Okay so here goes from a complete computer illerate , i feel proud of my self for being able to find the page to post something , and even more thankful to the man who spent the time in setting this up it has been intresting for me to read , what there is on the web , peoples memories of meeting me in what was now a decade ago ,thats you David seems you had alot of faith that we could have created some thing and that you could have directed a decent performance out of me i am not sure that i was open enough for that to have happened but i am sorry we never got to find out (I also hope that the spelling may have improved , albeit with spell check) and to read some of the points of view that i had on inane things , or maybe just inane points of view i thought to share , imbarassing !!!!
Still life has been full of many lessons, some re learned again and again some not needed repeating. All have helped form me , 2 years from thirty,with a strong family around me who support and love me ,who postively encourage me working , creating, and being focused, who i am slowly showing that i can be there for them in the way that they deserve, who have watched me grow from the nieve, obnocious, self important, self involved adult that i thought i was, in to a mother, a human being, who though has strong belives political, humantrian,ecological,could and should to more to support them with action as with and the community that has embraced her and her child life is good i am lucky to be able to say , and pray not to have jinxed it.
i have few very good friends, alot of friends, a bike, love and a love of dancing.last year i was given the oppurnity of work.
some thing that had not been intrusted to me in a long time, and rightly so, not the right head and not the right time. but i wish i could explain to you who ever finds this intersting enough to have gotten this far , the utter freedom and electricty created by working how alive and…. shit i know that there is so many people who it takes to make a film , a show, a play happen the devotion of so much time and energy the relating and ideas created by those around one , but on a completely selfish level it fed me more than i could have imagined and is some thing i came home from alive in a sense that i had not been creatively for a long time ( part of the work i know was started in a class i take by sam rumbelow who has been showing me the beginings of the possibilites of acting from truth )Now I have started i could go on and on it seems but not wanting to ramble nor get too personal I shall stop .I truly hope that those of you who get the oppurtinity to watch wild decembers , can enjoy it just half as much as i did making it and playing Breege.
I am headed to Ireland to do the ADR on it later this month and i will then get my first glimpse of it , nervous, excited worried, the Irish accent has left me , so will be practicing most of the time, hope fully meet up with Matt Ryan and Owen before.
I am so pleased to have worked and secretly pleased it is not all over.Lara
January 17, 2009
A Letter from Lara, herself :)
November 14, 2008
Lara in role of Breege in ecranisation of Edna O`Brien`s “Wild Decembers”
As IMDB cites, Lara Belmot will play leading role in Tv series that will be made in 2009. It is drama, an ecranisation of Edna O`Brien`s “Wild Decembers”. Lara will star alongside Matt Ryan as Bugler and Owen McDonnell as Joseph
“Wild Decembers” rewiew:
“Violet Hill, fluid, flowing, a brindled phantom upon the mountain in the early morning, a vision that streaked back and forth like a painted picture and then again in the dusk, becoming one with the dusk, except for her eyes, which glowed wildly.” This description of a magnificent racing greyhound illustrates the wild, dark, stream-of-consciousness style which has made Edna O’Brien something of a legend in her long career. Her 22nd work of fiction, Wild Decembers, is as stormy and bittersweet as its title, telling an age-old tale in a way that sweeps away the cobwebs and exposes the bare nerves of human pride.
O’Brien has inspired comparisons with some of the literary greats, including Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor and even Colette. But her style is very much her own, often bitter and acidic, yet paradoxically brimming with rambunctious, sensual life. Wild Decembers is all about the struggle between two men to claim a patch of land on a mountain in Cloontha, western Ireland. The sister of one of the men falls in love with the rival. What could be more timeworn, even cliched, than a simple struggle for dominance and birthright, complicated by forbidden love? Yet O’Brien’s telling is so masterful that it is as if this situation has never been heard of before.
The two men, Joseph Brennan and Mick Bugler, are distantly related, “the warring sons of warring sons,” locked in “the crazed and phantom lust for a lip of land.” Brennan’s people have been farming on the land for generations, so he sees Mick Bugler as an interloper and a pretender. Bugler is not even Irish, not properly Irish anyway, having come over from a sheep station in Australia to claim his supposed inheritance on the mountain called Slieve Clochan.
