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Lifestyle Welsh actor thrilled by role in latest Clint Eastwood movie

Dec 5 2009 by Robin Turner, Western Mail

Add a commentRecommend RUBBING shoulders with the likes of Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman is a long way from the shop-floor of a North Wales aluminium smelting plant.

So it was little surprise that Welsh actor Julian Lewis-Jones found it hard to believe when he shared the limelight with such luminaries at the premiere of rugby epic Invictus – a film in which he appears.

“What am I doing here? I used to work for Anglesey Aluminium,” he asked himself.

North Wales-born Lewis-Jones, 40, was plucked from relative obscurity by film legend Clint Eastwood last year to play a security chief in the South Africa- based film which is released in the US on December 11 and in the UK on February 5.

The film charts Nelson Mandela’s attempt to use the 1995 Rugby World Cup to heal his split nation after his release from prison, the fall of apartheid and his election as president of South Africa.

Bourne Identity star Matt Damon dyed his hair blond to play Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team while Morgan Freeman plays Mandela.

Eastwood drew the title of the film from a short poem often recited by Mandela, Invictus, written by William Ernest Henley which speaks of the will to survive in the face of adversity.

At the star- studded premiere of the movie at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, on Thursday night, former Pobol y Cwm star Lewis-Jones rubbed shoulders with the likes of Eastwood, Freeman, Matt Damon and Sandra Bullock.

And he also mixed with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who took their eight-year-old son Maddox to the premiere and after-launch party.

Speaking from Los Angeles Lewis-Jones told the Western Mail: “I had to pinch myself.

“I was in the Sam Goldwyn Theatre (where the 2010 Oscar nominations will be announced) with Clint Eastwood standing around and my face all big on the screen. I had to ask myself, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here? I used to work for Anglesey Aluminium.”

Lewis-Jones is justifiably proud of his latest role. “It’s a fantastic film,” he said. “It was the first time I’d seen the completed film and I was very excited.

“Actors like Sandra Bullock and Orlando Bloom came along to the launch which was fabulous and Clint was very happy with it and came across and shook my hand and congratulated me.

“I feel honoured and proud to have been a part of it.”

Lewis-Jones worked for Anglesey Aluminium around 20 years ago before deciding it was not the job for him. Initially, he became a bodybuilder and travelled to Los Angeles in his early 20s with the aim of becoming a gym instructor there.

But when he got to the movie centre of the world it inspired him to try his luck on the stage.

After various acting jobs and good parts on Welsh dramas Caerdydd and Belonging and a run in S4C soap Pobol y Cwm he got a part on the ITV drama Where the Heart is.

His previous film roles had included appearances in Solomon and Gaenor and the Bank Job with Jason Statham.

Then last January, Eastwood, Hollywood’s most prolific director, invited him to an audition for the rugby movie in Twickenham, London. He learned he had the part a few days later when he took a call from his agent while in the car with his wife Kim.

He said: “We almost crashed from the excitement.”

The actor and his wife, who met at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, and have three children.

They now live in Llanarthne, Carmarthen, where Lewis-Jones is a “massive” Scarlets fan.

On the set he said he tried convincing actors such as Matt Damon to become a fan of the Llanelli-based club.

“The Americans loved rugby and really got into the spirit of but they were raised on basketball and American football,” he said.

Matt Damon helped himself get into his role by training with a provincial team in Cape Town and speaking directly to Francois Pienaar, while Clint Eastwood, who will 80 next spring, joined Morgan Freeman and the Super-14 match between the South African-based Stormers and the Aussie Queensland Reds to get a feel for the game.

In the US the film has already attracted good reviews.

Variety magazine film critic Todd McCarthy said: “Invictus is a very good story very well told.

“Once again in his extraordinary late-career run, Eastwood surprises with his choice of subject matter, here joining a project Freeman had long hoped to realise.”

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