Superman Returns star Kate Bosworth
wanted to enjoy being young and free. Fortunately, she just
happened to be shooting a movie in the perfect place to do
that: Sydney.
Following a mysterious absence of several years, the Man of Steel
comes back to Earth in the epic action-adventure
Superman
Returns … While an old enemy plots to render him powerless once
and for all, Superman (Brandon Routh) faces the heartbreaking
realization that the woman he loves,
Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), has
moved on with her life.
Or has she?
Sorry, Superman, but Lois did move on with her life. But not with a
rival superhero; she was having an affair with a city named
Sydney.
It began with a 14-hour plane ride to a universe far away. The
passenger: young actress
Kate Bosworth, who had won the plum role
of playing Lois Lane in
Superman Returns, the eagerly
anticipated latest installment in the Superman franchise. Bosworth
knew that the movie was going to be filmed in Sydney, Australia,
before she even landed the part, and, she says, the location was
part of the allure. For Bosworth, who was born in Los Angeles,
moved to
Connecticut with her parents when she was nine and to
Cohasset,
Massachusetts, at 14, Sydney was as foreign as Krypton,
Superman's birthplace - and that made it all the better. "I'd never
been to
Australia, and I don't think I'd ever been so far from
home," she says, calling from her home base in L.A. "I went by
myself, and it was a fantastic time for me."
Just like that, she was Down Under, "landing in a completely
different world." A young woman named Jacqui showed Bosworth her
hometown. "She greeted me when I came off the airplane, and she was
working on the film as well," says Bosworth. "She is indicative of
the Australian personality, just so friendly and sweet and
down-to-earth."
Her mission? To facilitate Bosworth's on- and off-hours adventures.
Which were what, exactly? I ask.
"Off-hours?" she asks, always the professional, Lois before Kate,
the actress before the party girl.
"Yes, when you were off work?" I say.
"Um," she says, pondering. "Just to have a good time."
The consummate professional. This was an important quest.
"I mean, for me, it was a time in my life where I was really
enjoying meeting new people and going out and having fun and really
feeling young, feeling my age," she says. "I was 22 when I was
there shooting this film, and there's a specific time in your life
when you go away, whether it's to college" - she was accepted at
Yale but deferred - "or abroad the first time. I've been to many
places in my life, but this is the first time where I felt like I
was very far away. I was very independent, so it was a time in my
life where I was really discovering myself and enjoying being on my
own."
You're only 22 once, Bosworth says, and she spent eight months of
that magical year in the most magical city on earth.
ONCE LANDED, Bosworth and her new best friend Jacqui headed
straight to lunch.
"The first place I went is one of my favorite restaurants in
Sydney. It's a little café on Crown Street, called Kawa. One of my
favorite things about Sydney is the food. It's so delicious and so
clean. The fruits, the vegetables - everything just tastes so much
more fresh and alive. That particular café has some of the best
produce and juices and fresh-baked breads. I ended up going there
pretty much every day. It's just breakfast and lunch. It's at the
end of a row of vintage shops, and I love to shop vintage, so it
was really fun to stroll along and look into the windows or go into
the shops."
Since Bosworth was living in Sydney, she stayed in an apartment.
But that took some time to find, so, in the beginning, she stayed
in a hotel. "The Quay Grand Suites Sydney," she says. "That's right
on the harbor for those weeks when we did wardrobe fittings. The
first couple of days I lived in Sydney, my view overlooked the
Opera House and the
Sydney Harbour Bridge. If you look at a
postcard of Sydney, you see either one of those things. The Sydney
Harbour is wonderful, as well, because it's got lots of little
restaurants that go around the harbor. A lot of people commute by
boat from wherever they live. So it's a constant motion of people
going from one place to the next by boat."
Her apartment was in an area called Point Piper, also surrounded by
water. "It was right on the point, so my apartment was surrounded
by water on all sides except for one, obviously," Bosworth says.
"It was so beautiful to wake up every day and just literally have
ocean all around you. There's something exciting and peaceful about
it at the same time. The ocean lapped up against my patio, and when
I went to bed at night, I could hear the boats."
WHEN YOU'RE LOIS LANE, you never know when Superman is going
to swoop down and carry you off into the clouds or when you might
fall into the clutches of some evildoer.
For that, Bosworth required sustenance, and Sydney has plenty of
it.
When she wasn't working, she'd go exploring. It was always easy to
find a bite to eat along the way. "There is this unbelievably
beautiful walk, and anyone who's lived in Sydney would know it,"
she says. "You start at Icebergs, which is a wonderful restaurant
- really good food. We had birthday parties for some of the cast
and the director [Bryan Singer] there. We would meet at Icebergs on
a Sunday afternoon, and you get a good bottle of wine or a cocktail
and just watch the sunset because it's right on the water."
