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Mira Nair: Vanity Fair
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Mira Nair’s second major studio film, Vanity Fair, based on a classic William Thackeray satire on English high society, opens September 1. It features Reese Witherspoon with a not-half-bad English accent; Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, a sharp-jawed lad whom Nair borrowed from Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham; and a brace of estimable actors better known in the UK. Nair is attempting to banish the ghostsof The Perez Family, her last big-budget effort, which flickered faintly at the box office.
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A few months after the film's release, Nair will start directing the Christ Tucker comedy Gangster, M.D. a remake of the sensational Munnabhai MBBS starring Sanjay Dutt. The film, which could have a $60 million mid-level budget, will be Nair's most expensive, costing two times the budget of her last release, the ill-fated Vanity Fair. Jason Filardi, who wrote the script for the 2005 international hit Bringing Down the House starring Steve McQueen and Queen Latifah, is doing the honours for this one.
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In May 2003, Nair helmed the Focus Features production of the William Thackeray classic, Vanity Fair, a provocative period tale set in post-colonial England, filmed entirely on location in the UK and India. Reese Witherspoon stars as Becky Sharp, a woman who defies her poverty-stricken background to clamber up the social ladder; Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Eileen Atkins, Gabriel Byrne, and Rhys Ifans round up the stellar ensemble cast. Vanity Fair was released in September 2004.
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With "Vanity Fair," Nair faced a new set of cinematic challenges. Perhaps the most daunting was the adaptation of Thackeray's 800-page novel, a chore she entrusted to a fellow "Fair" fan, screenwriter Julian Fellowes of "Gosford Park" fame.
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Nair next will be in theaters March 9 with Fox Searchlight's "The Namesake," based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Pic is her first since Reese Witherspoon starrer "Vanity Fair," released in 2004.
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Nair began her career as an actor, but soon turned to directing, producing and writing documentaries and feature films. She has directed and produced over 15 different projects, among which are award-winning documentaries such as So Far From India and India Cabaret, as well as HBO original Hysterical Blindness (2002), and Focus Features' Vanity Fair (2004).
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