‘Before the Rains’ attracts top talents

Linus Roache has just finished his first season on a popular, iconic television series. To further cement his stardom, he probably should be using the summer hiatus to shoot a film. Instead, he’s traveling to promote a small picture opening today in the District called “Before the Rains.”

But then, the “Law & Order” star has never taken the obvious path to Hollywood success.

After garnering heaps of praise as the conflicted title character in 1994’s “Priest,” the in-demand English actor simply disappeared for almost two years.

“I hit that age of 30, had quite a degree of success, achieved a lot of the things I wanted to do, and started to question, ’Well, is this really it?’ Am I just going to spend the rest of my life making movies, doing TV?” recalls the 44-year-old, chatting comfortably and drinking tea in the lobby of a downtown hotel. “I was hungry for more meaning and purpose.”

It was a risky move. After all, success in film and television often means being seen on-screen as much as you can. That’s one of the reasons Mr. Roache needed a break.

“I was a little too entrenched inside it. I was driven by it,” he says. “It was a great opportunity to say, ’I don’t have to do it. Who says I have to be an actor?’ It was so liberating.”

Although he admits that there are things he missed out on, the decision turned out not to hurt his career. When he returned, he made a splash in the sexy Henry James adaptation “The Wings of the Dove,” co-starring Helena Bonham Carter. Since then, he has been working steadily, and in January, he donned an American accent and joined the cast of “Law & Order.” Longtime fans of the show are responding positively to his portrayal of Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter. (Sam Waterston’s character got a promotion when Fred Thompson left the show for his failed presidential run.)

His latest starring turn, in “Before the Rains,” is the English-language debut of acclaimed Indian auteur Santosh Sivan. The film is set in 1937 India. Mr. Roache plays an ambitious plantation owner whose affair with his Indian housekeeper has tragic consequences. He notes that this is a character with whom it is difficult to sympathize but adds that he had a way to make the man human.

“I grew up in the south of England, and some of my mother’s friends … were ex-Raj from India,” he says. “They had a certain love for life, and there was a certain character they embodied that I remember very clearly. That was my touchstone for where I went with the character.”

This isn’t the first time the well-traveled Mr. Roache has been to India. During his break from acting, he went there periodically, he says, spending three months there at one point. He had a specific purpose for his trip — to attend a retreat hosted by American guru Andrew Cohen, whose “evolutionary enlightenment” philosophy came out of his study of Buddhism and Hinduism. The English actor moved to the United States — he divides his time between New York and Massachusetts — partly because of his work with Mr. Cohen, who founded What Is Enlightenment? magazine. Mr. Roache will give a talk in New York this month on how these teachings have changed his life.

“When we come together beyond all this narcissism and self-concern, we actually have amazing potential to be creative with the problems that we have,” he says. “Trying to define oneself through one’s work and all these materialistic things is a sad way to live.”

It’s an unlikely thing to hear from a hot Hollywood star. Mr. Roache even seems a bit surprised himself that he ended up on a big TV show. “It was great to come back and have a simpler, clearer perspective, which is something I’ve been developing over that time,” he says. “I love my work. I like the creativity, the art of it, the world of it. I’m even embracing now being a more public figure, but I’m not driven by it. It doesn’t define who I am.”

Ivory alone

Most Americans won’t have heard of the director of “Before the Rains,” Santosh Sivan. They probably have heard of its British stars, Linus Roache and Jennifer Ehle, but they likely won’t have heard of its Indian stars. Two very familiar monikers appear in the opening credits, though: The film is “presented” by Merchant Ivory.

One-half of that legendary filmmaking duo (“A Room With a View”), producer and director Ismail Merchant, died three years ago. Director James Ivory, although he’s 79, shows no signs of leaving the business. “Not until I’m forced to,” he says with a laugh, speaking by telephone from New York.

Mr. Ivory and his editor knew a producer of “Rains,” who showed him a cut of the film. “I was impressed by the sweep of it and the authenticity of it,” he says, and so he lent his production company’s name to the release.

Mr. Ivory was born in California and grew up in Oregon, but his first films were documentaries about India. “One of them I made without even going to India,” he says. “It was an interest of mine that developed, in Indian art and music and life.”

Mr. Ivory’s films explore the world of the outsider, and he notes: “That theme wouldn’t have been so important to me if I hadn’t starting working in India. There you feel you do stand apart.” He says he particularly relates to that famous literary outsider, Henry James, who was born in America but traveled widely and finally settled in England. He has filmed a number of James’ books, including “The Golden Bowl.”

That interest in India led to a meeting with the Indian-born Mr. Merchant and a lifelong collaboration. “We always wanted to do the same thing. Not always the same thing, but we had a common goal,” Mr. Ivory says of the partnership. “It’s certainly not easy now. He was my absolutely closest artistic collaborator.”

His first film without his partner, “The City of Your Final Destination,” will be out by this fall. Speaking with the energy of a man half his age, he says he’ll shoot his next project, “The Widow Claire,” based on the play by Horton Foote, this winter. He also has been working for a long time developing a film version of Shakespeare’s great masterpiece “Richard II.”