ANNAUD PLANS A FROZEN ‘ROSE’ FOR ACTORS

Red noses, watery eyes and freezing hands--that’s what French director Jean Jacques Annaud is promising the Hollywood actors he’s lining up for the film version of the prize-winning best seller, “The Name of the Rose.”

That’s because the movie, about murders in a 14th-Century European abbey, will be filmed in the cells and courtyards of bone-chilling German and Italian monasteries this winter. And Annaud wants it to look freezing.

“Because it was,” he said on a visit to Los Angeles this week. “At that particular period it was far below zero. And I want that look. The actors will understand.”

Annaud, the handsome, 41-year-old director whose first film, “Black and White in Color,” earned him an Oscar and who then went on to consolidate his reputation with the extraordinary “Quest for Fire,” set in the dawn of human history, fell in love with “The Name of the Rose” as he read it.

And since obtaining the screen rights from author Umberto Eco, he has read everything he can about the period.

“The Middle Ages have long been my passion,” he said. “Very few people have any idea what it was like living in those days--most films we see are just comic-strip versions. So to be accurate, we’re re-creating the furniture and having special clothes made in Morocco, where they still use the ancient technique.”

Half the cast will be American, he says, and he hopes to announce names in about a month. One actor with whom he had long talks about the project is Roy Scheider, whose face, Annaud says, would have been perfect for the role of Brother William, who turns detective when the bodies of seven monks are discovered in a Franciscan abbey he visits. “Roy looks so gaunt, so monklike,” Annaud said, “and he was so enthusiastic. But the details could not be worked out.”

Shooting on “The Name of the Rose,” being produced by Berndt Eichinger for Neue Constantin Co. of Germany, will begin in November.

Clearly, like “Quest for Fire,” which took Annaud to six countries, this will not be an easy project.

“That’s part of the challenge,” he said. “Having said that, I must admit it would be nice one day to find a great script in my letter box, one that needs no rewriting, that is already cast and that has a big fat check attached to it. . . .”

NOTHING NEW: Tempers have been flaring at London’s National Theatre, and at the center of the row is that still angry playwright, John Osborne. He has suddenly taken exception to the casting of actress Joan Plowright, wife of Sir Laurence Olivier, in the coming revival of his 1957 play, “The Entertainer,” at the National.

She was to have portrayed the wife of the seedy entertainer Archie Rice--to be played by Alan Bates--and Osborne has startled everyone by claiming that she is “not right for this difficult part.”

Since Plowright is considered one of Britain’s foremost actresses, this has enraged National Theatre director Sir Peter Hall, who is now casting about for a replacement.

“The trouble with Osborne,” he says bitterly, “is that he does like slamming people. That’s how he keeps cheerful.” Adds Plowright’s agent: “You can always rely on John Osborne to offend somebody. . . .”

ENOUGH: Ballet star Alexander Godunov scored a modest success as an actor in his first movie, Peter Weir’s “Witness.” Now he has appeared in another film, “The Money Pit,” directed by Richard Benjamin. But on the other side of the Atlantic, Rudolf Nureyev, who made his acting debut in Ken Russell’s disastrous “Valentino,” has decided that enough is enough.

“No more films for me,” he says. “I always suspected my film career would not go very far, and I was right. Anyway, I find acting hard work.”

Nureyev, now 47, has for the last two years been director of the Paris Opera Ballet.

‘The Middle Ages have long been my passion. . . . Most films we see are comic-strip versions.’

‘At that period it was far below zero. And I want that look. The actors will understand.’