Saffron Burrows Movies
Tall, slim, and possessing impossibly large cheekbones, English actress Saffron Burrows first came to the attention of international audiences with her role in Circle of Friends (1995). Burrows, who had made her screen debut two years earlier in Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father, was cast as one of Minnie Driver's titular circle, an Irish girl who makes the mistake of getting involved with an older, morally suspect Englishman (Colin Firth).Thanks to the film's great success, Burrows found herself steadily employed, though not always in films of great quality. In 1999, she earned the label of "star on the rise" thanks to leading roles in four different films. Two of these, Wing Commander and Deep Blue Sea, were big-budget action films, while the others were art-house dramas directed by Mike Figgis. The first, The Loss of Sexual Innocence, cast Burrows as identical twins separated at birth, while the second, Miss Julie, was an adaptation of August Strindberg's play that featured Burrows as the title character, a wealthy young woman who enters into a ruinous affair with a servant. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
An American woman on a business trip in Ireland finds love knocking at her door, no matter how sternly she refuses to answer, in this romantic comedy. Marcy Tizard (Janeane Garofalo) is an assistant to Senator John McGlory (Jay O. Sanders), a congressman from Boston in the midst of a hard-fought reelection campaign. Nick (Denis Leary), one of McGlory's advisors, thinks that it might mean some extra votes in McGlory's heavily Irish-American district if he can arrange a photo opportunity with any relatives McGlory might have in the Olde Sod, so Marcy is sent to Ireland to find any surviving members of McGlory's family. Marcy is not especially enthusiastic about this assignment from the start, and her rancor grows when she arrives in the village of Ballinagra to discover that the annual matchmaking festival is in full swing -- and a number of single men immediately seize upon Marcy as a prize catch. One of them, Sean (David O'Hara), a former journalist who has come to Ballinagra to work on a book, takes an immediate fancy to Marcy, which she most certainly does not return. However, Dermot (Milo O'Shea), the town's leading matchmaker (when he's not busy running his tanning salon), is convinced that Sean and Marcy are perfect for each other, and he makes it his business to bring them together, whether Marcy likes the idea or not. The Matchmaker was filmed on location in Massachusetts and Galway, Ireland. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janeane Garofalo, David Patrick O'Hara, (more)
- 1997
A woman fleeing the man in her life discovers a city of women in this revisionist western. Chrysty (Amy Brenneman) is passing through the Nevada desert when she happens upon the small town of Silver, currently populated entirely by women and children, while the men in the community are gone -- working on a dam building project. When Chrysty discovers June (Bridgette Wilson) alone and in labor, she helps her as she gives birth; Chrysty opts to stay around, and she takes a job delivering milk. Silver is ruled by McGill (Kirstie Alley), the village's self-appointed sheriff who doesn't trust Chrysty; McGill discovers that Chrysty is actually an Idaho housewife running away from her husband, West (Angus MacFadyen). However, June's husband Rip (James Wilder), back in town after the birth of a child that may not be his and troubled by his wife's chronic infidelity, has fallen in love with Chrysty, and when West arrives to Silver to retrieve his spouse, Rip opts to fight for her hand. Nevada also features Saffron Burrows as June's sister-in-law, and Dee Wallace Stone and Kathy Najimy as a rough-and-tumble lesbian couple. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
A group of twenty-something graduate students play an on-going game of musical chairs with their love lives in this romantic comedy-drama. Danny (Matthew Letscher) is a self-styled professional student who is involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with Zoey (Saffron Burrows), a struggling writer. However, Danny's close friend Amy (Carlo Gugino) happens to be secretly in love with him, and she is waiting for the romance to finally collapse so she can move in. Meanwhile, Alan (Jon Tenney) is teaching a class on writing and has fallen in love with the ditsy Molly (Sherilyn Fenn), who unfortunately has her eyes on one of her other writing professors, the older Bruce (Bruce Davison). In the meantime, Tim (Peter Krause) waits on the sidelines, wondering when his opportunity for romantic triumph and/or disappointment will arise. Lovelife was written and directed by Jon Harmon Feldman, who has worked in television as a producer on such series as The Wonder Years and Dawson's Creek. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Saffron Burrows, Sherilyn Fenn, (more)
- 1996
