Protraits — Sink or swim duo

The 22-year-old star who got his breakthrough in 1993, playing Robert De Niro’s stepson in This Boy’s Life has major roles in Marvin’s Room and Man in the Iron Mask. The real surprise this summer is the 21-year-old Kate Winslet. The girl who won critical kudos for her roles in Sense and Sensibility, Jude and Hamlet, is the best British bet in Hollywood this year, beating behind the likes of Blenda Blethyn and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Gordon’s girlfriend

She wasn’t standing next to Gordon Brown when he went out to present the first Labour budget in 18 years. But next year could be a different story.

She is Sarah Macaulay, the public relations executive that Brown has been quietly dating for more than two years. The couple were spotted together at a Soho restaurant in London. Close friends say the rumours about their engagement are untrue, but it is likely to be announced soon. “It is fair to say they are an item but they’re not engaged,” said one of Brown’s closest confidants.

The 33-year-old Macaulay is co-founder of Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications. She is understood to have met Brown during a fund-raising event organised for the Labour Party by her company three years ago. Brown, despite Fleet Street rumours about his sexuality, has never discussed his friendship. But Brown’s friends talk about it rather openly. “She is intelligent, fun and quite political,” said one. “On top of that she is attractive and successful. They are quite an item.”

Dread of deadlines

It is every author’s nightmare to miss a deadline and then to be held up for it. It was nightmare that came alive for many authors when HarperCollins in the US cancelled 70 books because the writers missed their deadlines. David Godwin, who is the agent for Ben Okri and Arundhati Roy among others, described the cancellation as “extraordinary, shocking, ridiculous”.

But Giles Gordon, agent for Fay Weldon and Peter Ackroyd, says publishers are perfectly entitled to cancel books if authors did not adhere to a delivery date. In a similar incident, Shirley Conran sued her publishers for alleged breach of a £750,000 contract. She said she had made two postponements for her novel but made the final deadline. Her publishers thought she was four days late. Among the tardiest writers is Sir Edward Heath, the former British prime minister. He has toyed with the idea of memoirs since leaving office in 1975. He signed a contract with Weidenfeld in 1985, but no book has been forthcoming. Even former prime minister John Major’s wife, Norma Major, who wrote Chequers was not immune to the dread of deadlines. “I felt very pressured by deadlines passing.”

Gay and gorgeous

Rupert Everett is a British actor with a difference. For one, he is not on the Laurence Olivier-Kenneth Branagh track. He doesn’t go on about art. He’s also happily and openly gay. And, now he is the star of My Best Friend’s Wedding along with Julia Roberts. He describes acting as “a mammoth cruise, really. I think all actors are out to be attractive.” What about theatre?

“It’s a bore,” he says. “It’s fruity. You have to communicate with someone 50 yards up there. Everyone’s reciting. Hollywood’s another thing though. The name of the game is schmooze.” Tall, dark and handsome in the matinee-idol mould, he made a brooding debut in films Another Country (1984) and Dance with a Stranger (1985). He dipped a big toe in comedy with The Madness of King George (1994), creating a hilariously hangdog Prince of Wales and played the villain in Dunston Checks In. But unlike in the truest British tradition he says, “acting is not my life, it’s part of my life”.