Jude Law’s Triumphant Return: The Actor on ‘Star Wars’ Secrets, Going Full Frontal, Marvel and ‘Ripley’ Homoeroticism
by Ramin Setoodeh · VarietyI can’t keep up with him.
On a recent September afternoon, Jude Law is running away from the set of “Black Rabbit,” a Netflix miniseries where he plays a Manhattan nightclub owner who welcomes his troublemaker brother back into his life. Today’s setup, shot in the South Street Seaport, involves a flashback sequence between Law’s character and his scraggly sibling, played by Jason Bateman. Law and I are supposed to meet in the lobby of a hotel after the scene wraps, but filming goes over, and his assistant, Ryan, texts me that Law wants to talk to me as he walks to his trailer a few blocks away. But by the time I make it outside, he’s already a distant figure on the horizon.
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Is he that man in blue? “No, he’s in the gray,” Ryan says. “He’s fucking quick.” Unless we sprint — and maybe not even then — we’re not going to reach him.
By the time we get to his trailer, Law is inside changing back into his street clothes. He swings open the door half dressed in a white tank top, with his buff arms exposed. He’s still as handsome as he’s always been. Standing on a New York street corner, in the same city where he arrived 30 years ago as a broke Englishman for his Broadway debut in the play “Indiscretions,” Law, 51, seems to occupy the past and the present all at once — a serious, seasoned actor escaping the memory of overwhelming fame, when the tabloids used to write destructive stories about his personal life.
“Hello!” Law says cheerily as he dashes off to the trailer next door to wash up. “I’m going to put my hair on.”
A few minutes later, Law and I go for a walk. And while once upon a time, just the sight of him would stop traffic, today we travel alongside the East River without any fuss. When we get to a park, Law takes a seat as dogs scurry on the pavement. He speaks about his career, but he’s more excited to narrate the movements of the mutts around us: “That’s a dog, by the way, not me squeaking,” he says into my tape recorder at the sound of a jiggling ball. “It’s a very animal-friendly city.” A mother scolds her child, completely oblivious to the movie star just a few feet from her. No one notices Law until later in our conversation, when a man comes over to ask for a photograph.
“Sorry, we’re in the middle of something,” Law says politely. He adds, “Nice tee.”
The fan is wearing a “Star Wars” shirt, and Law clocks it because one of his upcoming roles is in “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew,” a TV series he filmed in 2022 and early 2023 before the actors strike. The sun stops shining. The man leaves, and we both look up. “I think it’s going to rain,” Law proclaims.
It’s not just that Law walks fast. He talks fast too and seems to hedge in conversation, telling stories that are devoid of drama — he’s lived enough of that. Law was among the first wave of A-list actors who became famous in the early days of toxic internet culture. Paparazzi stalked him for tawdry headlines about his divorce with his first wife, Sadie Frost, in 2003, and he was even hacked by the U.K. tabloid News of the World, under secret surveillance for years without knowing it. If he’s guarded, it might be a result of the years of trauma that come from living under such an intense microscope.
But that was then. This year is shaping up to be a big one for Jude Law. Not as big as 2004, when he starred in six films, all within four months — including playing a cad in “Closer,” a womanizer in the remake of “Alfie” and Errol Flynn in “The Aviator” — but this is the most the public has seen of him in years. Law has popped up in dozens of movies since then, embodying a young Dumbledore in the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise and Watson in “Sherlock Holmes,” but mostly he relishes flying under the radar as a character actor.
His next project puts him back in the spotlight. Over the summer, Law took a break from filming “Black Rabbit” to fly to the Venice Film Festival, where, for his turn as a 1980s FBI agent in the drama “The Order,” he was showered with rave reviews and a seven-minute standing ovation.
