The van turned a few more corners and arrived at tall, black, heavily guarded gates. I felt the hairs on the back of my head bristle and an icy cold fear devour my body. Either side of the gates, armed guard towers rose menacingly. As the gates slowly opened, unwanted memories and thoughts returned vengefully. How long would I be here? Would I walk out a free woman? When would I see my children again? The dull ache in my heart, so long submerged, awakened.
Behind the van the gates closed, a hard clink of metal against metal. Armed police swarmed around and as I stepped out of the van my legs buckled under me.
Yet incredibly, this wasn’t Yeserias prison in Madrid, once the most notorious women’s prison in Europe where I’d been incarcerated twenty years before. Instead I was in Alicante on the set of a film-a film that covered a period in my life and the life of my ex-husband the international drug smuggler Howard Marks. To me though, it was all too real.
As I stumbled out of the chauffeur driven production team car, the director came rushing over. In the distance I could see screen actor Rhys Ifans, hunched over almost in defeat, handcuffed, and dressed in prison attire, looking so like my husband Howard.
‘This is too realistic’, I mumbled, ‘I feel as if I’m back there’.
Bernard Rose looked at me sympathetically and suggested I got the driver to take me back to the hotel and spend the day in the spa. I gratefully took his advice, thankful that I could leave, unlike two decades before where I’d spent eighteen months behind bars, separated from family, friends and more importantly my children.
The film was shot early last year and was largely based on a mixture of material contained in the books both Howard and I had separately written about our experiences. It seemed ironic that four years after our divorce, our books were in a sense getting married.
I have yet to see the finished result. I imagine it’s going to be weird seeing myself portrayed up there on celluloid. Mine, my husbands and my children’s lives, dissected, portrayed, interpreted and rewritten by a virtual stranger.
The screenplay is written and directed by English film director Bernard Rose. Who is most well-known for his direction of the 1992 urban horror film Candyman and the 1994 historical romance film Immortal Beloved.
Perhaps, one might think, Bernard will have the experience of rewriting the romance and horror of mine and Howard’s life. Time will tell.
The film spans three decades. It charts Howard’s life from his childhood in Wales, through his Oxford days to when we meet and fall in love and embark on a life of smuggling large amounts of hashish and marijuana around the world. It will also recount how the DEA arrested us at our home in Mallorca, in the presence of our three young children, Amber, Francesca and Patrick. And eventually, after a long court battle in Madrid extradited us both to the US.
Eighteen months following the arrest I returned home and Howard served seven years of a twenty five year sentence before he too finally returned home to me and the children.
Howard and I, as well as our children all played cameo roles in the film which was shot first in Wales and then in Alicante, Spain. Amber and Francesca took part in the filming in Wales while Howard, Patrick and I played our parts in Alicante. However, in the editing of the film Howard and Patrick have been cut out.
Being involved in the film was fun albeit strange. How many people get to have a major movie depicting their life made? Let alone act in it. The production team was wonderful and supportive; fully understanding it must have felt strange.
For many years a question that I have constantly been asked was, ‘If your book is made into a film who would you like to portray you?’
And although I could think of many fine British actresses I admire, such as Minnie Driver, Helena Bonham-Carter, Kate Winslett or Anna Friel, I could never envisage any of them playing me.
Initially, I was surprised by the film company’s choice of an American actress. I knew little about Chloe Sevigny and had never seen any of her movies. But my daughter Francesca and son Patrick kept saying, “Mum, she’s sooooo cool.” My editor at Ebury, Andrew Goodfellow said he was one of her biggest fans.
Another friend of mine remarked “You have to be cool to know about Chloe”.
I concluded that I obviously wasn’t cool.
Chloe Sevigny became known for her fashion career and her unique sense of style. And in the 1990s starred in a string of critically acclaimed independent films before her first mainstream role in Boys Don’t Cry, for which she received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actresss.
Chloe Sevigny has continued acting in mostly independent, but critically acclaimed roles in art house films. According to an interview I read with her mother “She makes few films because she's so picky about what she does”.
Chloe Sevigny recently won the Golden Globe 2010 for Best Supporting Actress for her acting credentials on HBO’s hit show Big Love.
I was nervous about meeting Chloe and according to Rhys Ifans she was equally nervous of meeting me. But, we almost immediately bonded and discovered we had much in common.
We both had a middle-class upbringing. We were both raised as Catholics, have the same astrological sign of scorpio, designed and made our own clothes as teenagers, and both felt as “odd ones out” at school. We also as teenagers had a love affair with hallucingenics and dope, which we gave up by our early twenties. We also had our fair share of messing about on yachts. I am convinced that she is the perfect one to portray me and now cannot imagine anyone better.
I never watched her on set as I felt it would inhibit her. Especially, as many of the scenes shot in Alicante were paticularly emotionally charged.
She remarked to me that she regretted not having met me earlier (the filming began in Wales) as she would have played me stronger. I took it as a compliment, but it also has me worried that she will have played me too weak.
When I initially met Chloe I was struck by her likeness to my eldest niece, the daughter of my brother Patrick Lane. Whose own account of our smuggling days Recollections of a Racketeer has just been published by Mainstream. He is portrayed in the film by Jamie Harris, son of Richard Harris.
Jamie introduced himself to me by saying, “I’m your brother Patrick”. And strangely enough, he does resemble him. It was all most peculiar.
I think casting Rhys Ifans was a brilliant choice for portraying Howard. I cannot imagine anyone who could play the part better. Not just because they are both Welsh. Both Howard and Rhys have great charm are both highly intelligent and are both almost equally anti-establishment.
Rhys, also has the most wonderful sense of humour and is a loving, kind. loyal friend.
