Gillian Anderson has warned homelessness is a growing problem in the UK – one that will only get worse if we enter a recession.

The award-winning actress, who is playing a woman facing homelessness along with her husband in her latest film, The Salt Path, told Sky News: “It’s interesting because I feel like it’s even changed in the UK in the last little while.”

Born in Chicago, and now living in London, she explained: “I’m used to seeing it so much in Vancouver and California and other areas that I spent time. You don’t often see it as much in the UK.”

Her co-star in the film, White Lotus actor Jason Isaacs, chips in: “You do now.”

“It’s now becoming more and more prevalent since COVID,” said Anderson, “and the current financial situation in the country and around the world.

“It’s a topic that I think will be more and more in the forefront of people’s minds, particularly if we end up going into a recession.”

The film is based on Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir, which depicts her and her husband’s 630-mile trek along the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coastline, walking from Minehead, Somerset to Land’s End.

Written from her notes on the journey, The Salt Path went on to sell over a million copies worldwide and spent nearly two years in The Sunday Times bestseller list. Winn’s since written two more memoirs.

Isaacs, who plays her husband Moth Winn in the movie, told Sky News that Winn told him she “hopes [the film] makes people look at homeless people when they walk by in a different light, give them a second look and maybe talk to them”.

With record levels of homelessness in the UK, with a recent Financial Times analysis showing one in every 200 households in the UK is experiencing homelessness, the cost of living crisis is worsening an already serious problem.

The film sees Ray and Winn let down by the system, first by the court which evicts them from their home, then by the council which tells them despite a terminal diagnosis they don’t qualify for emergency housing.

Following the loss of their family farm shortly after Moth’s shock terminal diagnosis with rare neurological condition Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), the couple find solace in nature.

They set off with just a tent and two backpacks to walk the coastal path.

Isaacs says living in a transient way comes naturally to actors, admitting like his character, he too “lives out of a suitcase” and is “away on jobs often”.

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Shot in 2023 across Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Wales, Anderson says as a city-dweller, the locations had an impact on her.

Anderson reveals: “As I’ve gotten older, I have become more aware of nature than […] when I was younger, and certainly in filming this film and being outside and so much of nature being a third character, it did shift my thinking around it.”

Meanwhile, Isaacs says he discovered a “third character” leading the film just the day before our interview, when speaking to Winn on the phone.

Isaacs says the author told him: “I feel like there’s three characters in the film,” going on, “I thought she was going to say nature, but she said, ‘No, that path'”.

Isaacs elaborates: “Not just nature, but that path where the various biblical landscapes you get and the animals, they matter.

“The things that happen on that path were a huge part of their own personal story and hopefully the audience’s journey as well.”

The Salt Path comes to UK cinemas on Friday 30 May.

A weapons supervisor who was jailed for involuntary manslaughter over the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie, Rust, has been freed.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was released on parole from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants on Friday, after serving her 18-month sentence, NBC News, Sky’s US partner said, quoting New Mexico Corrections Department spokesperson, Brittany Roembach.

Gutierrez-Reed was released to return home to Bullhead City, Arizona, where she will be on parole for a year for the manslaughter case.

She was in charge of weapons during the production of the Western film in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2021, when a prop gun held by star and co-producer Alec Baldwin went off during a rehearsal.

Cinematographer Hutchins died following the incident, while director Joel Souza was injured.

Gutierrez-Reed was acquitted of charges of tampering with evidence in the investigation, but will be on probation over a separate conviction for unlawfully carrying a gun into a Santa Fe bar where firearms are banned weeks before Rust began filming.

Involuntary manslaughter means causing someone’s death due to negligence, without intending to.

At her 10-day trial in New Mexico in March last year, prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of Rust and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols.

The 18-month sentence she was given was the maximum available for the offence.

Baldwin, 67, was also charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the case was dramatically dismissed by the judge during his trial last July over mistakes made by police and prosecutors, including allegations of withholding ammunition evidence from the defence.

The actor had always denied the charge, maintaining he did not pull the gun’s trigger and that others on the set were responsible for safety checks on the weapon.

Rust was finished in Montana and released earlier this month, minus the scene they were working on when Hutchins was shot, Souza, speaking at November’s premiere in Poland, said.

Rust is billed as the story of a 13-year-old boy who, left to fend for himself and his younger brother following their parents’ deaths in 1880s Wyoming, goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather after being sentenced to hang for the accidental killing of a local rancher.

Wes Anderson is a rarity in Hollywood, with an unswayed distinct aesthetic which has every big name in Hollywood pleading to be in his next project.

Fronted by Benicio del Toro, his new film The Phoenician Scheme sees the return of numerous previous collaborators including Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright and Scarlett Johansson, but also adds new faces to the Anderson universe.

It is set in the 1950s and follows a ruthless yet charismatic European business tycoon called Zsa-Zsa Korda who, in Anderson’s own words, “has very little obligation to honour the truth.”

Looking to solidify his own legacy, without much thought for his 10 children, the slaves he wants to use or the land he wants to exploit, Sza-Sza chases multiple deals so he can build his career-defining project, Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme.

‘A motivation pill

The Phoenician Scheme was partly inspired by the life of Anderson’s father-in-law, whom he dedicated the film to, Lebanese businessman Fouad Malouf.

Del Toro tells Sky News it was a gift to play a truly unique character.

“It’s like taking a motivation pill,” he says.

“You’re motivated because it’s Wes Anderson, you’re motivated because of the script and the story and the character. It’s unpredictable, original. [There’s] one hell of an arc, and it’s full of contradictions.”

Always an actor in mind – well, mostly…

Michael Cera, who plays Bjorn, says he had a “sense of dread” joining the cast. His role was written with him in mind, something he still can’t believe is true.

“[Anderson] has got every actor at his disposal, you’d imagine,” he says.

With production pushed back due to an actors’ strike, Cera feared the project might “fall apart”.

“I was not really at ease until we were there,” he admits.

Every detail is meticulously planned in the Anderson film universe – from the art on the walls (original works from Renoir and Magritte in this case), to the intricate backstory of a character collecting fleas in a plastic bag as a child.

While most roles are written by the Fantastic Mr Fox filmmaker with certain actors in mind – the exception this time is Liesl, the daughter of the business tycoon.

The dream phone call

After months of an audition process, Mia Threapleton got the call to play the straight-talking nun who is beckoned by her father to inherit the family business after his sixth near-death experience.

The 24-year-old daughter of Kate Winslet got the news via a call from her agent while she was on the train – and was in such disbelief she told her to call them back.

“I didn’t believe them – and she laughed at me [and said] ‘of course I’m not lying to you, this is true’. And then I sat on the floor and I cried.”

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Del Toro believes it was Threapleton’s screen test where she stood out as an “inventive” actor who thought on her feet that got her the part, having fashioned part of a makeshift nun costume with a napkin from a lunch tray.

“I said, ‘is there anyone who got any hairpins?’ And I pinned it to my head.”

Ticking a Wes Anderson film off the bucket list is a goal for many actors. Threapelton says she still hasn’t come to terms with achieving it so early in her career.

The Phoenician Scheme is in cinemas now.