The Genius of Sally Hawkins

I was never going to be a Paddington fan. Not the character, you understand. I grew up with the animated TV show narrated by the great Michael Horden, who also narrated my favourite movie (Barry Lyndon) and therefore could do no wrong. I mean, I was never the natural audience for the film version made in 2014. Yet everybody recommended it (“You’ve got to see Paddington! He’s so cute!”) and, being a film addict, I was always going to get around to it.

And it was okay in that way certain films are okay, even if they irritate me. Three and a half stars out of five.

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Yet Paddington and its sequel felt like infomercials for a version of Britain that very few of us British people get to see. It was set in London (visits in my lifetime: about 7) and the Brown family lived in a millionaire’s house in Chalcot Crescent in Primrose Hill (current price of a house there… a mere £3,725,000).

This was, in name only, the middle-class world of the books. These films were steeped in privilege (no surprise when the late Queen agreed to have tea with Paddington), extending to the cast, which included the great and the slightly smug of London celebrity. It had Hugh Bonneville in it, playing the bland but safe middle-class banker father fresh off the back of his “£190-195 to pleasure him inter alia with toys (presumably not a Buzz Lightyear figurine)” scandal. I could never take him seriously after reading that. He also reminds me of Miles Jupp, which explains why I also come out in hives when I watch him.

And, of course, the ubiquitous Joanna Lumley eventually turned up in one of them… Darlings.

But then there was Sally Hawkins. She stood out and totally stole the film. It wasn’t long before I had a terrible crush on her – one of the virtues of being single is that I think I’m allowed these crushes. She defied the usual cliches of those movies, bringing a bohemian edge to the role (and I’m all for bohemian edge). Enough so that I watched, enjoyed, but was still irritated by the second film, yet still totally charmed by Hawkins.

Did I say charmed? I meant lovestruck.

When they announced that there was going to be a third film, I was delighted to hear that she wasn’t going to be in it.

Yes. You read that right. She wasn’t in it. And I was glad. By then, I’d decided she was better than Paddington slop. She instead went off and made films which were infinitely better.

One of those came out this year. Bring Her Back is an Australian horror movie from the same team as the excellent indie horror, Talk To Me. In this, Hawkins gives a brilliantly layered performance as the notional antagonist – a mother exploring dark magic to bring back her dead daughter. If Hugh Grant had been celebrated for playing the bad guy in A24’s excellent Heretic last year, Hawkins should be applauded even more for this from the same studio (A24 are the best and has been for a few years. They rarely release a weak film).

Hawkins is wonderfully wicked, but in that way, you know, is driven by the best motives, in this case, the love of a mother who cannot cope with the loss of her daughter. It is one of my picks for the best film of 2025, and much of that has to do with the way she retains a softness that just made me root for her even as she was doing wrong.

Reading around that film, I read that Hawkins suffers from lupus, which makes it hard for her to travel (is it bad that I wanted to hug her after reading that, damnit?), and the condition limits her opportunities, so her efforts are really to be applauded. She doesn’t make as many movies as some actresses currently considered “the best” – cough, Olivia Coleman – but every single one is a gem. Put simply, she must be the best actress currently working.

Bring Her Back started what’s become a bit of a Sally Hawkins season. The next film I found this year was Phantom of the Open (made in 2021), in which she played Jean Flitcroft, the wife of Maurice Flitcroft, the crane operator from Barrow who entered the British Open in 1976. At the time, it would have been generous to call Flitcroft an “amateur” golfer or even a “golfer”. He scored a round of 121 (for comparison, Seve Ballestrers played the first round in 69) and Flitcroft became known as “the World’s Worst Golfer”.

He was subsequently banned from all golf but would attempt to get in wearing disguises and under a false name. Yes, exactly the kind of stunt that immediately makes me a fan. And the result is a film of undeniable warmth and much of that is down to Hawkins. If the role of Jean didn’t work as well as it does, the story of Maurice might have felt like a farce. I came away wiping tears from my cheeks, thinking Maurice was a lucky guy having Jean beside him.

Most remarkable, I think, is that Hawkins even makes terrible 1970s fashions work. I can now look at those awful oval-shaped frames and not think of Olive from On the Buses. More importantly, she nails our NW accent perfectly and provides the heart of the movie.

But that leads me to the point where I had a problem with the film. It lay with the lead role, played by Mark Rylance.

Rylance is another of those actors who are rightly called “the best of his generation”, and I wouldn’t argue with that. He doesn’t get the huge screen-filling roles (with the exception, I guess, of the BFG where he played a CGI giant), but he usually plays small men, complex men, men in whom it’s not always easy to find the heroic vein. He was brilliant in Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks.

He is great here too – he’s hard not to love this role – and yet…

Well, here I have to let angry David into the room for a moment. He has a few things to say.

Rylance plays Maurice with a northern accent. It’s specifically a Lancashire accent, a little more to the north than my own, which is really a St Helens accent. Yet he seems to play him like he’s suffering persistent concussion. He plays him as a simple man, but slightly too simple, a little too innocent. Flitcoft apparently spoke many languages, was full of pithy and wise remarks, and possessed an endless supply of humanity. His gift was to make people dream big.

And yet there’s something else to this portrayal. Something less enjoyable. It’s a kind of pitiful, sentimental simplicity.

I found it annoying. I found it patronising in the way I am always annoyed by the establishment treatment of Northerners. Robert Shaw was born about 7 miles from where I’m now sitting. Why can’t film northerners talk more like Shaw rather than… I don’t know… Johnny Vegas?

If you listen to the real Maurice Flitcroft speak (and he speaks in real footage at the end of the film), you hear a man with a northern accent but of undoubted wit and charm. Rylance gives a performance that leans into a kind of reductive northern simpleton character. It’s a type that’s becoming the norm.

Perhaps I’m just noticing it more and more lately. It’s the Taskmaster phenomenon where every northern comedian seems to play the role of the dimwit. When I got my PhD in English Literature, I often felt pressure to change the way I speak. I knew others who did just that, one of whom lost a very strong regional accent after just a year at Cambridge. Perhaps because I didn’t go to Cambridge, I never felt that pressure, but I hope I’d have refused. I felt loyalty to my region. I hate seeing Northerners reduced to morons.

All of which is a long way from my opining about the genius of Sally Hawkins…

So rant over.

Hawkins really does steal this movie, as she stole the first two Paddington movies and Bring Her Back. I’d say she also stole The Shape of Water, but that’s to understate it. She was the lead and totally owned the movie, even though she hardly had a word to say. She was also robbed of an Oscar, if you care about such things (I don’t). (Frances McDormand was good in Three Billboards but she was really just playing Frances McDormand.)

Next on my “to-watch “ list: The Lost King and Maudie, one about history and the other about an artist, so I expect to be in my element. I must also revisit her performance in Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s 2013 film, which I must have seen (I’ve seen nearly all of Allen’s movies) but now can’t remember.

If you’ve not seen the other films, I recommend them to catch up with the actress I think is the best working today.

Crushes are optional but discouraged. I want Sally to only have eyes for me.

Since I lost my paid writing gig, I thought I’d try to write more about things I want to write about rather than ranting about the dangers of Farage and that chump in the White House. As you know, I watch a lot of movies and have a lot to say, even if I rarely have the time to say them. Let me know if you enjoyed this and if you’d like me to write more about films (or Sally Hawkins). Comment or email me (david AT davidwaywell.com). I’ve finally set up a proper email address!