‘I trusted a lot of people, and the wrong people, and I shouldn’t have’: Charlotte Kirk on navigating Hollywood

The British actor took up writing and producing to have control over what she stars in after a scandal involving some of the most powerful men in the film businessAfter a recent run as an assassin, a serial killer and a gangster, Charlotte Kirk was looking for something a little lighter, and surely nothing can be more jolly, more wholesome than a Christmas romcom. In Christmas & Chaos, Kirk plays Sadie, a pop star in search of a hit – or, to be more precise, three hits for a new musical by an impresario (a comedic Jason Isaacs who only appears on screen via video call). She has just a couple of weeks to come up with something with handsome-and-heartbroken composer (Ben McGregor).Kirk, who also produced the film, approached Jamie Adams, director of several low-budget British films, including Black Mountain Poets, intrigued by his regular use of improvisation. They worked out the story together, says Kirk, but made it without a script. All they knew was that “this was a Christmas movie, these two have got a deadline to make these hit songs and maybe there’ll be some kind of romance. And then it became something else, which is even more interesting.” Continue reading...