Actors Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney entered their roles in the new film Onwards and Sideways without the traditional chemistry read, relying instead on an immediate sense of trust. A head of production on their first job together, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney didn’t undergo the standard “chemistry read” to make sure they got on. According to but despite being thrown into the deep end in this hugely emotional, often hilarious film, both actors acknowledge an immediate feeling of safety around each other as they embarked on a project that would require them to strip themselves bare. “It’s odd,”, Ifans, “you learn so much about each other so quickly. I couldn’t tell you what kind of car Laura drives. And separately nearer their respective homes, the better to understand one popular form of recreational therapy for people with Parkinson’s, they waltzed together in London. According to “That’s the mothership of this wonderful organisation that now has offshoots all over the world, including here,” the New Yorker, When she, Ifans and I meet in the central London offices of the producers behind Onwards and Sideways. Each clearly easy in the other’s company, their conversation frequently erupting into gales of laughter, both are dressed casually and low-key. And then the body follows somehow, when it shouldn’t, how it opens up the imagination. According to as soon as I, That, I knew I wanted to be funny about Parkinson’s, because I saw no point in being serious.”. “You don’t have to scratch very far to find someone somewhere who knows someone who has Parkinson’s,” echoes Linney of a condition that, in the UK, 166,000 people are living with, with one person being diagnosed every 20. When the music stops, to see what happens to their bodies – it’s shattering in a good and a sad way, and the difference between someone moving in a dance class and then.
The project, which explores the lives of a couple navigating a Parkinson’s diagnosis, required both performers to engage in emotionally raw scenes, including portrayals of night terrors and the personal fallout of a gambling addiction. Despite the intensity of the material, both stars found the experience of working together grounding.
Linney, a 62-year-old triple-Oscar nominee known for her work in The Truman Show, Mystic River, and Ozark, joins 59-year-old Ifans, who famously starred in Twin Town and Notting Hill. Linney, 62, is a triple-Oscar-nominated star with a diverse array of roles on her CV, from her breakthrough in The Truman Show (1998) onwards through Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River and Richard Curtis’s Love Actually (both 2003), then the TV series Ozark and The Big C. Ifans, 59, frankly burst through in 1997’s Twin Town, AKA the “Welsh Trainspotting”, and went on to play Hugh Grant’s scraggly flatmate Spike in Curtis’s Notting Hill (1999), Daniel Craig’s stalker in Enduring Love (2004) and drug smuggler Howard Marks in Mr Nice (2010). So … it gets right to the bone of things.”.
To prepare for their roles, the pair participated in dance classes—an activity that highlights how the arts can help manage symptoms such as stiffness and gait issues. He runs a programme there called Dance for PD. According to it’s incredibly moving what the arts will do,” she, – in this case, how dance and music could relax people grappling with a condition that, among its 40-plus symptoms, causes uncontrollable shaking, stiffness of gait and involuntary freezing in doorways and thresholds. “How brave it makes people.
Linney, an alumna of Juilliard, attended classes at the school, noting that dance and music can offer relief for individuals struggling with the condition’s physical constraints. In Brooklyn, Linney was introduced to David Leventhal at the Mark Morris Dance Group. According to “I spoke with David for a long time – and then I learned that Juilliard has classes for this once a week,” Linney, Of the acting school that’s her alma mater. “So I just started hanging out there. Then, quietly again: “They were so inspiring, these classes. You’d be sitting next to a nuclear scientist and a school cleaner.
Ifans, a native of Pembrokeshire, sought out a different approach by attending weekly sessions at the Pontio arts and innovation centre in Bangor, North Wales. He described a unique atmosphere featuring a harpist and, by chance, a sheepdog roaming the room. He characterized the experience as peak Welshness, emphasizing how the classes acted as a social equalizer, bringing together individuals from all walks of life—from cleaners to scientists—to grapple with the same diagnosis.
The screenplay was written by 73-year-old Paul Mayhew-Archer, co-creator of The Vicar of Dibley. Mayhew-Archer is an outspoken advocate for the Parkinson’s community and a founding member of the Movers and Shakers podcast. He was diagnosed with the disease at 58, noting that his initial symptoms were subtle, such as experiencing very small and unclear handwriting. Which raises both awareness and laughs, alongside fellow “Parky people”, including journalists Jeremy Paxman and Mark Mardell, the 73-year-old is a founder member of the Movers and Shakers podcast.
Mayhew-Archer infuses the film with a balance of humor and tragedy. In one scene, a doctor delivers the diagnosis with a lack of tact that mirrors Mayhew-Archer’s own experience. The writer recounts a neurologist telling him he had difficulty smiling; he replied that it might be difficult to smile given the nature of the diagnosis. Ifans, who has been attached to the project since before the pandemic, praised the script for handling a life-changing condition with both levity and emotional weight.
Linney found that the project demanded a specific level of presence that transformed her approach to acting. She noted that the world of Parkinson’s forced her to be vulnerable, describing the experience as one that rearranged her cellular structure. Beyond this project, Linney is currently filming a romantic comedy titled Comfort and Joy, which focuses on the figures behind a 1972 sex manual.
The film, directed by John Madden, serves as a testament to how arts initiatives can provide community for those with Parkinson’s. For those living with the disease, it offers a rare, honest look at the realities of the condition. Onwards and Sideways is scheduled for release in UK cinemas on 6 November and will be available on BBC One and iPlayer later this year. In the Norfolk-set BBC film directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Ifans would have to nearly throttle Linney while in the grip of night terrors, she’d have to collapse in his arms in a weeping mess having bankrupted herself with a gambling addiction; both situations arising from the neurological condition afflicting their characters: Parkinson’s disease. A teacher) and Linney (Emma, a musician), his experiences directly inform the experiences of the fiftysomething characters played by Ifans (Tony.
