January 2, 2003
The Western Mail
Hollywood star flies into Wales to prepare to play Dylan
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Method actor Dougray Scott has been to Wales to follow in the footsteps of Dylan Thomas for his new movie about the Welsh bard.

Filming will start in February on the big budget movie of Dylan Thomas's life which is expected to reap tens of millions of pounds for the south west Wales tourism industry.

Shooting of the film Map of Love, named after a collection of Thomas's poems published in 1939, will take place in Swansea and Laugharne.

Rock star Mick Jagger is producing the film which, it is hoped, will be ready for release next November to co-incide with the 50th anniversary of Thomas's death.

Scottish actor Dougray Scott who starred in Enigma will play the hard-drinking poet while Emily Watson (Gosford Park, Angela's Ashes) will appear as his wife Caitlin.

Scott is noted for his intense preparations for starring roles and is said to be busy putting on weight to play the poet.

For Enigma, Dougray Scott learned the fundamentals of code-breaking to play Tom Jericho, the maths genius at the centre of the film.

Now for Map of Love, the Scott has been paying plenty of visits to Swansea to study the South Wales accent.

And he has also been to Brown's Hotel to taste at first hand the warm Welsh beer so prized by legendary writer Thomas.

The film's director Chris Monger says Scott, a graduate of the Welsh College of Music and Drama, has worked hard to master the part.

"When I met him the first time, he cleverly worked every kind of Welsh accent he could into the conversation to show he knew the difference and it was great to know he had this mimic quality," he said. "Dylan Thomas had a weird accent, an educated Welsh accent of its time, and there is nothing like it now.

"Also, Dougray has a very good feel for poetry," he said in an interview with the BBC.

Map of Love will focus on Dylan Thomas's stormy marriage to the long-suffering Caitlin in 1937 until his boozy death in New York in 1953.

The movie will be shot on locations including the Boat House in Laugharne, Brown's Hotel where the writer was a regular, Uplands in Swansea where Thomas grew up and seafront bars in Mumbles where he loved to quaff beer while watching yachts and boats drift by.

When the film goes on world release later this year it is expected to spark a bonanza for the tourism industry in south west Wales.

Thousands of Dylan Thomas fans, particularly from America, already make regular pilgrimages to Swansea and Laugharne to study the places that inspired him.

Map of Love is expected to excite a fresh new wave of interest in the life and loves of Dylan Thomas and the locations which mattered to him.

Swansea City and County Council is already planning a festival to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Thomas's death complete with guided tours centring on 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Uplands, where he was born.

Tourist officials in Swansea and Carmarthenshire are now gearing up for the "Map of Love effect" expected to kick in next year.

But Monger believes the celebrated Welsh poet was not the hard-drinker his legend relates.

"He was not known as a drunk in Laugharne. A couple of halves would be his limit," he said.

© Trinity Mirror Plc 2003