Boxing Clever; He May Have Knocked Back a Career in the Ring to Tread the Boards, but Jamie Sives Clearly Made the Right Choice If His Performance in Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself Is Anything to Go By. With His Impressive Track Record and a New Film in the Offing, This Charming Scotsman Is Tipped As the Next Big Thing

Sunday Herald › February 23, 2004

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Summary

Jamie Sives will admit he was a little worried. When we invited him down to the costume and props department of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, he thought we might want to take pictures of him dressed in some ridiculous period costume. The star of Wilbur (Wants To Kill Himself) doesn't particularly want to frill himself. But among the Elizabethan bumrolls, army fatigues, cassocks and space boots, there are various costume components set aside for Sives, a selection of designer threads from Dries Van Noten and Nicole Farhi to perfectly complement the role we've cast him in: that of Scotland's brightest young movie star.

To be fair, the 30-year-old looks halfway there when he arrives in model's own, understatedly smart in tailored shirt and jacket, dark jeans and pleasingly scuffed boots. The last time we met, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last August, he had wild blond hair, a plaid shirt and a cap, looking as if he was about to sail off into The Perfect Storm with George Clooney. Now, with his hair cropped and dark again, he looks more like his screen alter- egos in Wilbur and new movie, One Last Chance. Some female friends have remarked upon a certain resemblance to Sir Robbie of Williams, although Sives lacks the coagulative smugness of pop's saddest clown. I happen to think he looks more like Ronnie O'Sullivan. He's softly-spoken, polite, charming but there's a submerged steeliness that occasionally glints from far below the surface.

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Boxing Clever; He May Have Knocked Back a Career in the Ring to Tread the Boards, but Jamie Sives Clearly Made the Right Choice If His Performance in Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself Is Anything to Go By. With His Impressive Track Record and a New Film in the Offing, This Charming Scotsman Is Tipped As the Next Big Thing

About this time last year, Sives (pronounced see-ves) was accepting a European Shooting Star award from Dennis Hopper at the Berlin Film Festival for his performance in Lone Scherfig's touching, witty drama Wilbur. Despite his character being selfish and, frankly, a bit of a bastard to the women who fall at his feet, Sives managed to make him appealing, even while making a cuckold of his noble brother with Shirley Henderson. Much of his past 18 months has been spent with Wilbur, promoting the movie at festivals around the world.

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