From Icebergs, "you walk all the way along the water, up around
different sorts of bays and inlets, and come to
Bondi Beach, which
is another great place to get food." Often, Bosworth would stop for
what she calls "a guilty treat. There's a great fish-and-chips
place. I can't remember exactly what it's called. But it's local,
and it's kind of the only one there. It's just a great place to eat
and kind of socialize." If you miss the
fish-and-chips, you can
catch Three Eggs in North Bondi on the way back. "It's more cozy
than Kawa, which is open and airy and light," she explains. "Three
Eggs has big wooden tables and everybody sits out together. It has
really, really yummy breakfast foods. Or pastas."
That said, "The best meal to have in Australia is definitely in
between, like a brunchy thing." For that, you can go to Bill's.
"Famous for their eggs," she says. "I think they use cream,
actually. It makes them really fluffy, and they are so good. And
really thick slices of bread."
After breakfast or lunch (or brunch), Bosworth would walk some
more. "If you want to go farther on the walk, you can go through -
and it's going to sound crazy - a beautiful old cemetery on this
big, high hill that goes straight to the ocean. And everything is
white, really, the whole railing and all the stones and the
crosses. It looks like a postcard.
"What's great about Sydney is, for exercise, it's really about
doing it naturally," she continues. "Either long walks or surfing
or
swimming. It's such an outdoor environment, which I love because
I can't stand being in the gym."
THOUGH SUPERMAN RETURNS is a Warner Bros. release,
most days led Bosworth to the Fox Studios, with newcomer Brandon
Routh as the Man of Steel, the venerable
Kevin Spacey as the
villainous Lex Luthor, and red-hot director
Bryan Singer (
The
Usual Suspects, X-Men) running the show. Fox Studios, Bosworth
says, is "where they shot the most recent
Star Wars. Really
large, grand productions, obviously. Big green screens. Huge
high-ceiling studios."
It was nice, and better yet, convenient. "Because that studio is
central to where everyone was living," she says. "It's really nice
to be able to wake up and not have to, you know, commute for an
hour, to have a quick trip there and be sort of close to home."
I ask her if there was a place where she got into character as Lois
Lane. I mean, with all that attempting to unmask the Big Guy and
falling into his arms as he leaps over buildings in a single bound,
surely she didn't spring up from her water-surrounded bed in Full
Lois Mode. Lois is the quintessential American, I say. So how could
Kate channel her in Australia?
"You know what?" Bosworth asks, after letting me ramble. "What was
great about playing her: I'm blonde naturally, and so when I went
into Fox Studios and went into those gates, that's kind of when I
would focus on being that character." As Lois, she was dressed in
handmade outfits from vintage fabrics, "a classic feel, more of a
'30s vibe," she says. Thanks to a wig, her hair was brunette. "A
great way to really feel like you're in character is when you have
the costume and the wig and, you know, it feels like you're really
becoming another person.
"But otherwise, it was really just me being Kate in Sydney."
As a blonde (yes, it's her natural hair color), she was
anonymous.
"The people in Australia don't really care who you are, you know,
in terms of celebrity," she says. "They honestly couldn't care
less, which is very, very refreshing when you live somewhere like
Los Angeles where it just seems so important to everybody. So to
me, it was just refreshing to live in a city and to do a film that
was so big in a place that people cared more about who you were as
a person rather than what you did."
Channeling Jimmy Olsen, I can't give it up. This is a role
actresses must've dog-fought over.
"So you weren't really thinking about Lois Lane when you were
walking around Sydney?" I ask.
"Um, no, not really," she says. "I mean, I kind of save work for
work, and then when I could have some time off, I tried to enjoy it
for me."
THE WARDROBE FOR BEING KATE in Sydney took considerably more
work - and shopping - to assemble.
"My favorite places to shop were an area called Paddington and a
store called Scanlan & Theodore, one of the best fashion
boutiques in Sydney," Bosworth says. "Personally, it's my taste in
clothes. It can go either edgy - you know, great trousers and
sweaters - or really beautiful and flirty in feminine dresses. Very
flowy and cool. But that was one of my favorite stores and it's,
you know, only in Australia. Another store that I loved, that is
being more introduced to
America and
Europe, is a place called
Tsubi. They have really good skinny jeans, and that's more kind of
funky and cool, more of a
London street vibe. There's another great
jean store called Sass & Bide. That has great skinny jeans as
well."
Thus outfitted, Bosworth went out to play, often with her
costars.
