Stage Beauty

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Billy Crudup (Big Fish, Sleepers) and Claire Danes (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Romeo & Juliet) head up a host of British stars in a dramatically different period romance - Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding, An Ideal Husband), Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Ben Chaplin (Murder by Numbers, The Thin Red Line), Hugh Bonneville (Iris, Notting Hill), Richard Griffiths (Harry Potter, Sleepy Hollow), Edward Fox (A Bridge Too Far, The Day of the Jackal) and Zoe Tapper (Pepys) also star.

Set for rental video and DVD release and retail DVD release on 27th December 2004 by Momentum Pictures, Stage Beauty provides a wonderfully decadent look at 17th Century London in all its vulgar glory. Its evocative portrayal of life during the reign of Charles II, is a sight to behold. At a time when everyone was given licence to party, people grabbed everything with gusto. The theatres reopened, and well-dressed crowds swarmed to witness a golden age of English drama.

Actor Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is sitting pretty; the brightest star in restoration theatre. Women are forbidden to appear on stage, so the beautiful, brazen Ned shines in all the great female roles. Maria (Claire Danes), his loyal dresser, looks on with admiration- and just a touch of envy.

But when Charles II (Rupert Everett) changes the law, banning cross-dressing male actors, it sends Ned's once-glittering career into freefall and gives Maria the chance to capture the role she's always dreamed of and make the man she's idolized from afar finally notice her.

Directed by Richard Eyre (Iris, and the eagerly anticipated Mary Poppins stage production), produced by Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions and starring a host of British actors, Stage Beauty is the dramatically different period romance that will leave you yelling 'Encore!'