Me and Orson Welles Character Card: John Houseman (Eddie Marsan)

John Houseman, whose collaboration with Welles was to prove so fruitful, was born Jacques Haussmann in Bucharest, to a British mother and Jewish father from Alsace. Educated in England, he emigrated to the United States in 1925, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1943. President of The Mercury Theatre (Welles was vice-president), he went on to become a successful film producer and an accomplished character actor, winning an Academy Award® as Best Supporting Actor in the 1973 academic drama "The Paper Chase". He died in 1988.

Eddie Marsan appears as what Marc Samuelson calls "the solid centre of what's going on in the madness." John Houseman's late career as an actor makes him more familiar to many cinemagoers than some of the other characters in the film, but his particular appeal to Marsan was as "a Romanian Jew who reinvented himself as the quintessential Englishman in the New York theatre circuit and who continued to reinvent himself for the rest of his life. Houseman described his relationship with Welles as that of a father, a friend, somebody who had to be very firm with him and someone who was also at times in awe of Orson. We're filming a story about the theatre company, so all of those dynamics are on the film set, as well as being in the company.

"I'd like people to get a growing awareness of theatre in this period, because it was fascinating and it actually informed acting. The people of this period became the acting teachers for people like Brando, Paul Newman and Benicio del Toro. All the great acting schools in New York and Los Angeles came from these Theatre Projects, which were publicly funded at this time. So I want people to realise the genius of Orson Welles, which is under-appreciated, and also I want people to realise what it was like to be around someone so creative. Sometimes they can be so compassionate, you can fall in love with them, but also they can be so brutal."

Eddie Marsan was born and raised in BethnAl Green, East London. He served an apprenticeship as a printer before turning to acting, attending the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. He has become a prolific and popular character actor on stage, on television and especially on film. His notable film credits include Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York", Alejandro González Inñáritu's "21 Grams", Mike Leigh's "Vera Drake" (for which he won a British Independent Film Award as Best Supporting Actor) and "Happy-Go-Lucky", Adrian Shergold's "Pierrepoint", James McTeigue's "V for Vendetta", Terrence Malick's "The New World", Michael Mann's "Miami Vice" and Peter Berg's "Hancock". On television he has appeared in the last twelve months in two acclaimed BBC dramas - "God on Trial" and Dickens adaptation "Little Dorrit", as well as in Channel 4's hugely acclaimed Red Riding trilogy as news reporter Jack Whitehead. His other forthcoming film roles include Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes", Philip Ridley's demonic "Heartless" and "The Disappearance of Alice Creed", also for CinemaNX.

Based in real theatrical history, Me and Orson Welles is a romantic coming-of-age story about a teenage actor who lucks into a role in Julius Caesar as it's being re-imagined by a brilliant, impetuous young director named Orson Welles at his newly-founded Mercury Theater in NYC, 1937. The rollercoaster week leading up to opening night has the charismatic-but-sometimes-cruel Welles (impressive newcomer ChristIan McKay) staking his career on this risky production while Richard (Zac Efron) mixes with everyone from starlets to stagehands in behind-the-scenes adventures bound to change him. Claire Danes co-stars as Sonja Jones, the unapologetically ambitious assistant to Welles whom Richard tries to woo. Ben Chaplin plays Mercury Theater regular George Coulouris. Zoe Kazan, Eddie Marsan, Kelly Reilly and James Tupper are among the talented ensemble cast.

The fast-moving screenplay by Holly Gent Palmo and Vince Palmo is based on Robert Kaplow's meticulously researched novel of the same name. Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater is at the helm of the CinemaNX and Detour Film production, opening nationally in select cities November 25, 2009.

Photos by Liam Daniel, Copyright CinemaNX Films One Ltd.