The line between reality and fiction becomes increasingly blurred as an ailing screenwriter struggles with a story that seems to come to life before his eyes. A self-destructive loaner whose battle with pancreatic cancer has left him embittered and in great pain, Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney) decides to focus his attention on an a new screenplay entitled "Karaoke." A lurid tale concerning the murder of a young girl working in a seedy karaoke bar, the story soon begins to invade Feeld's reality when he overhears people speaking the dialogue that he had written and finds that the people working in a local karaoke dive not only share his character's names, but their lives as well. Drawn to the suspiciously familiar plight of hostess Sandra (Saffron Burrows), Feeld's suspicions of thuggish club-owner Arthur "Pig" Mallion (Hywel Bennett) begin to mount as Feeld increasingly questions both his health and sanity. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Albert Finney, Richard E. Grant, (more)
- 1996
- R
A man tries to win the hand of the love of his life -- which is an uphill battle, since she's about to get married -- in this romantic comedy from Australia. Seventeen-year-old Stephen (Simon Bossell) first sees Melissa (Saffron Burrows) across the room at a party, and from that moment on, he's hopelessly in love with her. However, as he's crossing the room to introduce himself, who should get there first but his fraternal twin brother Rick (Alden Young). While Stephen is the brighter of the two, Rick is more attractive and outgoing, and Stephen quickly realizes that he doesn't stand a chance with Melissa if Rick is his competition. Ten years later, Stephen is doing quite well as a stockbroker, though his love life remains a disaster, while Rick is the manager of the Hotel de Love, a cheesy honeymoon resort complete with heart-shaped bathtubs for two and artificial indoor waterfalls. While Stephen is paying his brother a visit at the hotel, who should check in but Melissa, with her bookish fiancé Norman (Peter O'Brien) in tow. While Melissa is surprised to see her former flame Rick, she has no idea that Stephen still carries a torch for her after all these years. Stephen tries to win Melissa away from Norman, which given his romantic ineptitude is no easy task; he seeks advice from Alison (Pippa Grandison), Rick's girlfriend, who works as a fortune teller at the hotel, though the results are not what anyone expected. Meanwhile, Stephen and Rick's quarrelsome parents, Jack and Edith (Ray Barrett and Julia Blake), have come to the hotel for a second honeymoon, and they hope to patch up their marriage. Hotel de Love was the feature debut for writer/director Craig Rosenberg. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Simon Bossell, Aden Young, (more)
Set in 1957, this romantic coming-of-age story follows three childhood friends from a small town in Ireland as they head to Dublin to attend Trinity College. Nan (Saffron Burrows), a year older than her friends and already in her second year at Trinity, is ambitious, romantic, and just a bit reckless. She hopes to win the hand of Simon (Colin Firth), an older Protestant land-owner who would help her rise up the social and economic ladder. Eve (Geraldine O'Rawe), a bit more pragmatic and cautious, finds herself falling for a boy named Aidan (Aidan Gillen). Bernadette (Minnie Driver), called "Benny" by her friends and family, comes from strict parents who won't allow her to live on campus, forcing her to commute back and forth from classes every day. Bennie's father, a haberdasher, has always expected that his daughter, a bit plainer and plumper than her friends, will marry his shop's manager, an odd duck named Sean (Alan Cumming). But at Trinity, Bennie discovers that she fancies a tall, good-looking rugby player named Jack (Chris O'Donnell), and to the surprise of Bennie and everyone else, it turns out that Jack fancies her as well. Circle of Friends gave Minnie Driver her breakthrough film role after her initial success as a television actress in Britain. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chris O'Donnell, Minnie Driver, (more)
Racial conflicts provide the impetus for this heavy, socially conscious British drama. The film begins in North Carolina, 1652, as an Ibo family calmly walks into the sea to drown themselves. To them death was preferable to slavery. The film quickly shoots into a future time, not too distant from our own, where the incarnated family lives in the Terrordome, a rundown ghetto neighborhood. There viciously racist Anglo policemen continually spar with drug-dealing gangs. Spike, a black gangster, is in love with a white woman. She's pregnant and ends up having an abortion after her former boyfriend beats her. Black Rad gets revenge by taking over a TV station after his wife, one of Spike's relations, is killed by police. She had rampaging around with a gun. On TV, Black Rad reads his propaganda. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Valentine Nonyela, Saffron Burrows, (more)
The My Left Foot team of star Daniel Day-Lewis and director Jim Sheridan were reunited to make this political docudrama about Irish citizen Gerry Conlon (Day-Lewis), who was wrongly convicted of taking part in an IRA bombing that killed five in Guildford, England in 1974. After a brutal interrogation forces him to sign a false confession, Gerry is sentenced to prison, his family is raked over the coals, and later his father Giuseppe (Pete Postelthwaite) is charged with being an accomplice and is also sent to prison where he lives out the last days of his life. Day-Lewis gives an outstanding performance as a man tormented by the injustice served him. Watch for Emma Thompson as the persevering lawyer who works for years, gathering evidence to clear Gerry's name. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postlethwaite, (more)
