FROM A BACK STAGE INTERVIEW Q: Ed, one for you. You could have directed this film. You didn't. I'm curious how you feel about that. The script has been dogged with controversy. Can you think about addressing that?

A: All I can say, it's exceedingly humbling to see something that you had envisioned long ago. But Harry and I together thought that John would be the most appropriate director for the film, and I think the work speaks for itself.

A: I'm not surprised by the claims actually. I think what's going to happen is anybody that is ever going to feel ripped off in the way that anybody wrote anything about the George Washington chopping down a cherry tree episode in our movie ­ same connection, either part of Shakespeare's lives known as a historical factor part of a lore. So that's really not protectable.

Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's screenplay is - in Britain - published by Faber and Faber 1999 [ISBN 0-571-20108-3] and in the United States by Miramax books/Hyperion 1999

FROM A BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW

Q: Before tonight, every time somebody told you you were going to win, you said "no, no," and you'd hide your head. So what did you finally think when your name was called?

Paltrow: I was very surprised and very thrilled, but very surprised.

Q: How much does it mean to you?

Paltrow: I don't know yet. It just happened, so ­ I need some time to process it, I think.

Q: The Brits, who like to have something at stake on Oscar night, seemed to have adopted you, after Sliding Doors and Shakespeare in Love, an honorary Brit. Is that what's happened or have you adopted Britain?

Paltrow: I hope a little bit of both. I love Britain. I love to work there, and I have some really dear friends there.

Q: What's different about working there than here?

Paltrow: Well, to be honest, it's just a completely different thing. Here when you do an American film, generally, you know, it's our biggest export, and it kind of feels like that. It's a big, shiny kind of machine, and it all works really well, which is great, you know. But then you go to Britain and it's a little bit quirkier and doesn't go as smoothly, but you have people who seem to be pouring everything they have into their art, and I just love to work there. I hope they'll have me back.

Q: When you spoke at the pre-release interviews, you said you couldn't be an actor without loving Shakespeare. What do you think "Shakespeare in Love" has done to introduce Shakespeare to new audiences?

Paltrow: I think, because the film is so accessible, because it's so beautifully written and so inclusive of its audience, I think it allows people to have their ear adjust to the verse and to really get swept away by the language and people are really ­ it's very encouraging to see people so taken with, not only the film, but with Shakespeare and asking questions about it. And I just think it's important that people read, so if this movie makes a handful of children pick up a Shakespearean play, then it was worth it.

FROM A BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW

Q: The obligatory "How do you feel and was it a surprise?" I know last year some people thought you might win for best actress.

Dench: It was a huge surprise. It was ­ this evening was ­ in fact, it's completely taken my breath away. I can honestly say I didn't think that it had really a running at all, because the part was very, very small, and I have seen certainly three of the other performers in the other films, the other nominees, and so it was the last thing I thought of. I'm delighted to have it, but I'm very taken aback by it.

Q: Congratulations, Dame Judi. Can you tell us how the plans are coming for building the theatre that you're so aggressively building?

Dench: The theatre, in case anybody doesn't know, The Rose Theatre ­ when I walked onto the set, it was so beautiful and so solid and so like The Rose, which, when the actual Rose was unearthed I had the good fortune to go and stand on the actual stage of it. And when Martin Childs had done that set, he found that it almost ­ to a yard or to a foot it was exactly the same proportion as The Rose was. And I was so struck by the set that I said to David Parfitt on the first day I was filming, you can't possibly break this up. This can't possibly be broken up. So at the end of the film he gave it to me. So I've been paying for it to be restored all the time since we finished the film, very early last year, and now I've just got a home for it, and it's going to be put up on the site of the Old Collins Music Hall in London in Islington Green. And I've now set up a trust fund for drama students so that it will be used by people, but hopefully some of the proceeds will also go, always, to the trust fund to help drama students through their training. Sorry it's such a long and complicated answer.

Q: What is it about "Shakespeare In Love" that you think that not only captivated the Oscars this year, but continues to captivate people and take them in and they really want to see this film?

Dench: Well, I think that the writing, it's undisputed. I think that the writing is marvelous and Tom Stoppard has taken a very witty view of Shakespeare, and he has not ostentatiously modernized it or made it more accessible, but it somehow is. If you know a lot about Shakespeare, there's a lot to pick up, and if you don't know a lot, it's okay because it's a love story and it's all right. So I think it appeals on quite a lot of levels. I hope it brings more people to see Shakespeare, because one good production of Shakespeare can bring a lot of people and one bad production can keep them away for many years, as well I know.

Q: I know you are about to do theatre in New York pretty soon, but in light of your recent popularity and critical acclaim in Hollywood and in the film industry, will that kind of take you away from the theatre --

Dench: No.

Q: No?

Dench: No. I mean for 41 years I've been in the theatre, so filming has come rather late to me. Filming has actually come, you know, since I've been 50, really, and ­ but I love the theatre, and I love the theatre best of all really. I don't know enough about filming to say I like it that much, but I love the theatre because simply you get to ­ it's work in progress, the theatre. And so you can go on night after night, hoping that you're going to get it better, and sometimes you get it worse, but, you know, a director will come along and tell you. But I like that idea of being able to go and just get something -- achieve more.

Q: You're so good at playing royalty and playing a queen, what do you have to summon within in order to play that convincingly, because those qualities that you emote aren't what we're used to in modern day life.

Dench: I don't know that it's anything different from any part you ever play. You try and you start with the guts of the person and you somehow fill up the inside of you as that person. Whether she's a queen or whether she ­ I've just played a Neapolitan prostitute. I've just finished in London a couple of weeks ago in Filomena by DeFillipo, and she was a woman, 25 years ago was a prostitute in Naples. It's the same process, whether she was that or whether she was Queen Victoria or whoever. It's exactly the same process inside. But I remember once that Ian Holmes, who is quite short, was going to play Henry V at Stratford, and he said to Tyrone Guthrie, "How do I play a king? How do I get the authority?" And Tyrone Guthrie said a wonderful thing. He said "What you do is you never let anyone come within five feet of you," and it's a very ­ of course, it's other people's attitudes to you that help you. It's not so much what you do yourself, perhaps.

FROM A BACK STAGE INTERVIEW

Q: How difficult was it for you to create these costumes?

Powell: Shakespeare ­ I keep thinking I got these for both. It's hard work, but great fun. I have a fantastic team of people that worked with me the whole time.

Q: How long did it actually take for you to create these costumes?

Powell: Well, we had hundreds of other people's costumes. We did a lot in a short space of time.

Go here to download some sound snippets from the film:

The De Lesseps' Dance,

Greenwich,

The Play & The Marriage