The 2015 Vanity Fair Hollywood Portfolio



1 / 24 Chevron Chevron EMILY BLUNT 25 films, including* Sicario (2015) and Into the Woods and Edge of Tomorrow *(2014). Photographed on Mount Lee, in the Hollywood Hills.

The Hollywood movie: America's big cultural gift to the world, along with jazz, rock 'n' roll, and blue jeans. But from the beginning, even as Hollywood was becoming Hollywood, American film had a strong British accent. One of our first stars, and still among our most iconic, was Charlie Chaplin, the product of a Dickensian London childhood. Perhaps it helped that his movies were silent? Then again, the advent of talkies made no difference. Gone with the Wind, as American a novel as there is, for better or worse, was brought to the screen with three of its four principal stars—Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard—holding British passports.

For more of the annual Hollywood issue, subscribe now and get this issue guaranteed. The full issue is available February 5 in the digital editions and on national newsstands.

As Paul Revere warned, they just keep coming, fearless in taking on even the most sacred of American roles. Do they think they still own the place? In the last couple of years, we have seen Abraham Lincoln reanimated by Daniel Day-Lewis—formally, as of last November, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, to make him sound even more English—while Solomon Northup, author of the de facto Gone with the Wind corrective 12 Years a Slave, was played by yet another of Queen Elizabeth's honored subjects: Chiwetel Ejiofor, O.B.E. How did David Oyelowo prepare to play Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most revered of all American heroes, in Selma? By being born 4,000 miles away from Alabama, in Oxford (England, not Mississippi), and training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

A Vanity Fair Original Video: Brits Declare War—On Hollywood!

Want more? [Watch Episode 2] (http://video.vanityfair.com/watch/british-portfolio-episode-2-coming-to-america) and Episode 3.

In this light, it is noteworthy that four of the most prominent British names in the current Oscar derby—Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Eddie Redmayne, and Felicity Jones—are being celebrated for staying home and playing actual Brits. Over the years, too, the U.S. has lobbed a few of our own thespians back at the mother country: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones, Dick Van Dyke as Bert the chimney sweep. But did America get a single decent part in the Harry Potter series? As evidenced quite gloriously on the following pages, this is a cultural trade imbalance that shows no signs of abating.