Gillian Anderson warns UK homelessness ‘will only get worse’
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.”
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in The Salt Path. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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.
Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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”.
Read more:
Is this every actor’s bucket list job?
Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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.
Taylor Swift has revealed the release date for her new album, The Life Of A Showgirl.
The pop megastar announced her 12th studio album earlier this week but didn’t give many details.
Now, in social media posts and an appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s sports podcast, Swift revealed just what fans can expect from the new album.
Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce on the New Heights podcast. Pic: New Heights
The Life of Showgirl, written during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, will be released on 3 October.
It consists of 12 songs, including the title track that features pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
The full track list is:
1. The Fate Of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest Daughter
6. Ruin The Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. Cancelled!
11. Honey
12. The Life Of A Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)
Long-time collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, two Swedish producers who worked with Swift on some of her biggest hits, joined the pop star for this album.
Within four hours of posting the full podcast episode on YouTube, it had already gathered 4.7m views.
The cover of Taylor Swift’s newly announced album. Pic: Republic Records
The back cover of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life Of A Showgirl. Pic: Republic Records
‘The hardest-working star in pop’
The album follows last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, which was released during the Eras tour.
That tour, with shows on five continents and in 51 cities, raked in more than $2.2bn (£1.62bn) and was the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Read more about Taylor Swift:
Swift’s final London show was the ‘best’
The impact of the ‘excruciating’ Era’s tour
Her new chart record
“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said during her podcast appearance.
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplow said after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
Disgraced US film producer Harvey Weinstein is to be tried for a third time in a sexual assault case.
A jury in New York could not reach a verdict in June against the 73-year-old who was accused of raping actress Jessica Mann, and a mistrial was declared.
Judge Curtis Farber has said he wants the new trial to happen before the end of this year.
The same jury found Weinstein guilty in June of sexually assaulting former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and not guilty of assaulting Polish former runway model Kaja Sokola the same year.
Weinstein will be sentenced for the guilty verdict in Ms Haley’s case on 30 September.
He denied all of the charges. Throughout the retrial, his lawyers insisted the sexual encounters with his three accusers were “transactional” and “consensual,” and labelled the women as opportunists.
Weinstein was originally convicted of rape and criminal sexual act by the same court in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison for the crimes.
Last year, however, New York’s highest court overturned the conviction, prompting Weinstein’s retrial this summer.
Weinstein was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood – the co-founder of film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, who produced films such as the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Game.
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In 2017, a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him propelled the #MeToo movement.
Some of those accusations later led to criminal charges and his convictions in New York and California.
Before the retrial, Weinstein was also serving a 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty of rape in California in December 2022. He has also denied this charge.
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