Law went shopping himself to find clothes that would fit Terry Husk, a stocky, grizzled federal officer chasing after a charismatic but dangerous leader of a white supremacist group, played by Nicholas Hoult. And there was one requisite for his costume: “There were some images we were looking at when men were really proud of their bums,” says the film’s director, Justin Kurzel. “The pants at that time were all cut to show the outline of someone’s bum. We all thought that was really interesting. The silhouette of Husk should really be masculine and should feel like a guy who knows he’s got a great bum.”
After “The Order” won over Venice, Law jetted to the Toronto Fim Festival for the unveiling of “Eden,” Ron Howard’s trippy drama, set on an island in the Galápagos, inspired by another real-life story about a group of settlers who wanted extreme privacy. Law plays Dr. Friedrich Ritter, who lives in a hut with his wife (Vanessa Kirby) and roams around his home naked.
“It was in the script,” Law says matter-of-factly about shooting a full-frontal nude scene in the film. “It was a clear statement of who this character was. It’s important that we do it.”
If Law is about to be overexposed, it’s not by design. He can’t control the release date of his projects — “The Order” opens in theaters on Dec. 6 and “Eden” is seeking distribution — but the internet has been celebrating Law’s triumphant return to stardom, though he’s really only interested in talking about the work.
For instance, Law set up his production company, Riff Raff Entertainment, when he was a 30-something actor intrigued by a pitch for what would become “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” Another of his 2004 films, this one was a sci-fi epic where he played an Indiana Jones-like air force pilot. Although the movie bombed at the box office, Law relishes its cult status. “I thought it was brilliant and wanted to help get it made,” he says. “It didn’t make that much money. But here’s the thing: Everybody talks about it now — it was like this first fully blue-screen movie, and it still looks pretty extraordinary.”
Law didn’t actively start producing more projects until he entered his 40s. The turning point came after he starred in 2016’s “The Young Pope,” the TV satire from Paolo Sorrentino about an American pope. With his own heartthrob days behind him (or so he thought), Law was eager to stretch as a pontiff who is beguilingly creepy.
“Maybe I’m too restless,” Law says about taking on producing. “Maybe I like to be in control. There’s something slightly powerless about being an actor waiting to be hired. You’ll only ever get the parts offered to you that people think you fit, rather than saying, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that.’”
Law’s film credits are broad and varied. He broke out big in 1999’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” as Dickie Greenleaf, a hunky American playboy on a never-ending vacation in Italy, and graduated to playing a forlorn Confederate soldier in 2003’s “Cold Mountain” (he received Oscar nominations for those films, both directed by Anthony Minghella). Though his name was once floated as a future James Bond, he played against type in the 2015 comedy “Spy” as a smarmy villain. And he’s carried his share of indie films, such as the 2020 Sundance darling “The Nest.”
“A big shift has been me taking the reins of my work,” Law says. “I’ve made nearly 60 films, and there’s a sense of confidence now, I suppose, in what I know I can get out of it and what a director can help me get out of it. Just having a sense of that gives you a greater sense of confidence in what you can do. I’d be lying if I said I’ve got nothing left to prove. I feel like I’m literally just warming up. And I’m excited about the work to come.”
In December, after some delays, Disney+ will finally drop “Stars Wars: Skeleton Crew,” with Law as the adult presiding over a troupe of four children who embark on their own intergalactic journey. Law only said yes after several long conversations with Jon Watts, the director of Tom Holland’s “Spider-Man” films, and the series’ creator. “I don’t think I would have dived in willy-nilly,” Law says. “I wanted it to be right. I didn’t want to be the guy that dropped the ball on ‘Star Wars.’”
While he produced “Black Rabbit” and “The Order,” Law was an actor for hire on “Skeleton Crew.” But he still weighed in on critical elements of his character, possible Jedi Jod Na Nawood. For instance, he refused to do what he calls “acting with a carpet.”
“They said, ‘Oh, you’re going to wear a wig — we want lovely, tousled hair.’ And I was like, ‘No, I think he should have really short hair — he wears a helmet.’ That took some persuasion.”
