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Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield bring to life a love story in Breathe | By Baz Bamigboye

5. května 2017 v 10:36 | andrewgarfielddaily
Claire Foy is clear about why the real-life couple who lived life to the full after the husband was paralysed from the neck down by polio stayed together: 'It was love, actually.' The actress, who won a Golden Globe for her brilliant portrait of the Queen in TV drama series The Crown, portrays another formidable woman in the film Breathe, directed by actor-filmmaker Andy Serkis and starring the Oscar- nominated Andrew Garfield. They play Robin and Diana Cavendish, the offspring of ancient English families. He was a captain in the King's Royal Rifle Corps who became a tea-planter in Kenya; she was Diana Blacker, a society beauty.
They married in 1957. But soon afterwards, when Robin was just 28, he was struck down by polio, paralysed from the neck down and forced to use a respirator. 'When Robin became ill, it gave her [Diana] a clear set of rules,' Foy told me this week when we discussed the film (which she shot last summer) as she sat in the make-up trailer on the set of The Crown, preparing to film Elizabeth's first Christmas broadcast. 'In a way, Diana knew that she'd have to be the person who was boss. He'd always been that person. But she had to pull herself together and become very organising, very capable and very strong.'
Robin and Diana's son Jonathan Cavendish, a film producer, commissioned writer Bill Nicholson to pen the screenplay for Breathe. He said his father's first thought after being struck down by polio was to 'turn off the machine'. 'My mother was only 25,' said Jonathan. 'His view was: "You can start again." But she wasn't having any of it.' Foy concurred. 'She wasn't going anywhere. That's the thing I found the easiest to understand: she loved him! She was going through it with him. There was no cutting and running, as far as she was concerned. That wasn't ever going to be an option.'
In terms of her character, Foy said: 'The most important thing to get was their love for each other. I didn't want to over-sentimentalise her; and she definitely doesn't want to be seen as a saint, or an angel, or incredible sort of nurse. It was just actually love.' Jonathan was a producer on Bridget Jones's Diary and runs the Imaginarium Studio with Serkis. He said it was sometimes 'odd' looking at his past, but he wanted to honour his parents because he believed they made a difference in the lives of others.
Garfield said that though Robin was unable to move, it didn't stop him from getting out into the world. He and Diana had an 'inability to accept the false limitations society and culture … were putting on them'. With the help of Teddy Hall, an engineer, Robin designed a special respirator that would allow him to travel. Diana would drive him in a van that was hooked up to the machine. They had some madcap escapades on the road, some of which have made it into the film, which will open on October 27.
'The amazing thing was that everyone around Robin became his body,' Garfield said. 'He became the mastermind behind all this invention.' Garfield noted that more than just a soul mate, 'Diana was Robin's access to the world'. He had 'tremendous dependence, physically and emotionally, on Diana' - which meant Garfield had to depend a lot on Foy. 'I would treat her body as my body,' he says. 'There's a beautiful symmetry and synchronicity there. 'I was in character most of the time and couldn't move. I had to be bathed, have help to go to the toilet. We had to show those moments, fleetingly. But we also had to show that Robin and Diana remained romantically attractive to each other.'

Originally given three months to live, Robin died in 1994, aged 64. However, Garfield said being around Diana and Jonathan - and friends and family - allowed him to absorb something of Robin's personality, and glimpse the man inside the respirator. 'One of his friends told me that everything was more likely to be funny than not,' Garfield said. 'That ability and awareness to see the absurdity and beauty of life is what made him special.' In 1970, Robin and Dr Geoffrey Spencer, a polio specialist, set up a charity - now called The Cavendish Spencer Trust - which continues to provide holidays for severely disabled and respirator-dependent people.
 

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1 Kate | cobiesmulders-hq.blog.cz Kate | cobiesmulders-hq.blog.cz | Web | 5. května 2017 v 11:25 | Reagovat

Ahoj, rozhodla jsem se vrátit na blog a když jsem byla aktivní tak jsme byly spřátelené, takže mě zajímá jestli by jsi o to měla stále zájem. Pokud ano tak se mi prosím napiš na blog.

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