WAGW reviews

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 'Girl' Filming Causes a Royal Fuss by Claudia Puig

 Who stirred up more attention during the London filming of  What a Girl Wants: Queen Elizabeth or British actor Colin Firth? Tough call. Firth may have emerged the winner, but only because Her Majesty was a pretender, played by an impersonator known as Elizabeth R. 

"She's the greatest Queen Elizabeth look-alike on the planet," director Dennie Gordon says. "She even goes to the Queen's optometrist to get the identical glasses. We had 300 extras in St. James's Palace, and she was just walking across the room and all the extras started applauding. She was so great, she just stood there with her little wave."

Off-screen, though, she indulged in some unregal behavior. "She lit up a cigarette and created a riot," Gordon says. "Oh, my God, the queen is smoking with the grips!"

In the film, which opens April 4, the dashing Firth, 42, plpays an aristocratic politician who realizes he has a 17-year-old American daughter (played by Nickelodeon star Amanda Bynes). 

Gordon says the married Firth works in the role, in part, because he has "that thing that adult women love. After Bridget Jones, Colin Firth makes us all weak in the knees."

Some of Firth's fervid fans showed up unannounced during filming. "We had stalkers on the set," Gordon says. "One woman shows up everywhere he goes. She's very proper in her little red suit. He sees her and says, 'My stalker's here,' and goes over and says, 'Hello, how are you?'"
 

© USA Today 2003
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Amanda Bynes was unsure about starring in What a Girl Wants when she first got the script. It was only when she found out Colin Firth would be playing her father that she was sure of the project. Bynes plays a girl traveling to England to find her long lost dad. 

"I got a script and it's really interesting with scripts because you never really know," Bynes said. "It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working. Once I read it, it seemed really cute but I didn't finish it. I don't like reading scripts because I'm everywhere and I have such a short attention span for that. I thought it was cute but I didn't know if I wanted to do a movie. 

Then I heard Colin Firth was interested and I was like 'What? He's interested? Let me look at that again.' I just thought this is a good thing and would be a good message to give to girls which is important I think because I've grown up with kids watching me. As they're growing up, I'm growing up and hopefully they can get a good message from it. When I found out Colin was doing it I was shocked that he would be near me, let alone do a movie with me. He was amazing. Even better than I thought he would be. He's down to earth and has such a good sense of humor and is so charming and such a lovely guy." 

Sharing the screen with Firth taught Bynes about the craft of acting. "There's no exact 'how to' but he's so natural that when he does it, I don't ever see him studying lines but he always brings something to it. He's hard on himself and will do the take 50 times and make sure it's right. Having that type of commitment and stamina is really impressive and is really a good role model and something good to see." 

© comingsoon.net 2003 
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.