Synopsis

When Beatrix Potter finally publishes her debut book, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", she becomes a writing celebrity. It leads to courtship and her first love with her publisher, Norman Warne. Their relationship and his marriage proposal in July, 1905, was to change Beatrix's life for ever. It was a love which she could not announce, or even talk about. In high-society London, her parents had insisted she keep it from friends and neighbours. They considered her proposed wedding a mismatch. Warne, they said, was from 'trade' and demanded that she carefully reconsider their life together. Beatrix allowed herself to be persuaded to leave her fiancé and London. It was supposed to be a time for reflection and calm. But instead, Beatrix faced tragedy and loneliness and returned, with a different outlook. She became a woman of strong views and independence. She also built up a farming dynasty in the Lake District over which she took charge, long after her writing career virtually ended in 1913. It established her as a woman ahead of her time, becoming the world's most successful children's writer, a wealthy landowner, farmer and an environmentalist.

What The Critics Say

"A lush and perfectly produced period piece that, if not increasing our pulse rate, at least provides viewing the whole family will enjoy." Ron Wilkinson MONSTERS AND CRITICS "The movie pulls off a neat trick, using animation to show how, when Potter is alone with her animal creations, they leap around on the page or wink at her with unapologetic cheekiness. They're alive, and they're in charge." Stephanie Zacharek SALON.COM "A Charlotte's Web for adults. Pure delight." Harvey S Karten COMPUSERVE "Don't be surprised if you shed a little tear in "Miss Potter". This enchanting biopic about the world of the creator of Peter Rabbit is warm and funny, revealing and moving. 'There's something delicious about writing the first words of a story,' says Renée Zellwegger's Beatrix Potter. 'You never know where they will take you.' For Potter, the direction of her life is fuelled by her imagination, and channeled into the characters she creates on paper - with pencil, paper and watercolour." Louise Keller URBANCINEFILE "The film is a guaranteed tearjerker, but more than that, an uplifting tribute to a single woman's quest for independence that would surely make Bridget Jones blush." Stella Papamichael BBC

"Its old-fashioned sincerity ultimately proves disarming. Sweet but not cloying, it’s a heartening portrait of goodness surmounting the odds." Trevor Johnston TIME OUT "Miss Potter is for moviegoers who are drawn more to the delightful than the destructive. It's undeniably refreshing to see a PG-rated movie for adults done so well." Camerin Courtney CHRISTIANITY TODAY "Wonderfully economical at 88 minutes, Miss Potter is a concentrated dose of cinematic joy and Renée Zellweger contributes greatly to its effect. Her "Miss Potter" has the nascent characteristics of a modern woman, and Zellweger's abundant ability to express her innermost emotions directly to us is superbly utilised. Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson are in top form as siblings who come into Potter's life and provide the love and warmth that her own home never quite matches." Andrew L Urban URBANCINEFILE "A delightful and enchanting biopicture about the famous children's book writer and illustrator whose love of the English Lake District made for a dramatic legacy." Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat SPIRITUALITY AND PRACTICE "Ultimately, we're won over by Beatrix's story. Hers was, as Richard Griffiths says of Thomas Hardy in The History Boys, 'a saddish life, but not an unappreciated one.' Even more appreciated now, thanks to this honest, unassuming little film." Eleanor Ringel Gillespie ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

