And we may have a winner of this year's coveted Smarm d'Or award
Brigitte Bardot, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Alex Reid. Yes, to the roll-call of stars who have glittered in the Cannes firmament, you may add another: the former Mr Katie Price, who has been working the film festival this week in a performance critics are already calling his finest since he was lured back to Jordan's gingerbread house and ordered to clean the oven.
Since docking at the festival, Alex has indulged in such a hectic round of yachting, star-bothering, upbeat tweeting and cocktail-sipping that he is this year's standout contender for the Smarm d'Or award. Maybe you didn't hear the news, squares, but Alex is getting out of the business of losing cagefights, and into the business of losing movie roles. And we shall come to his Cannes presence ? and an awkward-sounding encounter with Robert De Niro ? in due course.
But first, a recap of events in our picaresque hero's life, because there may be those of you unaware that Alex was still a celebrity in the absolute technical sense. Don't feel foolish. Many assumed Alex depended on his erstwhile host organism for survival, and that following his forcible detachment from Jordan, he would be starved of showbiz nutrients and would thus wither and perish. Intriguingly, though, it appears the genus is adaptable ? a survival story that contrives to be simultaneously Darwinian and a powerful argument against human evolution.
Remember, it was Alex who intoned shortly before his Vegas wedding to madam: "I just hope the public learns something from this." (Mm. I think they've been brought up to speed.) And following the union's sensationally unpredictable dissolution, it was Alex who barricaded himself into a cupboard in Jordan's pink mansion (I paraphrase slightly) and refused to leave, communicating only via celebrity magazine interviews that confirmed his status as earth's most suggestible human.
Eventually, he conceded defeat. The 35-year-old returned to the only other place he has ever lived ? his parents' house ? where mum Carol and dad Bob set about rebuilding the Reidernator. Consider that process complete.
"My mum was really not wanting me to leave, which was lovely," Alex tweeted as he moved into an expensive rental house last week, "but I got stuff 2 do, places 2 go, goals 2 accomplish!"
2 Cannes, then, and conflicting hints as to how Alex plans to follow his role in last year's critically misunderstood gangster movie Killer Bitch. (Did anyone see it? I don't think it was "in competition", as they say.) On the one hand, we've got his claim to be up for the lead in two Brit flicks. On the other, we have a newspaper report recounting what happened when Alex spotted Robert De Niro having a drink with Sean Penn and Kirsten Dunst at the Hotel Du Cap. Not wishing to intrude on private grief, we will cut to the punchline ? "Hotel staff asked him to leave the actors alone" ? and say how nice it was to see a pastel-suited Alex bounce back for some photos on a yacht, then tweet: "Having dinner with Bruno Copplor [Coppola], being all movie star like." Indeed he is ? looking for all the world as though pale blue linen is his birthstone and he has just lined up a meeting with Dreemwerks.
Not that it would be first time the studio has worked with Alex. He once claimed to have been Tom Hanks's stunt double in Saving Private Ryan, though that has since been commuted to being one of those stand-ins crews use to block a scene while the talent is in its trailer/Los Angeles. And it was only for the beach landing scenes. Still, the Reidernator's verdict on the director? "Professional and economic; things get done. Steven doesn't have to get riled if something isn't working ? everyone around him does the huffing and puffing." Ouch! That siren you just heard is the Hollywood faux-pas alert, which goes off if anyone is so gauche as to refer to Mr Spielberg as Steven.
Still, Lost in Showbiz will have no truck with those naifs who suggest that Alex's presence in Cannes cheapens the festival. At an elemental level, Cannes has always been about a shameless sort of attention-seeking, from Bardot engineering her own upskirt shots in the 50s, to miscast Sloane Liz Hurley getting caught sunbathing topless on the same hotel balcony year after year. In the shade. And don't forget Alex's family have always been steeped in cinema ? his mother, Carol Reid, directed The Third Man, which of course took the Grand Prix in 1949.
We may as well just accept that "cinema's Alex Reid" is an epithet that has been brewing for some years. As he once reflected on his resignation from the Territorial Army: "To sum up, other things in my life became more important. My mission on earth became clearer. Change this world we live in to a better place through educating rather than killing, or telling stories through acting."
So let the magic commence. As Alex has remarked of his critics: "It's like their own self-limiting belief structure. They can't grasp the reality I'm creating because there is no textbook way to go about what I'm doing."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/may/19/alex-reid-cannes-film-festival
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