"We were really, really close on this film," she says. "And I think
because it's not like we were all working in L.A., and we had our
groups of different friends and were living at home. We were all
sort of living in this bubble in a place that was far, far away
from home, and so we all did just become very close and go out at
night. We absolutely all hung out together."
So it was common to see Bosworth, Routh, Spacey (with whom Bosworth
starred as Sandra Dee in
Beyond the Sea), and James Marsden
(who plays Lois's fiancé in the film) out on the town, along with
other cast members like Frank Langella,
Parker Posey, and Eva
Marie Saint, all led by director Bryan Singer. Of Singer, Bosworth
says, "He's incredibly talented, but he is also a lot of fun. I
mean, he definitely knows how to have a good time."
But just as often you would find Bosworth with her dog.
"I loved Centennial Parklands," she says. "I think it was modeled
after
Central Park. It's a big park right in the middle of the
city, and it's really, really lovely. I have a dog, and she came
with me to Australia, so it was nice for me to, you know, walk her
around. On Sundays, they hold a lot of concerts there at the park
as well. I saw
Jack Johnson play when I first came to Sydney."
They had weekends off, which meant beaches.
"Palm Beach and Whale Beach," she says. "They are part of the
Northern Beaches. It's about 45 minutes to an hour's drive from
Sydney. Pack a picnic. I imagine Sydney a lot like California
probably was years and years ago. I mean, you know, when it was
still pristine and clean and beautiful and pure."
For dinner, Bosworth became a regular at the Pier, which has the
most Australian of seafoods: the crustacean known as the Balmain
Bug, a rock-lobster-like creature that she had to try on her
you're-only-22-once liberation tour. "Yeah, that's like the little
seafood critter, right?" she says. She ate her first of several at
the Pier, just down the street from her apartment in Point Piper.
"It was in a soup, actually. Delicious," she says. "That was my
favorite restaurant in Sydney. I went there pretty much every
weekend. It's right on Rose Bay, and the restaurant juts out into
the harbor, so it's shaped on the inside like an old, beautiful
boat. And in fact, you can dock outside of the restaurant and then
come up for lunch."
But dinner was usually only the beginning for the indestructible
cast and crew.
"There's a place called the Victoria Room. You can take a big group
of people there, and they have, like, really big round tables, and
it's all tapas," she says, before changing directions. "You know
what actually is very indicative of Sydney? They're famous for
their barbecues. You would go to a friend's house at night for
barbecue, hang out until the wee hours of the morning, and then go
home, sleep, come back sort of in the afternoon, have a Bloody Mary
and barbecue again, and then go just have a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Their way of life is just so incredible. I mean, I would absolutely
love to live there one day."
Some days, she flew to lunch or dinner, not with Superman, but by
seaplane. "They would take off and land right outside my window,
which was really fun. You take the seaplane about 45 minutes and
land on a river, and you pull up to a restaurant called the Cottage
Point and Inn Restaurant. And the only way to get there is by
seaplane. I suppose you could take a boat, but it's a bit more
tricky."
IN THE LAST MONTH of Bosworth's working sabbatical, she got
a visitor.
"My mom came out to visit me for a week," she says, and so they did
some of the touristy things. "When you live in a city, you sort of
don't really do the tourist things. But when somebody else comes to
visit, you start thinking of the things that you can take them to
do."
The most obvious thing was right outside her window: to climb the
Sydney Harbour Bridge. "It's incredible, because you get a history
lesson of Sydney; the way they built the bridge was just
incredible. They have to secure you to railings on the bridge the
whole time you're climbing. You literally climb the outside, up the
outside of the bridge. I mean, your whole body is free. You're just
attached by - what do they call those things when you mountain
climb? A carabiner."
She didn't do this with Superman; she did it with her mom.
"Yeah, we did. We climbed it. And it's beautiful. I mean, you're at
an incredible height and you get to see the whole Sydney, from the
Opera House to the
Blue Mountains. It's just really, really
beautiful."
She didn't make it to the Blue Mountains, but she did the next best
thing: She hit the Hunter Valley, home to some of Australia's
greatest vineyards. "I went wine-tasting in the Hunter Valley and
stayed at this incredible place called the Tower Lodge, which is
really intimate and small - only 12 rooms. But all the different
rooms have a different theme. They're very cozy with a fireplace,
and you kind of just taste wine and eat good food. And yeah, you
just go from one vineyard to the next.
MUCH TOO SOON FOR BOSWORTH, principal photography wrapped on
Superman Returns, and the actress's eight-month love affair with
Sydney was over.
