First Look At Lars Ulrich As An Old Timey Documentarian In Nicole Kidman’s ‘Hemingway and Gellhorn’

Filming is now underway on the HBO film “Hemingway and Gellhorn” starring Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen and they’re got a top notch cast surrounding them including David Strathairn, Parker Posey, Rodrigo Santoro, Molly Parker, Santiago Cabrera, Peter Coyote, Saverio Guerra, Diane Baker, Tony Shalhoub and Lars Ulrich. Yes, that Lars Ulrich.

Geeks Of Doom have a look now at Ulrich in character and well, he certainly looks the part. Ulrich plays Joris Ivens, a Dutch documentary filmmaker and communist. He made the film “This Spanish Earth” for the Spanish loyalists and the English language version was narrated by Hemingway himself. The work is considered a masterpiece, was screened at the White House where Ivens, Hemingway and Gellhorn all had dinner with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor.

Phillip Kaufman (”The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “Quills”) is at the helm for the film that will tell the story of the titular Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn who shared a tumultuous relationship and five-year marriage which began after meeting at a local Key West bar in 1936. They married in 1940 after romancing in Europe with Hemingway’s famous novel “For Whom The Bell Tolls” written during that time. Their respective correspondent work, however, meant they spent significant time apart which was ultimately a driving factor behind their divorce in 1945. Both tragically ended their own lives — Hemingway in 1961, struggling with psychological and physical deterioration and Gellhorn years later in 1998 after a long battle with cancer and blindness.

While we hope we don’t have to mention that Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” was inspired by the book, this is a pretty interesting career move for Ulrich. Until this, his only real “acting” was in last year’s “Get Him To The Greek” where he played himself. So it’s quite a big leap for the Napster-hater. But better this than another below sub-par Metallica album right?

Metallica “For Whom The Bell Tolls”