And then there is Breege, Joseph’s sensitive and withdrawn younger sister, who has given over her life to caring for her brother. Her considerable passion has been deeply suppressed by a sheltered and stifling existence until Mick Bugler drives in on his shiny-new tractor, stirring in her feelings she has never dared acknowledge before. Though Mick and Joseph make a rather forced show of friendship at the beginning, Bugler’s intentions to encroach on Brennan’s land soon become clear. Even the suggestion that Breege may be attracted to Bugler causes Joseph to subject her to a vicious beating which leaves her cowed with terror.
This is the first of many shocks in Wild Decembers. Up to this point, Joseph strikes us as a broody and obsessive, but basically decent, human being who only wants what he believes is rightfully his. The beating strips away this veneer to reveal a seething, hateful jealousy that will eventually drive him to even more desperate acts of violence. The roots of this hatred are impossible to find, buried deep in past generations, fueled and fed both by historic injustice and even the most innocent acts in the present day.
Rest of rewiew at:
September 19, 2008
Echoes (2008)
Lara plays a role of mother:
Echoes is a short film about a sex trafficker called Anya who is faced with a moral dilemma when she discovers that a young girl that she is trafficking (from Lithuania to London) is pregnant.
May 23, 2008
Lara in 2001 short “Breach” by Sam Taylor-Wood
Thanks to Lara`s fan from Finland>
this is interview from 2001:
Sam Taylor-Wood:
“Lara Belmont rose to the challenge of starring in `The War Zone’, her first film, with strength and vulnerability. What I saw on the screen was someone who had not been trained in any way. Who was totally open and natural. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more of her on the big screen.”
LARA BELMONT
Discovered at 13 by Isabella Blow, Lara Belmont spent her early teens modelling. At 18 she was spotted again, this time by a casting agent. Belmont went on to win the role of Jessie in Tim Roth’s The War Zone, for which she won Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Independent Film Awards.
What are the five things most often said about you?
Lara Belmont: Spun-out, positive, moody, sympathetic, generous.
The reason you get out of bed every morning is…
I don’t get out of bed, that’s the reason why I want a job.
If you could take only one item into the next century, what would it be?
My sanity – it’s not something I want to lose.
What’s the first thing you’ll do when you wake up in the 21st century?
Feel dazed and confused then take a paracetamol.
The person you’d most like to be stuck in a lift with…
Scarlet, my best mate, because we do everything together.
By this time next year…
I’ll have joined CND, got my driving licence, achieved inner happiness and finished a pint.
May 20, 2008
“Remember Hope”- Lara Belmont`s new short film
This short film is alot simmilar to the “Open skies”. Lara plays a mother that remember her last minutes with her little daughter before she dissapeared.
January 8, 2008
The Swap (2002) Imdb viewer review
Portrait of a dysfunctional marriage with a crime story background
If it were not for the brilliant portrayal of a family in which the married couple are no longer in love with each other, this would be only slightly better than a normal crime story. The relationship has reached a stage in which even banal conversations between the parents of two boys and a young adult daughter are likely to end in ugly arguments. Tom Forrester, played by Michael Maloney, is too busy running his business to have enough time for his family. His wife, Jen, played by Jemma Redgrave, is a busy mother who is dissatisfied with her role, and regrets not having continued with her work. This relationship is the main story, and the two characters keep up a tension throughout the film between their dissatisfaction with their partner and their remaining hopes for happy family life.
Jen organises a house swap with the family of an Australian professor for the Christmas holidays. While they are staying in Australia, the professor, Charles Anderson, played by Jonathan Cake, steals various belongings from the house in England.
There are various twists in the tale, which keep up the interest in the criminal part of the story, and also increase the likelihood of the family pulling together through adversity.
The supporting cast were very good. Rose Trenchard, played by Phyllida Law, was a very credible typical older lady neighbour, and Lissa, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the family, played by Lara Belmont, was very convincing as a young adult slightly disturbed by the constant arguing of her parents.
Following the various twist and turns in the story, the film reaches a dramatic final scene in which the married couple play out a thoroughly logical and satisfying ending, and even this may not be what one is expecting.
January 8, 2008
The Telegraph interview with Lara (2002)
THREE weeks ago, Lara Belmont was a student drugged and left for dead by psycho Jonathan Cake in Marc Blake’s two-part ITV thriller The Swap. Then, for the next couple of nights, she was in 19th-century St Petersburg, on BBC2, as spiritual prostitute Sonia in Tony Marchant’s adaptation of Crime and Punishment.