"The last night, we went to the Bayswater Brasserie. It's sort of
loungy - it's a restaurant, and it has a lounge. We all went there,
the whole crew. That was a little bit of a crazy night. I'm not
really sure I can remember where we all ended up. We were sort of
in a celebratory mood. And then I had to catch a really, really
early flight with Jimmy Marsden the next day, and we were both
feeling the late night together."
Then the plane took off, and Bosworth was forced to leave both
Sydney and Superman behind.
"Gosh, I was really sad," she says. "Listen, I've been in places
[for films] where I was there only for a couple of weeks and I felt
like it took ages because I missed being home and I missed my
friends. But when I was in Sydney, eight months felt like a brief
moment in time."
For Superman, it was a moment that may never come again.
Or will it?
She Said...
Kate Bosworth's super guide to Sydney
Lodging
Quay Grand Suites Sydney, very expensive, 011-61-2-9256-4000,
www.mirvachotels.com.au
Tower Lodge, very expensive, 011-61-2-4998-7022,
www.towerestate.com.au
Dining
Bayswater Brasserie, very expensive, 011-61-2-9357-2177,
www.bayswaterbrasserie.com.au
Bill's, café, moderate, 011-61-2-9360-9631
Cottage Point Inn and Restaurant, seafood, very expensive,
011-61-2-9456-1011
Icebergs Dining Room and Bar, continental, very expensive,
011-61-2-9365-9000
Kawa, breakfast/lunch, inexpensive to moderate,
011-61-2-9331-6811
Pier Restaurant, seafood, very expensive,
011-61-2-9327-6561
Three Eggs, breakfast/lunch, inexpensive,
011-61-2-9365-6262
The Victoria Room, tapas, moderate, 011-61-2-9357-4488,
www.thevictoriaroom.com
Attractions
Centennial Parkland, 011-61-2-9339-6699,
www.cp.nsw.gov.au
Fox Studios Australia, 011-61-2-9332-1300
Hunter Valley,www.huntertourism.com
Northern Beaches,www.sydneynorthernbeaches.com.au
Sydney Harbour Bridge, 011-61-2-8274-7777,
www.bridgeclimb.com
Sydney Opera House, 011-61-2-9250-7111,
www.sydneyoperahouse.com
Shopping
Sass & Bide, 011-61-2-9667-1667
Scanlan & Theodore, 011-61-2-9380-9388,
www.scanlanandtheodore.com.au
Tsubi, 011-61-2-9361-6291
We Said … Our super guide to Sydney
LODGING
Green Point and Constables Cottages, inexpensive,
011-61-2-9337-2333. Planning on staying for a while? Consider
renting one of these cozy cabins (which sleep six and eight,
respectively) in Sydney Harbour National Park for a week. They may
not have room service, but that's about all they don't have. Better
yet, they offer gorgeous views of the Sydney skyline, and you're
still only 10 minutes from Bondi Beach and other attractions.
Pensione Hotel Sydney, inexpensive, 011-61-2-9265-8888,
www.pensione.com.au. We weren’t sure “luxury” and “budget” could coexist in a hotel, as the Pensione advertises, but its sleek European styling and in-room amenities like dataports and mini fridges do indeed belie its affordability.
DINING
Longrain, moderate, 011-61-2-9280-2888,
www.longrain.com.au. Kate and crew may have dined at the Victoria Room, but we take our team to this convivial spot in a converted warehouse. The helpings of Pan-Asian specialties — think betel leaves topped with trout roe and tea-smoked duck — are as big as the tables. If you have to wait to be seated, be sure to sample one of the signature “stick drinks” at the bar.
Well Connected, inexpensive, 011-61-2-9566-2655. This Glebe Point Road café’s breakfast special is available until four p.m., but it’s a dish we’d actually get up early for. For about US$8, you get scrambled eggs on toast with bacon, slow-roasted tomato, coffee, and fresh OJ. The smoked salmon bruschetta is a keeper, too, but then so is everything else on the menu.
ATTRACTIONS
Sydney Harbour Seaplanes, 011-61-2-9388-1978,
www.seaplanes.com.au. You’ve seen them buzzing around town, so why not hitch a ride on one yourself? We recommend the quick trip to quiet
Palm Beach, a scenic peninsula complete with golden sand, crashing surf, and several restaurants.
Sydney Tower Skywalk, 011-61-2-9333-9222, www .skywalk.com.au. Sure, you can climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but with this nearly year-old outfit you can stroll out onto a glass-floored perch atop Sydney Tower, almost 855 feet above the teeming crowds below. Hang on!
FRIDAYSATURDAY
SUNDAY
ONE SPECIAL DAY
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