Beatrix Potter - A Remarkable Woman Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July 1866 in South Kensington, London. She lived a lonely life at home, being educated by a governess and having little contact with other people. She had many animals which she kept as pets, studying them and making drawings. Her parents took her on three month summer holidays to Scotland, but when the house they rented became unavailable, they rented Wray Castle near Ambleside in the Lake District. Beatrix was 16 when they first stayed here. Her parents entertained many eminent guests, including Hardwicke Rawnsley vicar of Wray Church, who in 1895 was to become one of the founders of the National Trust. His views on the need to preserve the natural beauty of Lakeland had a lasting effect on the young Beatrix, who had fallen in love with the unspoilt beauty surrounding the holiday home. For the next 21 years on and off, the Potters holidayed in the Lake District, staying once at Wray Castle, once at Fawe Park, twice at Holehird and nine times at Lingholm, by Derwentwater, famous now for its rhododendron gardens. Beatrix loved Derwentwater, and explored Catbells behind Lingholm. She watched squirrels in the woods, saw rabbits in the vegetable gardens of the big house. She made many sketches of the landscape. They still kept in touch with Rev Rawnsley, who after five years at Wray, moved to Crosthwaite Church just outside Keswick. Rawnsley encouraged her drawings, and when back in London Beatrix made greetings cards of her pictures, and started a book. Rawnsley encouraged her to publish, and eventually Frederick Warne published 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' in 1902. Her third book, 'Squirrel Nutkin' had background views based on Derwentwater, Catbells and the Newlands Valley. Fawe Park featured in 'The Tale of Benjamin Bunny'. In 1903 Beatrix bought a field in Near Sawrey, near where they had holidayed that year. She now had an income from her books, Peter Rabbit having now sold some 50000 copies. In 1905 she bought Hill Top, a little farm in Sawrey, and for the next 8 years she busied herself writing more books, and visiting her farm. In 1909 she bought another farm opposite Hill Top, Castle Farm, which became her main Lakeland base. Seven of her books are based in or around Hill Top. Tom Kitten and Samuel Whiskers lived there. Hill Top is still as it was then, and is now the most visited literary shrine in the Lake District. Beatrix Potter married William Heelis, a solicitor in Hawkshead, in 1913. Then started the next stage in her life, being a Lakeland farmer, which lasted for 30 years. The office of William Heelis is now the National Trust's 'Beatrix Potter Gallery'. In 1923 she bought Troutbeck Park Farm, and became an expert in breeding Herdwick sheep, winning many prizes at country shows with them. Beatrix continued to buy property, and in 1930 bought the Monk Coniston Estate - 4000 acres from Little Langdale to Coniston - which contained Tarn Hows, now Lakeland's most popular piece of landscape. In 1934 she gave many of her watercolours and drawings of fungi, mosses and fossils to the Armitt Library in Ambleside. When she died on 22 December 1943, Beatrix Potter left fourteen farms and 4000 acres of land to the National Trust, together with her flocks of Herdwick sheep. The Trust now owns 91 hill farms, many of which have a mainly Herdwick landlord's flock with a total holding of about 25000 sheep. This was her gift to the nation, her own beloved countryside for all to enjoy. Beatrix was the first woman to be elected president-designate of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, which continues to flourish. For more on Beatrix Potter please go to Visit Cumbria © 2007. The Inside Story When director Chris Noonan called "Action!" for the first time on "Miss Potter", on March 7, 2006 Renée Zellweger stepped into the role of the iconic English writer, Beatrix Potter, a role she has made uniquely her own. "There is nothing over produced or over-rehearsed about Renée’s performance," said director Chris Noonan. "There’s real spontaneity. You know she has an anarchic, subversive sense of humour, and when you learn more about Beatrix Potter, you discover she had real wit, and was far earthier than you might suppose." What will surprise many cinemagoers is that, until the script came to him, Noonan had no particular interest in Beatrix Potter. In an interview with the Manchester Evening News he revealled, "Her books were around, I was aware of her stories but I had never been read them as a child. So she hadn’t impinged on my consciousness much. I just knew she’d been a writer of children’s’ stories, and I assumed something about those stories, because I’d seen the drawings on the bunny cups and all the crockery, that they were overly sweet and saccharine. I had no particular interest in her and her story. But then this script came across my desk and I read it, and was very deeply moved. After that I went back and read some of her stories and discovered they are actually quite sophisticated. There’s a real twisted humour in some of them, and a lot of them are very dark. I found it fascinating, and her story was just mind boggling really. I couldn’t believe that no-one had told it before." And here's a real twist. In his film, there is a story of "The Rabbit's Christmas Party". Noonan wrote that story after visiting an exhibition of her at a London gallery. "The paintings are just exquisite. I saw an exhibition of her work at a gallery in London, just before we went into production. And it was there that I saw the painting from the rabbits’ Christmas party series, which is the painting we incorporated into the story, that she was painting for Norman. There was no story to go with this series of drawings so I took the liberty of writing something, I actually sat down and wrote the story of the rabbits’ Christmas party in a Beatrix Potter style, as much as I could. That story was never published so I could get away with it." As a young fan I, like many, have never known of the huge legacy this remarkable woman, a true environmentalist created. "I don’t think many people know a great deal about her life," Noonan said. "A vision of Beatrix that I’ve had from the beginning is a modern woman placed into the suffocating social environment of the turn of the 20th Century." Richard E Maltby Jnr, the Tony award winning writer of musicals (including "Ain’t Misbehavin", "Fosse" and "Ring of Fire") has written a fascinating story chronicling Beatrix Potter's achievements. It tells of her love for her publisher Norman Warne and, her striving towards an independent life at a time when her expected place in society was as a conformist wife. It praises her talented pen (both as writer and artist) that created the world