Growing up in South London, the son of two teachers, Law had loved the original “Star Wars” movies. So he was giddy to see firsthand how a “Star Wars” project was made. “It was a really interesting process,” Law says. “It’s technically complicated to get those things right — you’re dealing with animatronics and puppets and machines and huge, complicated worlds. I’m the guy that wants to see how the wizard does it.”
Law comes alive discussing the intricacies of making the TV series. “It all has to go through the ‘Star Wars’ filter,” he says, his eyes flickering as if he’s trying to solve a riddle. “Like, there are no buttons in ‘Star Wars’ — only ties. Buckles? Yes. Velcro? Yes. Although, I don’t think you ever see the Velcro.”
Law then starts to dissect the cinematography of “Star Wars.” “There are certain shots they don’t allow you to do if you’re the director. You can’t pass through the glass of the spaceship; you have to stay on the outside or inside. I love that. You see the shot and go, ‘Oh, I’m in “Star Wars.”’”
How was it being in possession of the Force?
“Who says I’ve got the Force?” Law asks and laughs.
When I speak to Law again a few weeks later, it’s on the phone. After wrapping “Black Rabbit,” he’d gone home to spend time with his wife, psychologist Phillipa Coan, whom he married in 2019, and his seven children. Now he’s in Los Angeles, dismissing the notion that he’s a well-rested man.
“Ha, ha, ha. No, I’m not rested,” he says. “I’m shattered. It’s been nonstop. Going home was wonderful, but trying to see everyone and get everything done meant it was just as busy as work in New York.”
The day before, he was at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where he accepted a career tribute award. During a Q&A there, Law revisited “The Holiday,” the 2006 Christmas movie directed by Nancy Meyers, where he plays a single dad who romances Cameron Diaz. “They asked the audience who has seen ‘The Holiday’ or who watches it every year,” Law says. “Ninety percent of the audience put their hand up. It’s a delightful thing what this movie has become.”
Law’s stories about Hollywood are fun — more like something that would be the basis of a question in Trivial Pursuit than gossipy. Take his famous scene in “The Holiday,” where his character puts a napkin over his head and glasses over the napkin to entertain his daughters as “Mr. Napkin Head.”
“I’d actually done Mr. Napkin Head before,” Law says. “I did ‘Alfie’ with Charles Shyer, who had been married to Nancy Meyers. And Charles included Mr. Napkin Head in ‘Alfie,’ but the scene got cut. And then I did Nancy’s film, and Mr. Napkin Head was in that.”
Law recalls how Mike Nichols selected Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter” for the soundtrack to “Closer”; the song plays in the opening credits as Law walks in slow motion, catching Natalie Portman’s eye before she’s run over by a taxicab, literally knocked out by love.
“That song is that whole period for me,” Law says. “That experience of making that film is held in that song. Mike had that song — I believe one of his children gave it to him. He played it for us right in the beginning.”
Speaking of Law’s more recent work, if he could wave a magic wand, Law would return to playing the younger Albus Dumbledore in the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise, though he acknowledges it’s not likely they’ll continue. (He was in the second and third of the “Harry Potter” prequels, in what was supposed to be a series of five.)
“I know it’s certainly on hold,” he says. “My guess would be that, now that they’re doing ‘Harry Potter’ as a TV show, they’ll probably put their energy into that. I certainly haven’t heard that there’s anything on the horizon.”
Law met with J.K. Rowling, whom he still regards fondly, in 2017, and she filled him in on the complete arc of the story she’d hatched for these new films. “I had a pretty clear sense of where it was going to go,” Law says, recalling that Rowling gave him many notes, including one that Dumbledore saw himself as a monster.
“And that’s why he liked Newt,” Law says of the character played by Eddie Redmayne in the films, “because Newt took care of monsters.”
In the movies, Dumbledore struggles with his identity as a gay man who falls in love with the Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. “Because of Dumbledore’s past,” Law says, describing a fight with Grindelwald that led to his sister’s death, “I think he always felt guilty that he had been misled because he was in love. It followed him. He found himself to be unlovable because he trusted his heart.”
