{"id":949759,"date":"2026-11-02T10:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T10:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/949759\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T10:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T10:36:10","slug":"we-both-know-how-we-feel-about-death-and-dying-rhys-ifans-and-laura-linney-on-their-brutally-honest-parkinsons-drama-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/949759\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We both know how we feel about death and dying\u2019: Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney on their brutally honest Parkinson\u2019s drama | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahead of production on their first job together, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney<\/a> didn\u2019t undergo the standard \u201cchemistry read\u201d to make sure they got on. Which is remarkable, given what their characters would have to do to each other in Onwards and Sideways.<\/p>\n

In the Norfolk-set BBC film directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Ifans would have to nearly throttle Linney while in the grip of night terrors, she\u2019d have to collapse in his arms in a weeping mess having bankrupted herself with a gambling addiction; both situations arising from the neurological condition afflicting their characters: Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

But despite being thrown into the deep end in this hugely emotional, often hilarious film, both actors acknowledge an immediate feeling of safety around each other as they embarked on a project that would require them to strip themselves bare. \u201cIt\u2019s odd,\u201d says Ifans, \u201cyou learn so much about each other so quickly. I couldn\u2019t tell you what kind of car Laura drives. What her home looks like. But we both know how we feel about death and dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linney, 62, is a triple-Oscar-nominated star with a diverse array of roles on her CV, from her breakthrough in The Truman Show (1998) onwards through Clint Eastwood\u2019s Mystic River and Richard Curtis\u2019s Love Actually (both 2003), then the TV series Ozark and The Big C. Ifans, 59, frankly burst through in 1997\u2019s Twin Town, AKA the \u201cWelsh Trainspotting\u201d, and went on to play Hugh Grant\u2019s scraggly flatmate Spike in Curtis\u2019s Notting Hill (1999), Daniel Craig\u2019s stalker in Enduring Love (2004) and drug smuggler Howard Marks in Mr Nice (2010).<\/p>\n

Divergent backgrounds, then. But equally time-served, too. So the actors were able to dive in, no chemistry read required. They did, though, do dance classes. They waltzed together in London, and separately nearer their respective homes, the better to understand one popular form of recreational therapy for people with Parkinson\u2019s. In Brooklyn, Linney was introduced to David Leventhal at the Mark Morris Dance Group. He runs a programme there called Dance for PD.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the mothership of this wonderful organisation that now has offshoots all over the world, including here,\u201d the New Yorker says when she, Ifans and I meet in the central London offices of the producers behind Onwards and Sideways. Both are dressed casually and low-key, each clearly easy in the other\u2019s company, their conversation frequently erupting into gales of laughter.<\/p>\n

Ifans and Linney in Onwards and Sideways. Photograph: Jonathan Birch\/BBC<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke with David for a long time \u2013 and then I learned that Juilliard has classes for this once a week,\u201d Linney says of the acting school that\u2019s her alma mater. \u201cSo I just started hanging out there. It\u2019s incredibly moving what the arts will do,\u201d she says \u2013 in this case, how dance and music could relax people grappling with a condition that, among its 40-plus symptoms, causes uncontrollable shaking, stiffness of gait and involuntary freezing in doorways and thresholds. \u201cHow brave it makes people. How it opens up the imagination, and then the body follows somehow, when it shouldn\u2019t. And the difference between someone moving in a dance class and then, when the music stops, to see what happens to their bodies \u2013 it\u2019s shattering in a good and a sad way. So \u2026 it gets right to the bone of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ifans, meanwhile, attended weekly sessions with a group who meet in Pontio, an \u201carts and innovation centre\u201d in Bangor, north-west Wales. \u201cThere was a harpist accompanying the dance,\u201d says the Pembrokeshire native. \u201cThen there was a support dog running around the room who happened to be a sheepdog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHerding!\u201d adds Linney, laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was peak Welshness!\u201d acknowledges Ifans, to hoots all round. Then, quietly again: \u201cThey were so inspiring, these classes. And a great leveller. You\u2019d be sitting next to a nuclear scientist and a school cleaner. Both dancing to the same tune and wrestling with the same diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The writer of Onwards and Sideways is Paul Mayhew-Archer. He\u2019s an actor, writer \u2013 he co-created The Vicar of Dibley with Richard Curtis \u2013 and accidental activist. The 73-year-old is a founder member of the Movers and Shakers podcast, which raises both awareness and laughs, alongside fellow \u201cParky people\u201d, including journalists Jeremy Paxman and Mark Mardell. He was diagnosed with the disease at 58, with the canary in the coalmine, symptoms-wise, being that \u201cmy handwriting was very small and unclear\u201d.<\/p>\n

His experiences directly inform the experiences of the fiftysomething characters played by Ifans (Tony, a teacher) and Linney (Emma, a musician). They also, full disclosure, inform my writing of this feature: my dad has Parkinson\u2019s and I\u2019m in the age bracket Mayhew-Archer was when he was diagnosed. My handwriting is appalling.<\/p>\n

Love is the drug \u2026 Linney with Jason Bateman in Ozark. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n

True to Mayhew-Archer\u2019s mission, Onwards and Sideways is painfully, honestly funny. The scene where Rory Kinnear\u2019s doctor rather cavalierly informs Tony that he has the condition features a joke lifted from Mayhew-Archer\u2019s own diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy neurologist told me one of the symptoms is the difficulty of smiling, and that I seemed to have difficulty smiling,\u201d Mayhew-Archer relates to me when we meet on another day in the same office. \u201cAnd I said: \u2018Well, that could be because you just told me I\u2019ve got Parkinson\u2019s.\u2019 As soon as I said that, I knew I wanted to be funny about Parkinson\u2019s, because I saw no point in being serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markThere\u2019s a mercurial element to this illness \u2013 it\u2019s bespoke. No one has the same Parkinson\u2019s<\/p>\n

