Anthony Edwards, best known as ER's Dr Mark Greene, has taken time off from the top-rated medical drama to star in a British romantic comedy with a script developed by theatre impresario Bill Kenwright. Christopher Pickard reports. 
 

Last summer, actor Anthony Edwards took a break from ER and headed for London to practise a bit of sports therapy. Edwards is, of course, better known to fans of America's top-rated television programme ER as Dr Mark Greene, the man who works alongside George Clooney's Dr Douglas Ross. He is also the man who held his own against Tom Cruise in Top Gun. 

Edwards, a confirmed Anglophile, is no stranger to London, having attended a summer workshop at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before studying drama at USC. He has returned many times since with his wife Jeanie Lobell, a make-up artist, whose family has an apartment in the British capital. 

The man who is credited with getting Edwards to London last year is British theatre impresario Bill Kenwright, who had developed a script by Geoff Morrow with Edwards very much in mind. Initially called Us Begins With You, but re-christened Don't Go Breaking My Heart, and featuring Elton John and Kiki Dee's duet, the screenplay was written with British actress Jenny Seagrove, Kenwright's partner, in mind.  

Don't Go Breaking My Heart is likely to put Seagrove, best known internationally for her performances in Local Hero and A Chorus of Disapproval, back on the big screen after five years spent dedicated to the British stage, most recently in Peter Hall's West End production of Hurlyburly. 

Directed by newcomer (at least to features) Willi Patterson, Don't Go Breaking My Heart is a romantic comedy which hinges around an unconventional romantic triangle. The triangle is created when Tony (Edwards), an American sports therapist living unsuccessfully in London after being sacked by his main client (played by Olympic gold medallist Linford Christie), meets Suzanne (Seagrove), a charming widow and mother of two who has a long-time admirer in Frank (Charles Dance), a philandering hypno-dentist. Frank tries to hypnotise Suzanne to fall in love with him, but it is Tony who turns up in the right place at the right time and, unbeknown to him, benefits from the spell-induced affections. The cast also includes Tom Conti, Jane Leeves, Lynda Bellingham and George Layton. 

When Jenny met Anthony 
"It's Sleepless In Seattle meets When Harry Met Sally, with a Chariots of Fire ending," jokes Seagrove, who showed her commitment to the project by flying to Los Angeles just for a photo shoot with Edwards when he was unable to return to London because of his ER work load. "It's our baby," says Seagrove of her and Kenwright's long-term commitment to getting the project off the ground. "You can either sit around waiting for the right script or go out and get your own script going. That is what we have done. Happily, it has been a totally joyous experience." 

Edwards admits that for just one brief moment he did consider directing the project but decided to go with Patterson. "I'm not crazy about acting and directing myself," Edwards told Moving Pictures during a break in the photo shoot in Los Angeles just weeks prior to Cannes. "I also didn't feel that I knew the English colloquialisms well enough to do the project justice as the director." 

Edwards had been the first of the ER cast to be given the directing reins on the hit series and his work continues to be acclaimed on both sides of the camera. Most recently he directed the ER episode that was broadcast by NBC in the US on 30 April. 
Despite all the media hype surrounding the final episodes of Seinfeld, Edwards says the cast of ER is relaxed. "I think the media have overlooked the fact that ER regularly puts on a couple of million more viewers than Seinfeld." 

Edwards is immensely proud of both ER and Don't Grow Breaking My Heart and thinks that for the time being, independent films that he himself produces are his future on the big screen. With his other interests, he explains, he simply does not have the time to commit to many studio pictures. The last was Joel Schumacher's The Client, in which he starred opposite Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. 

Worth the money 
Edwards' production partner in Aviator Films, which executive-produced Don't Go Breaking My Heart, says the film fitted the bill in terms of the type of project they want for Edwards. "Character-driven projects with a literary background that can be independently financed," as Dante Di Loreto explains. "While it is also about ownership and the fact that we can be very picky, they are projects that we can become very involved in – films which we will hopefully feel as good about five years down the road as we do today." 

Michael Green, executive vice president of BWE Distribution, which holds international rights to Don't Go Breaking My Heart, calls the film "exquisite", and while admitting he had to pay rather more than he planned to get the film, thinks that it is money well spent. "Everyone's faith in the project has been rewarded by the finished picture," he says. "It will shine this festival."