of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggy-winkle, Jeremy Fisher and their friends. It tells the story of a woman whose life was a fascinating mix of professional achievement and private grief; a woman who swum against the tide. Richard E Maltby Jnr's screenplay required little tweeking. But Noonan did make one major change. In Maltby Jnr's original script the animated creatures jumped from the pages and were enviasaged as 3D images. Noonan saw a danger in that. "In the original script some of them jumped off the page and took their place in the normal human world as three dimensional creatures. I felt that that was dangerous, that it would become a sort of gimmick that overshadowed the human story I wanted to tell," Noonan (1995 New York Film Critics Award winner for Best First Film) said. "We had a lot of discussion over that, Renee and the animators and the producers and me, and finally arrived at what’s in the film, which is about as close as you can get to something that Beatrix herself might have worked towards. We just use her drawings and animate them, so that the quality of her drawings doesn’t change." Renée Zellweger, who plays Beatrix put in a lot of hours researching her character. "She’s a stickler for research, she really wanted to know everything she possibly could. She went through the Warne archive, which is the easiest way to get to some of Beatrix’s original paintings so that there you are, and see the marks that her brush made. They also had these templates for the books, which she presented to her publisher in little children’s exercise books. She really dictated the way her books were going to look, she designed them herself basically. The Warne people said that if every author were to present stuff as thoroughly thought through as she did then they wouldn’t have to employ designers." "Miss Potter" took eight weeks to film using locations such as: London, the Isle of Man and, the beautiful Lake District, home to so many of Beatrix Potter’s creations. In the first two weeks of production, the cast and crew moved around London and the Home Counties. A magnificent street of Queen Anne houses provided the exterior of the Warne home, while Kingston-upon-Thames offered up a fabulous period conservatory for the Warne garden. The famous Bluebell Railway where the age of steam lives on (if only for tourists), was home to the unit for three days while a poignant farewell scene took place as the Potters left for the Lakes, and Beatrix said goodbye to Norman Warne. The National Trust’s Osterley House provided three excellent locations – as Hyde Park complete with horses and carriages, as an art gallery visited by Beatrix and Millie Warne, and as a tearoom where Beatrix and Norman speculate about how much profit Beatrix’s books might make. The Isle of Man provided a virtual film studio for the production, with four weeks of interiors to be filmed. In the final two weeks the production moves to the Lake District, the beautiful region of England where Beatrix Potter spent much of her life, and did so much good, buying up failing farms, and properties and lavishing on them much needed tender loving care. The film is a most delightful experience and one that is 'family friendly'. It remains true to Potter's life story. "I tried to remain true to her tastes and her life wherever I possibly could," says Noonan. "One of the dangers of this film was that it could have become schmaltzy or overly sentimental. But she was such a matter of fact sort of character that it would have been completely contradictory to who she was, what sort of reality she wanted to present, if I’d done that. So I was determined, above all, to steer completely away from that." The Verdict "What a blessing. A tale that in the main features the story of Beatrix Potter's adult life and yet it is still 'G' rated. It's beautifully shot, the characters are wonderful to watch, the illustrations are beautiful (stay for the end credits) and what comes out in the films closing chapter will amaze many fans of Potter's delightful childrens books. Excellent performance from Renée Zellweger as "Miss Potter"; her onscreen chaperon Miss Wiggin played by Matyelok Gibbs ("Babel"); Lucy Boynton who plays the ten year old Beatrix and, television veteran Barbara Flynn (Mary Queen of Scots opposite Helen Mirren in TV's "Elizabeth I") as Beatrix's mother. What adds further joy to "Miss Potter" is the understated, outstanding performance by Ewan McGregor as Potter's first love, publisher Norman Warne and, Emily Watsons delightful contribution as Warne's spinster sister Millie. While "Miss Potter" is definately family friendly, it may not hold the attention of very young viewers. The gorgeous Lakes District scenery adds to the pleasure of what should be a very entertaining experience for most cinemagoers. Very recommended. 4 1/2 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "MISS POTTER" stars .......
Academy Award winner Renée Zellweger ["Jerry Maguire", "Nurse Betty", "Cold Mountain" and "Cinderella Man"]; Emily Watson ["Gosford Park", "Punch-Drunk Love", "Red Dragon" and "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers"]; Barbara Flynn ["Quick Change", "You're Dead" and "The Escort"]; Bill Paterson ["The Ploughman’s Lunch", "The Killing Fields", "Truly Madly Deeply" and "Bright Young Things"], Matyelok Gibbs ["Victor/Victoria", "A Room With A View", "To Kill a Priest" and "Oscar and Lucinda"]; Lloyd Owen ["Between Dreams", "The Seasons Alter", "The Republic of Love" and "Get The Picture"] and Ewan McGregor ["Brassed Off", "Moulin Rouge!", "Black Hawk Down", "Young Adam" and "The Island"] as Norman Warne.
"MISS POTTER" was .......
directed by Chris Noonan ["Bulls", "Stepping Out" and "Babe"]; screenplay by Richard E Maltby Jnr ["Miss Potter"]; production design by Academy Award winner Martin Childs ["Shakespeare in Love", "Mrs Brown", "Calendar Girls" and "Lady In The Water"]; set decoration Tina Jones ["Chasing Liberty", "Kinky Boots", "The Last King of Scotland" and "The Queen"] cinematography by 1995 BSC Best Cinematographer Award winner Andrew Dunn ["Gosford Park", "The Count of Monte Cristo", "Stage Beauty" and "Mrs Henderson Presents"]; original music by New York International Radio Festival Gold Medal winner Nigel Westlake ["Babe", "Babe: Pig In The City", "The Nugget" and "Horseplay"]; costume design by TONY Award and Three Time Academy Award winner Anthony Powell ["Tess", "Death On The Nile", "Travels With My Aunt" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"] and edited by Robin Sales ["Mrs Brown", "Topsy Turvy", "Johnny English", "Keeping Mum", "Very Annie Mary" and "The Upside of Anger"]. Run Time 92 minutes Rated G [AUST] Copyright ©2007 - Weinstein Company - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2007 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved