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When Harry Met...
Je Goldblum
Harry Borden looks back on a shoot with
charismatic Hollywood lm star Je Goldblum
T
oday, most portraits of
Hollywood A-listers you
see in magazines tend
to be arranged by fi lmcompanies, shot in Los Angeles
and distributed centrally. It suits
the companies because it’s more
effi cient than having images shot by
lots of photographers for different
magazines. It also means they have
much more control over the images.
The downside, for readers, is that
magazine interviews with these stars
often look bland and all very similar.
In the same week I photographedJeff Goldblum for the Observer Life
magazine, back in 1997, I also
photographed actors Julie Walters,
Minnie Driver, Charlton Heston,
Rachel Weisz and Demi Moore.
Access was much better, but the time
I had to do these shoots was often
limited and the pressure was well
and truly on for me to get results.
Goldblum was a massive star inthe 1990s and had starred in
big-grossing fi lms such as Jurassic
Park (1992) and Independence Day
(1996). When I met him, he was 44
years old and doing publicity work
for his next major blockbuster, The
Lost World: Jurassic Park.
The shoot took place in the
Dorchester Hotel, London, where he
was also doing interviews. I went
along with the Observer’s writer,
Harriet Lane, and an assistant. We
were carrying my Hasselblad 500CM
with a couple of lenses, a ringfl ash
and a red head tungsten light. We
also took a portable Colorama
backdrop, which I would have fallen
back on if there were no interesting
backgrounds available.
I was looking forward to meeting
Goldblum, and he didn’t disappoint:
tall and rangy, he was smart, very
self-assured, with loads of charisma
and an offbeat sense of humour.
When Harriet’s interview was over,
I had about ten or 15 minutes to
shoot a memorable portrait.As with my portrait of another
American fi lm star, Morgan Freeman- which I talked about recently in
this series (AP 23 January) – I had to
hit the ground running, encourage a
convivial atmosphere and work fast.
I knew from previous experience
that the Dorchester’s soft furnishings
wouldn’t offer a good background,
and if there was an interesting
location there would probably be
something in the way. In this case,
an area beside the fi rst fl oor lifts was
covered in red fl ock wallpaper that
I knew would go well with his dark
blue suit, dark blue shirt and tie.
The only problem was that an
enormous gilt mirror was partly
covering the best section of the
wallpaper. So, to the fi lm company
publicity manager’s extreme
irritation, I got out my Swiss Army
penknife, unscrewed the mirror, and,
with the help of my assistants, lifted
it from the wall.
If I was in that situation now, I’d
simply take the shot with him next
to the mirror and later retouch it out
in Photoshop. Back then, I had to
get the image in-camera, which
often wasted valuable time, or
resulted in me squeezing the subject
into a space that looked awkward.
Using my Hasselblad, an 80mm
lens and either a ringfl ash or red head
I shot half- and three-quarter-length
portraits on three rolls of colour fi lm,
which I later cross-processed to give
a more contrasty appearance.
Then I switched to Kodak Tri-X
black & white fi lm to go in close for
some more conventional
Hollywood-style head shots. The
original classic movie star portraits
would have been shot in a studio on
large-format cameras and carefully
lit. My portraits were shot in a few
minutes, only lit by the red head.
The kind of hard, contrasty light
you get with a red head is quite
intense and can be pretty brutal on
some faces, but if they’ve got an
iconic face and great bone structure,
they can look fantastic with it.
As I packed up my gear and left
after an intense 15 minutes or so,
Though lit only
with a red head,
the black & white
head shots worked
very well; one was
used on the cover
of Observer LifeHarry had to take
down a large
mirror that was in
the way, but it was
worth it to get the
perfect shot
in-camera