Brits play Hollywood greats

Their names evoke a glorious vision of Hollywood glamour and romance.

Now the world of Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Katharine Hepburn and Jean Harlow is being recreated on screen - with British acting talent.

English stars Kate Beckinsale and Jude Law are among the cast of The Aviator, a biopic of the billionaire Howard Hughes.

The movie focuses on his early life when he was Hollywood's golden boy. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the young Hughes, who produced his first Oscar-winning box office hit at the age of 21, set numerous aviation records and romanced many of the world's most desirable women.

Among them was Ava Gardner, the screen queen who dated Hughes in the early 1940s.

In the movie she is portrayed by Miss Beckinsale, whose alabaster beauty does undeniable justice to her predecessor's legendary looks. The Hughes-Gardner relationship was famously volatile, and at one time he hit her, giving her a huge bruise around her left eye. She responded by striking him with a bronze bell, knocking out two teeth.

Another of his girlfriends, Katharine Hepburn, is played by Cate Blanchett, an Australian who lives in Brighton.

They met in 1938 when he landed his plane on a golf course just as she reached the seventh tee. She once dived naked off the wing of his plane into the waters of the Long Island Sound. Jude Law plays the notorious lothario Errol Flynn, who is seen in one scene trying to steal Miss Hepburn away from Hughes, who later dumped her for Bette Davis.

American singer Gwen Stefani, who is married to the British singer Gavin Rossdale, plays Jean Harlow, whom Hughes discovered for his film Hell's Angels.

The cast of The Aviator spent hours looking through footage of the characters they were going to play, producer Graham King has revealed. He said Miss Blanchett, in particular, had captured the essence of Miss Hepburn.

'It's not so much the look as the voice,' he said. 'It was scary to hear her talk. It's eerie - she had it down to a T.'

Hughes, whose other girlfriends included Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth, was married twice, first to debutante Ella Rice then to actress Jean Peters. Aged 70, he died a recluse in 1976.