Hollywood actress tells why Newcastle proved a top choice for filming her new movie – Chronicle Live

When new movie The Bay of Silence comes out this September, North East viewers will spot some very familiar locations among the exotic settings for the thriller starring Dracula star Claes Bang and Quantum of Solace Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko.

Actress and first-time producer Caroline Goodall has given Newcastle and Northumberland prime roles in the atmospheric tale which sees the iconic Tyne Bridge form the backdrop to a pivotal scene and areas of the coast double for Normandy.

Her decision to film in and around the city stemmed from the inaugural Newcastle International Film Festival which ran in 2018.

Back then, plans to produce a film for the first time were on the back burner for Caroline, who is the only British actress to have starred in two Steven Spielberg films - having made Hook, Hollywoods first $12m film, with Robin Williams and also Schindlers List with Liam Neeson, playing the wife to his Oskar Schindler - and whose other movie credits include Cliffhanger and The Princess Dairies.

Impressed by the region's locations and its 'film-friendly' approach, she signed up as a festival board member and said she would return with a film crew if her project did take shape.

"I am passionate about the fact that work in the UK needs to be less centralised," she says of the festival's aim to turn the industry focus away from London.

"It was a lot of fun and I met some fantastic people."

Citing local talent, such as director Sir Ridley Scott with whom she's worked, and the "magnificent" North East locations, she said: "One of my promises was that if we got the film up and going, certainly we would come to Newcastle - so we did."

True to her word, she turned up with a top-drawer cast in tow, including household name Brian Cox and rising Dracula star Claes Bang, to start work on The Bay of Silence, adapted from a novel by Lisa St Aubin de Tern, which she's also written the screenplay for and which takes its name from a small cove on the Italian Riviera.

"I was just so happy to be able to go back to the region," she says. "It was so right for what we wanted."

The region's diverse locations loaned themselves well to the beautiful, atmospheric and disturbing story about family man Will, played by Claes, who discovers his wife Rosalind (Olga) and their three children have disappeared.

Caroline calls it "a mystery thriller drama" and Hitchcock-style psychological twists unravel in Will's frantic search which takes him across Europe.

Filming also took place in Italy - where Caroline lives while she also happens to have family in the North East - including in the actual Bay of Silence, Baia Del Silenzio, on the Italian Riviera.

Caroline has a role in the film too which involved filming a scene with Claes near the Sage Gateshead, "with the Tyne Bridge in the background. It's such an fantastic shot," she says.

Claes' character Will is an engineer who comes to Newcastle on business, pitching for work on a bridge which led to Caroline making a script re-write to include a joke about the number of bridges the city already has.

It's during the visit that Will's wife goes missing which sets in motion an increasingly disturbing series of events in a mystery which involves some "tough themes" says Caroline, such as the death of a child and mental health issues as Will tries to unearth what has happened in his absence.

"You absolutely go down the rabbit hole with him."

Claes, whose profile has rocketed since he starred in January's joint BBC and Netflix series Dracula, had already experienced the city, having previously accompanied Caroline to a talk at Tyneside Cinema for a screening of his 2018 award-winning film The Square.

Caroline says: "It was great Claes got to see Newcastle as he was happy to come back."

His new role is a very different one for him and she says of his down-to-earth role as Will: "He's not being Dracula-like at all!

"He's a warm, vulnerable, cuddly, gorgeous man - as he is in fact."

They stayed in the city for a few days and also in Alnwick and Eshott Hall in Northumberland when filming moved up to the coast around Alnmouth before they ventured even further north into the Scottish borders and St Abbs.

Caroline's first time behind the camera brought unexpected challenges, from a hairy time filming with heavy equipment on the shore during a deluge to a freak twister at the Bay of Silence which flooded them out and soaked the costumes. Producer responsibilites even extended to rearranging last-minute accommodation for crew.

It's been an enormous undertaking, with chasing finance and continuing her acting career which saw her slot in acting roles during post-production - such as in Britbox series and Scandinavian noir-style drama Cold Courage - to add cash to the pot.

Throughout, Emmy-award winner and good friend Brian Cox, who plays Rosalind's former stepfather, was a huge help.

"Without him being so supportive and lovely, this film would not have happened," says Caroline.

She credits the Newcastle festival too, for adding further incentive to develop her ambitious film project, saying: "I think helping with the film festival was a very good dry run for me to get my producer spurs."

Still busy acting, she's finished off work in Hungary on Amazon film Birds of Paradise and is currently in Croatia finishing the long process of making special-effects-laden The Islander.

"I've been Covid-tested so many times," she says of her life travelling around for work during the pandemic. And it's been tough.

"For a start, I fly in, I quarantine for a week and I'm now isolated, in an apartment on my own. I get groceries sent in."

Covid tests follow on a regular basis once on set and much of the creative process is remote, with Zoom meetings and photographs to help with costume fittings when not part of a special bubble.

In The Islander, which she describes as "a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic steampunk movie", she plays an admiral of a fleet.

"I find myself in this place where I play presidents, the head of the CIA ... I'm getting all these top roles where women are the movers and shakers - no grandmas!" she laughs.

Having started The Islander before making The Bay of Silence, its final stages now make a nice "book-end" to her own project.

But her film's timing, coinciding with the pandemic, means that it has been denied its cinema release.

Instead, The Bay of Silence comes out on DVD and all social platforms on September 28 but who knows what will happen in the future as the movie - getting five-star reviews at preview screenings - may still get its moment in the sun.

It made its debut at Shanghai Film Festival - a real one, not a virtual event - where it showed for five nights on a huge screen but the coronavirus crisis meant that she and the team could not walk that red carpet and enjoy the celebrations.

"It was one of very few European films chosen, says Caroline, "but we were not able to go.

"They put on such a show - it would have been so wonderful."

It has come out in the US already, where it was simlarly not expecting to enter into cinemas but the distributors then asked to waive the contract they had signed to allow it a run after all, and it has since played to audiences in the likes of California, Texas and New York.

She thinks how and where you watch a film is all-important and the experience affects your perception of it, she says; contrasting a cinema to a home environment with all its distractions.

Having been in London when lockdown happened - while her cinematographer husband was in LA before the family could reunite in Italy - she managed to get out to the cinema, to see Tenet, when restrictions eased and she loved being back, enjoying the communal experience and a discussion of the film afterwards.

But, with the pandemic having changed so much about life, The Bay of Silence's release on all platforms could be the new normal.

Caroline has viewed it on a small screen too and the stylish thriller still looks good.

"I'm just happy it's out there and people are going to see it," she says.

"In the pandemic, with so many people suffering, I feel really fortunate that people feel it's worth watching."

The Bay of Silence will be out on DVD and digital HD September 28.

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Hollywood actress tells why Newcastle proved a top choice for filming her new movie - Chronicle Live