It turns out Lindsay Lohan had a lot more in common with Elizabeth Taylor than anyone could imagine, her latest co-star told the Daily News.
Grant Bowler, 44, plays Richard Burton in “Liz & Dick,” a new Lifetime movie that debuts Nov. 25 and explores the epic romance between Bowler’s Burton and Lindsay Lohan’s Elizabeth Taylor.
“Lindsay was a child star, the same as Liz Taylor, so I think there were many similarities between them,” Bowler says. “And in a real way I think that enhanced the film.
“Liz grew up in that movie-star world, and that’s all she knew. She just accepted that’s how her world was, and she didn’t care at all what anyone thought about it, or said about her.
“It’s a world that’s so different from the one most of us know — and Lindsay had that understanding from the very start.
“I actually studied her every day. Most of what I learned about that world, I got just from watching her. So I think it worked out very well for the film.”
Promoting the movie has been a different story.
LiLo bailed on a promised interview with Barbara Walters, opting to appear on “Good Morning America.” And when she was asked questions about her troubled personal life — troubled insomuch as Taylor’s was — she ducked them.
Bowler, on the other hand, comes from a background much closer to Dick’s than to Liz’s.
He first met Richard Burton, or at least Richard Burton’s voice, when he was a lad growing up in Australia.
“We had a recording of ‘War of the Worlds,’ ” Bowler says. “It wasn’t on television or anything, just on a record. And Richard Burton did the reading.
“I listened to that record over and over until I think I could have narrated the whole story myself.”
So Bowler didn’t come cold to playing the part of the film legend, but once he took the role, Bowler says he did find a number of complexities beneath Burton’s rich, commanding voice.
“I think at heart he always remained very closely attuned to the small Welsh village where he grew up,” says Bowler. “Yet at the same time, when he was with Elizabeth, one of the things they had in common was that they both wanted to live as large a life as possible.
“I mean, think about it. Here’s a kid from a very modest home, who didn’t even speak English until he was 8 or 9 because everyone in the house spoke Welsh, and he grows up to find himself living on a yacht with the most famous woman in the world.”
A little whiplash, perhaps?
In one scene from “Liz & Dick,” Liz complains about the inconvenience of traveling and Burton impulsively buys them a plane.
“When we filmed that scene,” says Bowler, “I was literally jumping up and down. I was so giddy at the thought of owning your own airplane.
“I don’t think Elizabeth felt that way. I think she just felt that whatever she got, she deserved. But I suspect Burton probably felt much more as I did.”
Taylor’s sense of entitlement becomes one of the central themes of the film, interwoven with a line she and he both repeat several times — that she always wants “more.”
“And that’s what he always wanted to give her,” says Bowler. “He was delighted that he could buy her large diamonds. And remember, they really did have almost unlimited resources. Any time they needed more money, they could just agree to make another film. .
“But I think that was also part of the reason their relationship was doomed, because you can’t build something lasting on the idea of ‘more.’ Eventually it’s going to fizzle out.”
Before that happens, however, the passion boils hot enough to scald everything and everyone around them, and Bowler agrees it was critical that passion also be conveyed.
“Fortunately, the chemistry [between himself and Lohan] was there from the beginning,” he says. “It’s not something you can really predict, because there are people who have wonderful chemistry in real life and none on the screen. There are plenty of examples of that in the movies.
“But in this case, it was there, which was great.”
And Bowler knows chemistry.
He has done a lot of work on Australian TV, both as an actor and as a reality show host.
In the U.S. he’s had recurring roles on “True Blood,” as the vampire Cooter, and on “Ugly Betty” as a corrupt CEO.
He played Hank Rearden last year in the first of a planned three-movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”
But playing Burton, he says, has been a highlight.
“My favorite shooting day in the whole picture was the scene where I got to do his Hamlet,” Bowler says. “That’s one I’ll treasure forever.”
