Jack O’Connell will star in the lead role of Pathé’s as of yet untitled Alexander McQueen biopic, Variety reports. This will be a major part for the British actor, who has previously appeared in the films “300: Rise of an Empire,” “Unbroken” and “Money Monster.”
This film about the famed fashion designer will be directed by openly gay filmmaker Andrew Haigh, with a script by Chris Urch, based on the biography “Blood Beneath the Skin,” by Andrew Wilson.
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Haigh’s previously films include “Weekend” and “45 Years.” He has also written and directed episodes of the HBO television show “Looking.”
“In 2009, Alexander McQueen put on one of his greatest shows — a stunningly beautiful re-working of his greatest designs from the past 15 years,” Pathé said in a statement. “It was a show that he dedicated to his mother and one in which he tried to make sense of his life and art. The film explores McQueen’s creative process in the months leading up to the show, providing an intimate portrait of the man behind the global brand — a moving celebration of a visionary genius whose designs transcended fashion to become art.”
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McQueen was born in London and was raised in working class surroundings. He eventually worked his way up from an apprentice to a chief designer at fashion house Givenchy before starting his own successful label. McQueen, who struggled with issues of drug dependency, depression and anxiety died as a result of suicide in 2010 at the age of 40, shortly after his mother died of cancer.
AntBee
I have always been under the impression, that his mother died, with whom he was very close, he could not bear to live without her in his life, so he killed himself. I seriously doubt he would leave this Earth without his mother, not by his own hand anyway. If I have it wrong, please tell me so.
I’m looking forward to the movie, and will be searching out the biography. I have the two books of his designs, the one from the MET, and another I cannot recall the name of at the moment.
His work was one-of-a-kind, I had dreamt of one day attending one of his shows.
Kangol
McQueen’s final fashion show during his lifetime, the Spring/Summer 2010 Plato’s Atlantis runway event in fall 2009, was a landmark. It was one of the first–if not the first–streamed live, and featured those reptilian or butterfly-like, symmetrical designs, as well as the almost unwearable crab-feet pumps. He went out with style, but before he did, he blazed a path with very few rivals. Of the major contemporary designers, he had very few peers in the innovative, visionary department (Rei Kawakubo, Nicolas Ghesquière, Rick Owens, etc. would be among the few).