Law speaks of feeling kind of Zen about inhabiting Dumbledore. “To play him and to really feel a sense of his extraordinary powers, I found a nice place in myself,” he says. “I liked his heart, and I liked playing him because of that. I always enjoyed stepping in his shoes.”
As for dipping his toe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that was just a one-picture deal in which he played Yon-Rogg, the leader of the Starforce, in 2019’s “Captain Marvel.” “I don’t think there was much more they could get out of Yon-Rogg,” Law says. “That, for me, was the height of Marvel.”
The film was a blockbuster but received mixed reviews. Yet Law says, “It was a really good experience. I wish I’d been allowed to have a bit more fun with the part. I wanted him to be more arch. I wanted to lean into the humor more. Also, those suits are hard to move in because they’re thick rubber. You go to stunt camp for a couple of months, where you’re doing all these fight rehearsals and learning to do all this stuff. And then you put the suit on, and you go, ‘Oh! I can’t touch my toes! How am I going to do all that stuff with this thing on?’ You figure it out though.”
The role that Law hears most about from fans is his indelible part opposite Matt Damon in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” It makes sense, given that the Patricia Highsmith mystery turns 25 in December and even inspired a Netflix TV series starring Andrew Scott, which Law has seen.
“I was sort of amazed and delighted at how completely different it was,” he says about the TV show. “It had a completely different quality — some of which I thought worked really well, some of which I didn’t think worked as well. But it was a completely different beast to ours.”
Law was 27, and mostly unknown to U.S. audiences, when Minghella offered him the part of Dickie. As legend goes, Law almost turned it down because he didn’t want to just play a pretty party boy — he was worried he’d get typecast and Hollywood wouldn’t take him seriously. But that didn’t happen. “Ripley” made Law an international star.
“He was definitely a teenage girl’s dreamboat in ‘Ripley,’” says the film’s costume designer Ann Roth. “He was a great-looking guy. He had the right walk. But it wasn’t that he was so secure; he was not described as super sexy — he got sexy.” (Of Dickie’s first scene in the film, lounging on the beach, Roth says, “That’s when poor Matt wears his green knitted trunks.”)
Dickie is an insatiable agent of chaos. Living in Italy with his young American girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), he carries out various affairs, drinks, parties and lives like a Kennedy. “Anthony wanted Dickie to really shine,” Law says. “A lot of that was him really encouraging me to embrace the lifestyle when I wasn’t on set or when I wasn’t needed — to really enjoy the boat, the music and eating fine food and drinking good wine. And really live it, which isn’t hard off the coast of Italy.”
Looking back on his most famous character, Law believes Dickie is aware that Tom is attracted to him, and while he never reciprocates the advances, he likes the attention. This all comes to a head in a scene where Dickie, while in the bath, plays chess with Tom, outside the tub, who — in the most homoerotic moment in the film — asks if he can get in.
“Dickie was someone who liked to be adored,” Law says. “Dickie was someone who liked to be looked at. There’s a crux in that moment in his life — he almost crosses a line and then decides, given the time and who he is, that he can’t cross it. He’s fully aware of what he’s doing and how to play a moment like that. It’s a moment of tease, really.”
In an ensemble of the gifted stars of tomorrow — Damon, Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman — Law stood out. Soon, everyone from Steven Spielberg (who cast Law in “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”) to Martin Scorsese (who put him in “The Aviator”) would be calling.
“Here’s an interesting insight,” Law says. “I remember having a conversation with my mother, who said something that I look back on now. She said something like she had to ‘share me’ now. And I think what she meant by that was there was suddenly a sense of people knowing who I was and reaching out to her. She felt like there was a loss of privacy, of intimacy, that needed protecting.”
That was about the time the tabloids began invading Law’s personal space, trying to snap photos of him with Frost, and their young son, Raff. “It was oddly linked also to being a father for the first time,” Law says. “I remember there being photographs of me carrying my baby son around whilst I was shooting ‘Ripley.’” It strikes Law as weird that his memory of fame during this time “was always married to me protecting him and feeling really invaded by people prying into this private time or into my private life.”