Howard and I have known Rhys personally for several years and Rhys had always wanted to play the part. In many ways I think this might have been one of Rhys most testing roles to date, because of his friendship with our family.
And this was really put to the test in an airport scene Rhys and I acted in together.
During the filming in Alicante I was having coffee with Rhys before he left the hotel to “shoot” the scene just after our arrest from our home in Palma, Mallorca.
In this scene the DEA agent, Craig Lovato, was to interrogate him and he would realize that I also was under arrest and facing extradition to the US.
During our coffee Rhys had psyched himself up so much that he was almost in tears and clinging onto my hand and hugging me. As the car drove off from the hotel to the film set, I could see he was crying. He genuinely throws himself into the role he is playing, which is what makes him a great actor.
The Spanish actor Luis Toscar, known internationally for his villain role in Miami Vice played the DEA agent, Craig Lovato, who had become obsessed with bringing my husband to justice.
On our first day in Alicante my son Patrick and I visited the set. Patrick spied Luis coming out of his dressing room trailer, sporting a large fake moustache ready to go on set. Patrick, in an act of devilment reminiscent of his father, strode up to him and said “You’re the bastard who arrested my parents”.
Luis looked rather taken aback, as Patrick at the age of twenty-two and six feet tall is rather large. Luis apologised to Patrick before nervously rushing away. And as he did so tried to avoid my eyes, as I too fixed him with the evil eye, as he looked so like the DEA man of my nightmares.
I felt rather sorry for Luis, as Rhys and Chloe also kept their distance from him. In their eyes he was playing the “baddie” and to be convincing in their film roles they felt they had to keep their distance.
On Howard’s first night at the hotel in Alicante, he and a bunch of his cronies, who had joined him, were partying very loudly in Howard’s room. Rather amusingly, unknown to Luis or Howard, they had adjacent rooms in the hotel.
Luis was unable to sleep because of the noise and was sorely tempted to go and hammer the door of the offending room. I dread to think what would have happened if pretend Lovato had banged down the door on a “out of his head” Howard.
Instead Luis complained to the reception and had his room changed. He also complained to the production team who, much to everyone’s amusement (except maybe Luis) discovered the culprit was Howard.
The other strange experience about been involved in the film was meeting “my children”. Obviously, the children as they grew up were played by various young actors. The three I met in Alicante were playing Amber and Francesca as young teenagers and an eight-year-old boy Edgar, playing Patrick.
It was strange for my son Patrick to meet his eight-year-old self. He had wanted to play his father, but with no acting experience he wished he could go back in time and at least play himself.
I think the choice of the cast was altogether excellent. Shortly before the film went into production, by sheer coincidence I bumped into David Thewlis and his girlfriend, the actress Anna Friel. This was in an obscure tapas bar in a small village on the island of Mallorca where I live and they were enjoying a short break from their hectic acting schedules.
David Thewlis known for his roles in Naked, Seven Years in Tibet and as Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies was to play the part in Mr Nice, of Jim McCann (the Irish connection and self-proclaimed IRA man).
He told me that he is often mistaken for Rhys Ifans ‘Twice a week, people come up to me and say, “You were great in Notting Hill “. I, like David and Anna fail to see the similarity. Anna winked at me and said, “David’s so much uglier”.
David had just received his copy of Mr Nice to study. I, of course gave him a copy of my book Mr Nice and Mrs Marks, and told him to read that instead as it was by far the better book. I’m glad to say he took my advice. I also told him tales about McCann and I think, inadvertently, as Anna’s face whitened and lost its LA tan, nearly frightened him off from accepting the role.
David Trewlis’s ex-wife Sarah Sugarman plays the part of Howard’s mother. And Howard jokingly remarked to me “Well now, I never knew my mother was at one time involved with Jim McCann.”
Patrick and I also met, Omid Djalli, often described as the world’s funniest Iranian stand up comedian and actor. He is playing Malik who was our Pakistani supplier of Hash.
Omid’s international appeal is vast, and after having met him and his lovable grin I could see why. He has appeared in some of Hollywood’s highest-grossing films, like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ the ‘Gladiator’ and, ‘The Mummy’.
He thought it was hysterical that all the family had cameo roles in the film. And everytime Patrick and I ran into him in the hotel he would grin at us and chuckle “It’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant”.
And, I think it’s safe to say that for all of us it was a unique if not surreal experience.
Howard and I overlapped on the film set by a day, and it was always going to be an ‘interesting’ experience. What template is there for how to behave while you and your ex husband take bit parts in a re-enactment of your life together? I certainly didn’t know of one.
In the end I needn’t have worried about how we’d get on together in these delicate circumstances because when Patrick and I arrived, Howard was already embarked on a major bender and didn’t seem to have much idea of what planet he was on, let alone the finer points of what we were both doing there.
The producer and director seemed relieved to see me and seemed to think I’d somehow be able to ‘sort Howard out’. It was a role I’d been playing all our married life. Some things, it seems, never change.
A few days after Patrick and I had returned to Mallorca I received a very penitent message from Howard explaining he’d remained on his bender for days before coming to his senses in the middle of “an incredibly huge and noisy march in the middle of Lahore”.
There are some aspects of life with Howard I don’t miss at all! But after all the years together and despite a divorce I still worry about his health and insane lifestyle.
All in all, the abiding memory of the three decades I spent with Howard is one of happiness and certainly never of boredom. This, in spite of the devastating lows we faced of been separated from our children and from each other by prison.
The producer Luc Roeg of Independent Films has told me he thinks it will be hard for me to watch the film. But until it happens it is impossible to say what emotions I will experience.
Certainly, the making of the film has roused within me deep, powerful and conflicting emotions- seeing my life retold on a cinema screen promises to be even more confusing
But perhaps it will be a thoroughly cathartic experience as well?
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