Joely Richardson Focuses on Work While Avoiding Mom’s Politics

Just what do English actors, far from home and working on a big Hollywood movie, talk about with each other during breaks? The queen’s visit? The exchange rate? Try again. It’s Peter Greenaway.

When English actress Joely Richardson found herself teamed up with John Gielgud while filming “Shining Through” a few months ago, all she heard the elder statesman of British stage and film talk about was director-writer Greenaway. Gielgud had just finished Greenaway’s “Prospero’s Books,” a much-anticipated film version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

Richardson, the 26-year-old daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson and younger sister of Natasha, had stories of her own. She plays the youngest of three women--all named Cissie Colpitts--who murder their husbands in Greenaway’s “Drowning by Numbers,” now at the Nuart in West Los Angeles.

Like a Greenaway movie, Richardson’s recollections are vivid: “The crew was Dutch, completely unlike the English. There were these huge Dutch women with hammers behind their ears, slashing away, creating really fabulous things. Then a gigantic gale blew through, ripping trees out of the ground, crushing cars. We had no electricity for a bit. It was like wartime. Everyone got really close.”

Unlike Natasha, who has voiced differences with mother Vanessa’s politics, Joely is mum on the subject. Staying at the home of father Tony (long divorced from Vanessa) while in Los Angeles, the youngest Richardson is still based in London, alternating film and stage jobs. “That’s how I’d always like to do it,” she says, “with real, steady progress.”