Lara Belmont in The Swap: ‘I love the idea of doing something that you feel passionate about, but I hate the idea that people know who you are’
Add to this her role as a clubber pursued by a murderous spook in Marcus Adams’s horror film Long Time Dead, which opened in January, and one can’t help concluding that, so far, it has been quite a year.
On screen, Belmont is pale, petite and distractingly pretty, a remarkably relaxed actress who both looks her 20-odd years (her exact age is a state secret) and can also radiate a melancholic knowingness far beyond them. Whether the vehicle is good (The Swap), bad (Long Time Dead) or mixed (Crime and Punishment), she quietly, almost involuntarily, walks away with scene after scene.
In the flesh, she is no less alluring, but she also has a skittish energy that has not yet made it on to the screen. She enters the central-London bar where we meet with a big smile, a firm handshake, and a flurry of apologies for being so late. Her tardiness is the result of protracted preparations for her latest project, Ashes and Sand, a film adaptation, by director Bob Blagden, of Judy Upton’s play of the same name, in which she stars opposite Lock, Stock . . . alumnus Nick Moran.
The play was first seen at the Royal Court in 1994, with Samantha Morton in the lead. “I’ve taken her role,” says Belmont, her accent betraying a childhood divided between south London and Gloucestershire, “though I probably won’t do it as well!” The role in question is Hayley, the leader of a gang of girls who try to get some money together to escape their native Brighton, and the story is about the cracks that develop in their friendships and plans.
“Hayley,” says Belmont, “is a very intense, highly intelligent, in-yer-face sort of girl, and the film is really high-energy. I really wanted to do something like this, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s very easy,” she continues, apparently reflecting on past performances, “to be in front of the camera and be quite low, and be quite ‘in yourself’ – it’s much easier than to break out and really act. It’s very easy to be quite sullen.”
“Easy”, it must be said, is not a word that one would associate with the role with which Belmont made her name, and which is likely to remain her most notorious. Despite having modelled intermittently since the age of 13, she had never considered acting – until, so legend has it, she received a tap on the shoulder while out shopping one day. Is the story true?
“Hundred per cent!” she replies in sing-song tones. “I was cruising along Portobello Road with my sister and my friends, and before I knew it there was a Polaroid in my face, and then one thing led to another – it was a whirlwind, I guess.”
The mystery photographer was a talent scout for British actor/director Tim Roth, who was casting for his 1999 screen adaptation of Alexander Stuart’s pitch-black tale of incest, The War Zone and within weeks Belmont, unknown and untrained, had left her sixth-form college to play Jessie, the frequently naked daughter of Ray Winstone’s monstrously abusive Dad.
Critical opinion was polarised. On the one hand, Belmont was almost universally praised for her performance. (Artist Sam Taylor-Wood spoke for the multitude in describing her as “totally open and natural”, and was so impressed by her that she made her the tearful star of her silent film Breach, at her White Cube²’s exhibition last year.)
On the other hand, The War Zone reignited the age-old debate about the ethics of nubile young actresses disrobing for middle-aged men in the name of cinematic art.
What Belmont’s perspective on this chapter in her life will be in 20 years, one can only speculate. Certainly, she appears to have taken it in her stride. “It was all right,” she says breezily, pinching a Marlboro Light. “I’m pleased I got the chance to play Jessie. It was an opportunity I just wasn’t going to throw away – even,” she adds, “if it did mean getting my kit off.”
Belmont may be on the foothills of fame, but she does not entirely relish the prospect of reaching the top, and is even considering returning to college at some point. “I hate the idea of being spotted on the street now,” she says. “I was walking down the road to see my sister one morning, and this guy was suddenly just walking along with me sounding off about stuff I’d done. I don’t like that. I love catching the bus, I love catching the Tube, I like being able to pick who I talk to. I love the idea of doing something that you feel passionate about, but I hate the idea that people know who you are.”
Belmont is hardly the first person to say this. But, in an age groaning with putative Pop Idols for whom celebrity is all, the means a distant afterthought, this is one young performer who seems to have her priorities straight.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/03/02/btvclass0.xml
January 7, 2008
Lara lovely smile in “Someone Else”. I love Lara smiling!
Coming…
All most there…
And here it is:)
