23 November 2014
Newsdesk
Sally Hawkins drew inspiration from her mother for her latest role.
The 38-year-old British actress portrays stern but fair mother Mrs. Brown in forthcoming movie Paddington. And she felt immense respect for motherhood as she worked on pulling together her character.
“Mothers everywhere, including my own,” she told British newspaper The Independent when asked about what informed her work. “There’s no greater job in the world so hats off to all mums out there.”
Sally plays one of the primary figures in the infamous children’s book adaptation. As the story goes, Mrs. Brown adopts Paddington Bear and takes care of him as her own.
Sally and her co-stars, including Hugh Bonneville, made the movie by acting alongside an expensively made teddy bear’s head on a stick - which the actress says worked just fine.
“You hear of nightmare scenarios, but we never felt that,” she explained of the task of pretending. “As long as we knew where he would be sitting and tried not to touch him too much, because that’s another $100,000… My instinct was to keep hugging him but I couldn’t because that would have caused a lot of headache.”
She also spoke about Colin Firth’s departure midway through production. The actor was set to be the original voice of Paddington, until he and writer-director Paul King jointly decided he wasn’t appropriate for the role. He was replaced by Ben Whishaw.
“So many people went into forming Paddington that him leaving didn’t feel weird at all,” Sally revealed. “I loved working with Colin. I think he’s tremendous. But then Ben is just so perfect, it couldn’t be anyone else.”
All in all, the Happy-Go-Lucky actress is elated to have been involved in the highly anticipated film. She and Paul had in fact been longtime friends before he cast her.
“I love Paul dearly,” Sally gushed. “And I just felt incredibly flattered to be asked because I knew Paddington was such a huge film for him to get. Working with friends is always so much more rewarding because they’re people you love.”
