the social skills of a shotgun.”

Dom has another fateful run-in with an American party girl in the South of France, whose life he saves, for better or for worse. The buoyant Melody is played by Irish actress Kerry Condon, who enjoyed having a different take on Dom. “My character sees the good in him,” she notes. “She’s someone who sees the good in the whole world. She doesn’t see Dom as this pathetic guy still partying in his 40s. She just sees that there’s a sweetness and vulnerability to him.”

Romanian model and budding actress Madalina Ghenea takes the key role of the film’s sultry femme fatale Paolina, Mr. Fontaine’s mistress and Dom’s fateful nemesis. “Being a femme fatale is not easy,” Ghenea admits. “Yet, somehow I fell in love with her. And I’m sure the audience will fall in love with Dom. Somehow you fall in love with him, even though he’s Dom!”

“A man with no options suddenly has all the options in the world.”

To go for this Dom-style look, he collaborated with director of photography Giles Nuttgens (MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, WATER) and production designer Laurence Dorman (ME AND ORSON WELLES), both of whom previously worked with Jeremy Thomas on YOUNG ADAM.

Nuttgens was instantly taken with Shepard’s vision. “Richard had written a completely unique script and he was utterly in command of what he wanted,” the cinematographer observes. “It was immediately clear to me that he had a very big, creative brain working in very, very different ways from anyone else’s. When I meet for the first time with a director, I’m less interested in talking about how the film is going to look than in how it is going to feel. What is the emotional tone? And Richard knew that more deeply than anyone I’ve encountered.”

The challenge was to splash that emotional tone onto the screen. “It was quite clear that while the plot of DOM is about a criminal trying to get his reward, at heart, what you’re experiencing is a guy going off the deep end and expressing that in his own very strong way to the audience,” Nuttgens continues. “Dom is completely out-of-his-head and totally destructive, to himself and others, so we wanted the look to get at that energy. The last thing we wanted was a stylishly de-saturated, flat looking film. So the idea was that even in the most banal situations, even when we were shooting in London in November, we were always pushing the edge in terms of color and texture. Anywhere that we could add another level of color, we did. I think we all felt the film’s colors could serve as a continuous counterpoint to how dark and extreme Dom can be.”

This effect begins instantaneously as the film opens with Law, naked in a jail scene unlike any other. “It’s a long monologue and it’s all one take,” notes Nuttgens, “when the audience is right away invited into the extremely shocking head of Dom Hemingway. Even in that scene, we wanted the prison to look different from what you’re used to and Richard, Laurence and I talked a lot about how we could attack the senses from the get-go. We wanted to set the tone that this was going to be colorful, strong and hit you in the face, and let people know that there’s a rich level of humor to it.”

Dom heads to France after his release to get what he has coming from his boss, Mr. Fontaine. Shepard, Nuttgens and Dorman crafted Fontaine’s lavish, high-living villa in a dizzying brightness, as if seeing the world fresh again after 12 years staring at prison walls. “We lit the villa in pinks and greens, stuff you would never usually see,” Nuttgens explains. “The whole idea was to imagine how overwhelming the world is to Dom just out of prison, and how much pleasure Fontaine has been enjoying while he’s been away.”

For one of the film’s most high-wire sequences, when Dom makes a wildly threatening speech in Fontaine’s living room, Dorman lined the walls with a series of monkey portraits by the artist/photographer Jill Greenberg. The hyper-real, manipulated photos – at once eerie, comic and primal – only add to the visual frisson. “Those photos were a stroke of genius by Laurence,” says Nuttgens. “That scene, which is so much about ego and envy, becomes not just a scene between three men, but a scene between three men and three monkeys.”

France was also the scene of a spectacular car crash, which involved some of the most technical challenges of the shoot, including rain, lighting, flying automobiles and mud pits.

Returning to London’s moodily industrial East End, the team maintained its focus nonetheless on color and quirks. “The beautiful thing was that Richard didn’t want to imitate anything else. He just wanted to show this world as Dom sees it,” sums up Nuttgens. “It was really incredible the degree to which Richard drove this film from the first lines he wrote in Dom’s inimitable voice to every detail of the shoot and post-production. No matter the technical challenges, he inspired everyone to stick to our guns, to stay in Dom’s POV, and that made the whole film an excitingly intellectual, creative process.”

Adding to the film’s fluid moods is the score by Rolfe Kent, who has composed for many of Shepard’s films, was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work on Alexander Payne’s SIDEWAYS and is know to many for his Emmy®-nominated theme to the “Dexter” television series.

Kent notes that the music went through several twists and turns as he and Shepard looked for the right counterpoint to Dom’s wild behavior. “I began writing for a full brass ensemble,” he recalls. “And one example of that approach survives in the moment when Dom gets his money. But at some point I showed Richard a rough idea I had using strange atmospheric tones in a rhythmic way, and he encouraged me to keep going down that road. It gives the film a serious but unusual edge, which really comes out in the train sequence. Richard felt the film would work best if the music avoided being comedic and instead took Dom and his life seriously. So that is the path we took.”

