The cult success of Kick Ass made Jane Goldman one of Britain’s hottest screenwriters. Now she’s made her first big, big film in X-Men: First Class. What is it like being the only woman in those Hollywood meetings, asks Donald Clarke, all the while bracing himself for the moment when he must bring up that husband of hers
YOU HAVE to feel a little sorry for Jane Goldman. Yes, having conjured up a genuine cult hit with Kick Ass, she is currently one of Britain’s hottest screenwriters. A ruggedly gregarious sort with a sharp line in self-deprecating wit, she has, moreover, managed that feat without making any conspicuous enemies (unless the Daily Mail counts).
But, for all her success, she must, when conducting interviews, still find herself counting the seconds until the hack mentions her blasted husband. Well, if you will insist on staying married to Jonathan Ross, that’s what’s going to happen.
Let’s delay the inevitable for a few moments and ponder Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class. The latest film in the superhero cycle takes us back to the origins of the mutant cabal. It is 1962 and Professor Xavier is still a young lecturer at Oxford University. Over the course of the picture, after meeting up with Michael Fassbender’s Magneto, the still hirsute genius gathers together allies and sets out to quieten down the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is a big, big, film. As Goldman explains, her previous two collaborations with Vaughn – Kick Ass and the fantasy Stardust – were, for all the extravagant visuals, relatively intimate productions. She must have had to shout to make herself heard while working on X-Men?
“Well, not with Matthew,” she says. “This franchise is going a long time and will continue long after Matthew and I have stopped being involved. I was actually delighted we got as much freedom as we did. Look, there is an awful lot of other people’s money involved. You’ve got to be polite. But, yes, it couldn’t have been more different to Kick Ass. There we didn’t have to answer to anybody.”
At the risk of sounding patronising, I wonder if she ever pondered the fact that she was so often the only woman in the room. Glance down the credits for First Class and you encounter a great many Burts, Daves and Mikes. There are precious few Janes.
“No, that’s not a patronising thing to say at all,” she laughs. “You are frequently the only woman at these big meetings. I don’t know why that still is.”
Did she ever find herself being talked down to? “I didn’t really have that. It’s not like in that Fast Show sketch where you say something and everyone ignores you. Then, when a man says the same thing, they all say: ‘Great idea!’ There was one thing I noticed, though. Sometimes they’d be discussing actresses in an objectified way and then they’d turn to me an apologise. I don’t know what to be offended by there: the original comment or the apology. ‘Hey, are you saying I’m fat or something?’”
I dare say Goldman can take care of herself. Wielder of a hearty laugh, resplendent in her trademark hairdo, she comes across like the sort of person who – in the most charming fashion – would never allow herself to be sat upon.
She’s had an interesting career. Goldman, now 40, was born in London, the daughter of “a homemaker” and a dad who, as she tells it, kept his finger in a varied collection of pies. He owned a clothes shop. He worked for charities. He ran a restaurant.
“The cuttings all say he was a wealthy property developer, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” she snorts.
When she was just 16, she got a job helping out a Daily Star journalist with his notes and transcriptions. A position as a junior reporter soon came her way. She could have stayed on at school, done her A-levels, gone to university and then, half a decade later, applied for just that sort of job. Not surprisingly, she grabbed the early chance. Her first gig was as the paper’s pop music reporter.
“I’m afraid it wasn’t as wild as it sounds,” she says. “It was awesome in that it was still old-school Fleet Street. It was actually in Fleet Street, in fact. We had manual clunky typewriters. You’d roll up the copy, put it in a tube and fire it through these vacuum-tube things. I left just before Wapping changed everything. There were still drunks in the newsroom. I was very grateful to have that experience.”
Now, alas, we have to address the issue of Mr Ross. Shortly after she started at the Star, she and he began dating. By all accounts, the chat-show host, 10 years her senior, was besotted from the start and never stopped trying to negotiate her up the aisle. As things turned out, they held off until she reached the mighty age of 18.
A true professional, Goldman emits not the slightest of sighs when the floppy-haired one’s name is brought up.
“Yes, we met when I was 16,” she says with something a little like a twinkle. “And I didn’t want to be with anyone else. We got engaged, but waited until I was 18 – not because we had any doubts, but because I didn’t want my parents to have to sign the wedding certificate. That really would have been a bit trashy. The decision was borne out by how things have worked out. Twenty-five years later we’re still happily together.”
Their marriage does seem to be among the most solid in the slippery world of show business. For all Ross’s lubricious chatting-up of guests on TV, his affection for his wife has always been undeniable. I suppose I’m required to ask how they’ve managed it.
“I don’t know. You know, there’s probably the same amount of divorces in any world. We’re just more aware of it in the entertainment word. Look, if you are well suited and easy-going that is the key to anything. We are both easy-going people and very fond of one another. What else can I tell you?”
Ross and Goldman have three children. While they were growing up she continued to write. She worked on a video-game magazine. (She tells me she and her son are addicted to the online fantasy game World of Warcraft.) She wrote a book on The X-Files. But it wasn’t until she delivered the script for Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman fantasy, that the world seemed to take serious notice.
“There was no conscious decision to change career paths,” she says. “It’s just that screenwriting is so much more prominent. Before that I was mainly writing non-fiction for teenagers. That’s not something people are aware of. I wanted to do jobs that wouldn’t get in the way of my kids. I’m not judging working mothers, but I really wanted to be there for the fun stuff.”
She was finally thrust into the most dazzling ring of the spotlight when Kick Ass, a superhero pastiche, emerged in 2010. The film is most notable for the character of Hit Girl, a pre-teen avenger with a taste for blue language that might cause even hardened sailors to redden. By that stage, certain antics with Russell Brand – plus reports of hefty salaries – had already turned the mid-market tabloids against Ross. The news that Satan’s wife was now leading poor wee kiddies astray sent the Daily Mail into paroxysms of moral fury.
“The whole thing puzzled me,” she says. “It was such a manufactured scandal. It didn’t affect any actual people. Almost no real people were upset. My only experience of ‘controversy’ was journalists asking about the ‘controversy’. There was some Australian family group that tried to object. But then they changed their minds when they realised it was appropriately rated.”
At any rate, Goldman seems to have prospered from the experience. Later this year, The Debt, a thriller concerning a Mossad hunt for Nazi war criminals, will makes its way into lucky cinemas. In 2012 a version of Susan Hill’s ghost story The Woman in Black, also from a script by Goldman, is due for release. She’s doing very nicely for herself.
Meanwhile, Ross has drifted into the background somewhat. All going well, in a few years’ time he might be regarded as that bloke who’s married to Jane Goldman.
Still, she seems philosophical about the fact that, for the moment at least, she will have to field questions about her old man. I do wonder if she ever gets annoyed about the gently lewd remarks he, when on telly, makes about their sex life. That’s not quite decent. Is it? “Oh man, I don’t know,” she hoots. “His job is his job and that’s incidental to our own life. Hmm? I don’t think anything he has said has ever bothered me. Hey, maybe there’s something I don’t know about. We don’t really watch the show.”
Oh so, unlike Larry Sanders, he doesn’t cuddle up at night in front of his own witticisms? “No, he doesn’t watch himself and, since he was in on Friday nights, that counted me out as well. Ha ha!”
Yes, she’s a good egg, that Jane Goldman.
yyy X-Men: First Class is released next
Friday