Law struggled with the way paparazzi crashed his world day after day. “It was never the job aspect,” he says. “Going to a premiere or promoting something was part of the job. But being invaded was something that always made me bristle. So, sadly, I always associated the experience with that discomfort. I really don’t want to go over old ground, but there was a chapter afterwards, as things got more and more intense in that way.”
In that chapter, Law divorced, got engaged to his “Alfie” co-star Sienna Miller and became a tabloid sensation after they split (you can Google what happened). “That time is now over,” he says, “and I’ve moved on from it. And so has, fortunately, the attention of the photographers and the prying eyes on me.” Law adds, “But I’ve had to learn to live in a certain way that keeps them at bay. And I have to handle my kids’ and my partner’s privacy in the same way.”
But the press invasion into Law’s personal life reached new heights when, between 2003 and 2006, the News of the World hacked his phone. Law, who testified in a trial in 2014, was awarded $200,000 in a settlement.
“It was a true frenzy,” Law says of the barrage of stories about him before the breach was discovered. “Once the route was figured out, it was clear why it was a frenzy: Eighty, ninety percent of the stories were being accessed illegally, and they actually generated stories for their publications. So the money was just washing around, which meant photographers were vying for something that led to another story. And the illegal information they were getting out of hacking and monitoring people that way was feeding the newspaper.”
“It was a crazy experience to go through,” Law continues. “A really upsetting experience, because it forces you to suspect and doubt people around you. You have to circle your wagons and protect your family and protect yourself.” His voice gets harder. “But what doesn’t kill you nourishes you, right?” He lets out a brittle laugh.
During this time, Law was hounded by the press and made into an object of prurient fascination and lust. After being selected as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2004, he squirmed in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres where she told him about a report that men were getting plastic surgery to copy his lips.
“Interestingly, I was talking about this to a friend,” Law says. “He made a good point. He said, ‘If you were a woman, people would have been told off for objectifying you.’ I think it frustrated me because I was this young guy desperately keen to have an acting career and for people to talk about that, as opposed to what I looked like.”
Ben Jackson, Law’s producing partner at Riff Raff, estimates that Law watches three movies a week, often lamenting that he can’t see more of them on the big screen. “He used to do that as a kid, go and watch double bills in the movie theater,” Jackson says. “He watches a lot. There are not many films he hasn’t seen or doesn’t know about.”
As an actor who’s crossed over from movies to TV, Law doesn’t think anything can replace the theatrical experience. “I hope one doesn’t kill the other,” Law says about TV and film. “I’m just a fan of going to the cinema. It would be catastrophic if one ate the other.”
Law has learned that making TV isn’t that different from starring in a movie — it just requires more stamina. “In many ways, you have the opportunity to choose a ‘Star Wars’ and an indie like ‘The Order.’ It’s an exciting time: You can tell it in eight hours, you can tell it in 16 hours, you can tell it in two hours.”
With TV, he appreciates the bigger canvas. Law has devoured every episode of “Skeleton Crew,” for instance. He’s not sure whether or not there’ll be another season, since the child actors who appeared in the first grew up during the strike. “The kids were at an age where you leave six months and they grow four inches,” he says.
Whether or not he dons his “Star Wars” uniform again, Law will be plenty busy. On the set of “Black Rabbit,” Jackson remembers shooting a night scene in Greenwich Village, where Law disappeared into the crowds of the city. “We had a scene on Seventh Avenue at Waverly at midnight on a Thursday,” Jackson says. “We shot with real people on the street — that’s crazy.”
But the craziest part? The NYU students who drunkenly clogged the sidewalks didn’t even notice Law as he walked by — until it was too late. “By the time he’d gone past them,” Jackson says, “well, you know what it’s like — he’s a fast walker.”
And Jude Law ain’t looking back.