Despite his long-lived collaboration with Shepard, Kent says this project was unlike any other. “I’ve worked on at least 6 films with Richard, and each one takes a completely different approach and invents something new. The score to DOM HEMINGWAY evolved slowly and eventually found its sweet-spot between the lost-childhood theme for Dom's daughter Evelyn and the slightly melancholy, slightly cocky theme for Dom, which is full of momentum and apprehension.”

One of the most challenging moments for Kent is one of the story’s most moving moments for Dom, when he goes to the cemetery to finally have a chat with the wife he left behind. “It’s a scene requiring a delicate and changing balance between Dom’s remorse and his hope,” the composer explains. “Richard had me re-write this cue several times as we tried to find the right way to allow the performance to unfold, and navigate the raw and despairing emotions Jude brought out. By the end there is just a hint of Evelyn's theme coming back, a glint of hope and warmth returning after all.”
DOM’S LOOK

“What can I tell you? I’m a handsome f***er.”

Costume designer Day, who recently worked on SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN and the forthcoming DIANA, was thrilled with the prospect of bringing a new twist to a classic costume genre. “Having read the script and after meeting Richard, I realized his love for British cinema and I wanted to create a modern look with a twist on 1970's British gangster films,” he explains. “Richard was a fantastic director to work with, as he has an encyclopedic knowledge of films, and is an incredible collaborator. He was involved on all levels of the process of designing the clothes.”

For Dom, Day honed in on a man stuck in a fashion time warp. “Dom's clothes were great fun to create,” he remarks. “I worked with a great tailor, Murat Ozkan of William and George Ltd, to produce a suit that looked great on Jude -- but also looked like he hadn't worn it for many years. Even thought it appears ill-fitting in places, Jude managed to look impeccable at all times, even when rolling down a muddy hill in torrential rain.”

Law felt the clothes captured the man. “The little touches that Julian brought were brilliant,” says Law. “Dom has been in the bubble of prison, out of society. But also as a man, he lives a whisky-fogged lifestyle of self-denial and escapism, so he comes out not only wearing the clothes of a man of twelve years younger, but the clothes of a man who was always out of sorts anyway. Julian was clever in that he cut everything Dom wears so that it pinched in all the wrong places. All of that adds layers and helps tell the story of a guy out of time and out of touch with who he is in the world.”

Day also had a blast with Dickie’s attire. “Richard E Grant's clothes are a definite throwback to the 60's – they are like PERFORMANCE crossed with THE ITALIAN JOB -- but my main influence was Hunter S. Thompson, one of the greatest style icons,” he says. Day also admits: “I used my own 60's yellow tinted sunglasses to finish off Dickie’s impeccable taste in clothing.”

He equally enjoyed the film’s full cast of characters, each one a work of fashion eccentricity in his or her own right. “This film was one of the most enjoyable jobs I have ever worked on,” he concludes, “with a fantastic cast and crew and great characters to design for.”

Hair and make-up designer Yoshihara, whose film work ranges from SKYFALL to TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER SPY to HARRY POTTER, altered Law’s facial features substantially. At first the designer found it hard to imagine that someone of Law’s looks and build could morph into the character she had read in the script, but over time, the look was honed into something that came alive.

In researching several well-known East London gangsters, Yoshihara found that many had broken noses and facial scars, and she wanted to add that touch of mystery to Dom Hemingway. “I thought that it would be great for the audience to wonder what might have happened to create his various scars and features,” she explains.

Law bears a custom-made set of prosthetic teeth that give him that Dom smile and wears an uncomfortable device that sets Dom’s broken nose at an angle. “We gave him golden teeth, but nicotine-stained gold. So when he smiles, you can see how many cigarettes he’s smoked in prison,” Yoshihara laughs. “We also applied lots of pigmentation to make him look like a person who hasn’t taken care of himself, layering shades to create a perfectly unhealthy look.”

All of those details were essential, of course, to making the film feel as real as it does outrageous. But the inexplicable magic came when the cameras rolled and Law submerged his entire self beneath the boiling surface of Dom’s persona.

Having embedded himself so intently, Law says he won’t soon forget Dom Hemingway or the surprising outcome of his escapades. “Playing Dom was an exhausting process and I developed some very bad habits which took a while to shake off,” he confesses. “But I learned a lot from him. I’ll miss him. I loved being him and loved having him in my life. That sounds terribly sentimental, but he’s got a quality that is very attractive. He can’t help but be himself, even if that self is very loud and sometimes appalling. The best way to describe Dom Hemingway is that he is indescribable.”