'Brideshead' has been revisiting Hayley Atwell in all sorts of ways

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Hayley Atwell was "minus 1" when the landmark miniseries "Brideshead Revisited" debuted on British television and turned Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick into stars, but ever since she auditioned for the role of Julia Flyte in a new film version of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, she's found herself connected to the 1981 series.For example, before Atwell and co-stars Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw launched their publicity campaign for "Brideshead Revisited," she had "Brideshead" all around her as she did a play at the National Theatre in London this summer."In the dressing room down from me is Jeremy Irons, who's doing a play at the moment called 'Never So Good,' and in the play that I was doing, Anthony Andrews' nephew was in the play with me," says Atwell. "It was like I could not escape."And then a guy came to take the photograph of our cast, and he came up to me and he said, 'Oh, I'm staying in London at the moment with my friend Diana Quick, who gives you her blessing.' I just went, 'Whoa, this is so weird.'"It's kind of like fate, I think."Atwell, 26, had neither seen the miniseries nor read the Waugh novel when she auditioned for director Julian Jarrold in early 2007, but she fell in love with the script."I thought the story was very beautiful, and I found it amazing," says Atwell. "I already found out that Matthew and Ben and Emma (Thompson) and Michael (Gambon) would be attached to it. I thought, 'This is something very special.' "U.S. audiences got their first look at Atwell in January when she starred with Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream." Within a few weeks, they were able to see her in a British-produced film of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" that played on PBS's "Masterpiece.""Oh, how boring," says Atwell, apologizing for her sudden omnipresence.Once she was cast by Jarrold, Atwell read "Brideshead Revisited" and used it to help create Julia."It became the Bible for me when I was on set," she says by phone from New York. "I often referred to it. It was very useful to have it as kind of enhancing to the inner life of the characters and filling in certain blanks."Atwell believes the story hits home for her generation as well as for people who grew up with the miniseries and those who experienced it only from the 1945 novel."I felt that it was one of those books where, like any great classic, it travels over time and it's delivered into the lap of a new generation," she says. "That's kind of the mark of a great story, that it can be told again and again."The new take on a young man's friendship with a staunchly Catholic aristocratic family emphasizes the religious aspects more than the miniseries did, Atwell says."That wasn't as strong in the television series, mainly because you had 11 episodes in which literally to put page by page onto the screen," she says. "With our film, we wanted to highlight the impact that the Catholic Church and that upbringing would have had on the choices that each of the characters make romantically. Especially because, even more so now 27 years later after the series and decades and decades later after the story was set, there's not so much of that sense of religion anymore within society."(Contact Knoxville News Sentinel film critic Betsy Pickle at pickle(at)knews.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)