Six Degrees of Separation : from novelist Daphne Du Maurier to …
(Last week was Du Maurier’s 106th Birth Anniversary, on the 13th of May)

Daphne Du Maurier 6°

… Mark Zuckerberg
Maurier’s short story was the basis for the movie Don’t Look Now (1973) which starred Julie Christie (1), who played ‘Gertrude’ in the modern adaptation of Hamlet (1996), in which the character of the tragic ‘Ophelia’ was played by Kate Winslet (2), who starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio (3) in Titanic (1997), and DiCaprio appeared in the bio-pic J.Edgar (2011), which also starred Armie Hammer (4), who came in The Social Network (2010), based on the invention of the most popular social network, ‘Facebook’, in which Jesse Eisenberg (5) played the real life inventor of ‘Facebook’, the genius Mark Zuckerberg (6).

… Max Minghella
Maurier’s most notable novel was adapted into the movie Rebecca (1940), by Alfred Hitchcock (1), who also directed Strangers on a Train (1951), with Farley Granger (2), based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (3), and another one of Highsmith’s novels was adapted into the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), with Jude Law (4), which was directed by Anthony Minghella (5), whose son happens to be actor Max Minghella (6), who too starred in The Social Network (2010).

… Jaclyn Smith
Maurier was responsible for the haunting piece of literature that was Jamaica Inn, which was adapted into a television movie in 1983 starring Jane Seymour (1), who played  the famed soprano Maria Callas (2), in the, made for TV, bio-pic of the richest man in the world from the previous century, Aristotle Onassis (3), in Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988), with Raul Julia (4) playing Onassis, and Onassis later married former American First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy (5), who was portrayed by Jaclyn Smith (6) in the television bio-pic Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1981).

… Antonio Banderas
Maurier’s novel My Cousin Rachel was made into a movie starring Olivia De Havilland (1) and Richard Burton (2) in 1952, and Burton appeared on the stage version (Broadway/West End) of the musical Camelot in the early 60’s, and Vanessa Redgrave (3) starred in the movie version of Camelot (1967), and Redgrave later appeared in Letters to Juliet (2010), which also had a guest appearance by Gael García Bernal (4), who starred in La Mala Educación (2004), which was directed by Pedro Almodóvar (5), who also directed Antonio Banderas (6) in La Piel que habito (2011).

… Madonna
Maurier’s famed novel Rebecca was the basis of the BBC adaptation of Rebecca (1979), and this television mini-series starred Jeremy Brett (1), whose most famous role was that of playing ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in many a television movies and series’ from the 1980’s and 90’s, and today the Hollywood revival of Holmes, from 2009 & 2011, sees Robert Downey Jr. (2), playing a more comical homoerotic version of the famed fiction detective, and Downey Jr. starred in Restoration (1995), which also starred Meg Ryan (3) as a blind woman, who came in the comedy Serious Moonlight (2009) with Timothy Hutton (4), and Hutton played a real life notorious disillusioned American who was imprisoned for spying for the enemy, the Soviet Union, in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), which also starred Sean Penn (5), who was briefly married to pop diva Madonna (6), and they appeared in Shanghai Surprise (1986) together.

… Michael Ealy
Maurier’s favourite movie version of her celebrated novel Rebecca, was the 1940 version, starring Joan Fontaine (1), who starred with Cary Grant (2) in Suspicion (1941), and Grant co-starred with Audrey Hepburn (3) in Charade (1963), the re-make of which, The Truth about Charlie (2002), starred Thandie Newton (4), who appeared in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), alongside Will Smith (5), who starred in Seven Pounds (2008), which also starred Michael Ealy (6).

Nuwan Sen’s Film Sense ()
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