Ifans \u2013 who\u2019s been staunchly committed to this project for the duration of its lengthy gestation, stretching back pre-Covid \u2013 seconds that emotion. \u201cI loved the way Paul\u2019s story about a life-changing diagnosis was handled, funny and devastating all at once. My attraction to it was also that I have friends and family who\u2019ve been impacted by Parkinson\u2019s. That gave me a fast track into the telling of a story like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to scratch very far to find someone somewhere who knows someone who has Parkinson\u2019s,\u201d echoes Linney of a condition that, in the UK, 166,000 people are living with, with one person being diagnosed every 20 minutes according to Parkinson\u2019s UK. \u201cI certainly have friends who do.\u201d<\/p>\n

To \u201cact\u201d Parkinson\u2019s, Ifans and Linney were aided by the Neuro Heroes, \u201cremarkable women who do physio for people with Parkinson\u2019s and various related conditions\u201d, says Linney. \u201cThey helped us with our basic understanding of Parkinson\u2019s, and then also the physicalisation. [Because there\u2019s] a mercurial element to this condition \u2013 it\u2019s bespoke. No one has the same Parkinson\u2019s.\u201d Or even the same side-effects from the drugs prescribed to help manage the incurable condition: they can cause increased libido, appetite, and compulsive spending and gambling.<\/p>\n

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Thrones is where the heart is \u2026 Ifans in House of the Dragon. Photograph: HBO<\/p>\n

\u201cParkinson\u2019s was like a physical dialect for us,\u201d continues Ifans. \u201cWe had to learn its physical language. They [the Neuro Heroes] could say what was happening at the muscular level, or the skeletal impact, of Parkinson\u2019s. But we needed poetry to understand what that felt like. Whether it felt like moving through tar or sand. Just to be able to arrive at an image that you could apply to the body, that you could take with you to set each day, to help you achieve the shapes and positions that Parkinson\u2019s puts people in.\u201d<\/p>\n

And those people, ultimately, were always in the actors\u2019 minds. Mayhew-Archer knew the film had to honour those with the condition, but that that noble aim did have its bluntly practical limits. \u201cWe knew we couldn\u2019t cast people with Parkinson\u2019s in those two central roles,\u201d he says. \u201cPartly because Laura\u2019s character has [a medical procedure] done which means she stops doing certain things. And it would be very hard for people with Parkinson\u2019s to stop doing some things!\u201d he adds with a laugh. \u201cOnce you start freezing, you can\u2019t stop!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the added responsibility in getting Parkinson\u2019s right,\u201d says Ifans. \u201cNot just right, but bang-on. Because there\u2019s a whole demographic watching that deserves to be represented. That was the scary bit, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Linney, staring intently at her co-star across the table, nods. It was, she says, fundamentally about \u201cdoing it justice\u201d. And then, \u201cthe possibility of failing at that?\u201d says Ifans. \u201cHuge responsibility. That brought us closer together. That\u2019s the stuff that woke us up at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we meet, Linney is about to be unveiled as one of the cast of DC superhero TV series Lanterns. She\u2019s a Guardian of the Universe, \u201cor so I\u2019ve been told\u201d, she says with spoiler-savvy diplomacy. \u201cBut a green beam might come down and evaporate me if I utter a word!\u201d She\u2019s also two weeks into filming, alongside Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, Comfort and Joy (formerly The Joy of Sex), a romcom about the north London throuple who helped produce Alex Comfort\u2019s groundbreaking 1972 illustrated sex manual. So, another unconventional midlife drama but lighter, certainly, than Onwards and Sideways.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something about this world of Parkinson\u2019s that forced me to be very present in a way that I normally am not, particularly while working,\u201d she admits. \u201cIt forced me to be over my skis a bit. And off-balance, and vulnerable, and experiencing things in very different ways. \u201cThis movie rearranged my cellular structure!\u201d she adds, beaming in gratitude. \u201cMost movies don\u2019t do that. I love my work. But very few experiences have literally rearranged my soul. This one certainly did.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Ifans, this year we\u2019ve seen him alongside Anna Maxwell Martin in Apple TV\u2019s cold war-era sci-fi thriller Star City. When I meet him, he\u2019s just been beheaded on House of the Dragon. Onwards and Sideways, in stark contrast, is acting in the raw, with no high-concept narrative or CGI to hide behind. Acting of a different order.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. You can have spaceships, lunar landscapes, swords and castles, but you ain\u2019t gonna have a co-star like this,\u201d Ifans says, beaming at Linney. \u201cThat\u2019s where the money is. Not the coin \u2026 That\u2019s why we go to work. As Laura says: all these [roles] are different and thrilling and enjoyable in their own way. But this film is particularly nourishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having seen Onwards and Sideways in the company of my mum, who cares 24\/7 for my dad, I couldn\u2019t agree more. We watched it bathed in both tears and smiles. It\u2019s a beautiful achievement; empowering, educational entertainment, and Ifans and Linney deserve all the credit in the world for how they\u2019ve portrayed the multiverse of Parkinson\u2019s. I would send them a personal note to thank them for what they\u2019ve done for those with, and connected with, the disease. But I\u2019m not sure they\u2019d be able to read my handwriting.<\/p>\n

Onwards and Sideways is in UK cinemas from 6 November, and on BBC One and iPlayer later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of production on their first job together, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney didn\u2019t undergo the standard \u201cchemistry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-949759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}