HOLLYWOOD -- Either the middle class has disappeared from the British Isles or has become too mundane to portray in movies.
For the past decade or so the Brits have given the world three types of films: Shakespearean classics, elegant Victorian showcases or seamy little stories of the working class or worse.
Among the best of each category released last year were were Kenneth Branagh in 'Much Ado About Nothing,' Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in 'Remains of the Day,' and David Thewless in 'Naked.'
Least known and certainly least seen among that trio is 'Naked,' a low-budget glimpse into the gross world of young, wasted lives dealing with unsatifactory sex, meaningless relationships and utter despair.
Yet newcomer Thewless is being talked up for an Academy Award nomination for his tragic portrayal of a bright but disenchanted working class sod who wastes his life in drunken revelry and sex with scuzzy women.
His character, Johnny, is physically unclean and pathetically aimless but he's also charming, glib and comical.
An odd element of 'Naked,' which has won much critical praise, is that Thewless improvised every bit of his considerable dialogue, forcing fellow cast members to go along for the ride, which they do very well.
Asked about the origin of his surname, he said, 'Thewless is a Huguenot name meaning ill-mannered and lacking in virtue, which is kind of interesting.'
Thewless' accent isn't Mayfair. It's a mixture of Yorkshire and Liverpudlian, which makes it almost undecipherable to American ears.
On a trip to Hollywood to promote his Oscar chances, Thewless, tall, gangly and bright, tackled the subject of the scarcity of middle class films from England.
He admits Americans are fed a steady diet of British movies characterizing the English, Irsh and Scots as a rough and ready bunch of malcontents in 'The Crying Game,' 'The Krays,' 'Hear My Song,' 'The Field,' 'My Left Foot' and others.
'There are a lot of angry, rebellious people in the British Isles,' he said, 'and they do make for interesting stories. The more the recession bites, the less life looks so rosy.
'Art has always been there to serve our purpose, and film is a potent medium to express resentment and unhappiness. 'Naked' is an expression of that. It's nothing new because there are always angry young man.
'There are a lot of those people around Britain these days. In Soho where I live, I find people sleeping in doorways and I've gotten to know them. They're not all alcoholics and junkies. Some are highly intelligent people who choose to live on the streets, refusing to scrounge on the state through the dole.
'Films about the middle class are most often made for British TV, but they aren't generally exported. They don't seem to do as well abroad as 'The Commitments' and 'The Snapper,' which are about the working class and interesting because they have more of an edge.
'Everyone in England is aware of class status. I was reared in the shopkeeping class, not the middle class, which is a cut above. My father had been a miner.
'I've just finished a British TV film, 'Dandelion Dead,' playing an awkward, repressed and inarticulate lawyer. It was a real change from the raging, articulate Johnny.
'Johnny was based on someone I know,' said Thewless, who looks a decade younger than his 30 years. 'The story illustrates that native intelligence isn't always a bonus in life. Johnny's too questioning and wild to benefit from it. He's self-educated and suffers from an overdose of sanity in an insane world.
'I must say there is some of my own preoccupation with such thoughts in Johnny. And I believe there is some of Johnny in me.
'When you come up with your own lines, it's impossible to separate yourself from the man you're playing.
'Mind you, we didn't just turn on the camera and begin ad-libbing. The director and our cast devoted four months of preparation and improvisation to inventing and refining the characters and story before filming began.
'We explored all the possibilities of character relationships as we went along.'
Thewless' performance won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. He also won best actor kudos from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics award.
During his stay in Hollywood Thewless and his agents are meeting with major deal-makers with an eye to making future movies here in the film capital.
'It would be a nice leg up for a shopkeeping class lad like myself,' he said with a broad wink.
