В общем, читайте!Not many men can claim to have been invited by Oliver Stone to seduce him, or to have had sex with Colin Farrell. But ballet dancer Francisco Bosch has. He talks to GT on the eve of appearing in Derek Deane's in-the-round production of Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet with the English National Ballet.
Francisco Bosch has had sex with Colin Farrell. Now, before you start sending in the hate mail, you should know that a) it was only acting, and b) it ended up on the cutting-room floor before the final version of Alexander, last year's historic mega-flop, hit the screens. Bosch played Bagoas, the mysterious Persian eunuch who commanded Alexander's affextions - and it was their love scenes, although historically accurate, which caused the massive fuss that ultimately made a nonsense of the film.
All of this seems to have washed over Francisco Bosch who, after all, has other fish to fry. "It didn't bother me. I did the job, we saw a screening of the movie as it was meant to be, and it was beautiful, and that was the end of that." His apparent sang-froid is explained by the fact that Bosch is not primarily an actor. He's a dancer with the English National Ballet, and so, with his days taken up with classes, rehearsals and performances, he has little time to fret about such things. At the time of writing, he's preparing a series of new pieces for a three-day choreographic workshop, as well as rehearsing the company's huge production of Romeo & Juliet. He's too interested in trying to stop smoking, in finding time out to practice rollerblading or see his boyfriend, to worry about homophobic film critics.
But the Alexander debacle marked a turning point in Bosch's life in other ways. On the same day that he got the job in Oliver Stone's movie, he told his parents he was gay. "It was the right time for me, because I had a steady boyfriend, and it was the right time for them because they were ready for it. Of course it came as a shock, but they were great, and I know that they'd love and support me whatever I chose to do."
"Ballet Dancer is Gay" is hardly headline news, and Bosch admits that, in the tolerant atmosphere of the dance world, homosexuality is pretty much expected. In fact, his whole life appears to have been blissfully free of problems in that area, which may have something to do with the fact that he grew up in Spain. As the age of four, he was dancing Flamenco on his parents' tabletop near Valencia; at 13, he'd left home to study dance full time in Madrid. He gave up Flamenco for Ballet, joined the Nacho Duato's Compania Nacional de Danza and worked with every contemporary choreographer he could have dreamed of. "Dance was with me from the very beginning," says Bosch, now 22. "When I first saw Flamenco, I loved everything about it: the strength, the emotion, the music, the costumes. As I went into training, there was a lot of pressure on me to concentrate on Classical Ballet - but I hated it. It seemed so stiff after Flamenco, and the music was so boring. But I made that choice, and now I'll never leave Ballet. It's where I'm meant to be."
Bosch can do things with his body that would put most of us in traction, and when he's posing for photographs in the ENB rehearsal rooms behind the Albert Hall, its hard to figure out how he can manage to look pretty and relaxed while putting his legs where they were never designed to go. At one point, while holding a pose that looks frankly indecent, he asks "Does this mean I'll never be able to go to Soho again?"
It wasn't just his dance style that changed while he was in Madrid. Up to the age of 16, he'd been dating girls. "I'd had a big relationship with a girl for about a year and a half, and when that was over I realised that I was interested in something else. Nothing happened until I was 17, and it was no big deal. It never has been for me." He's now in a steady relationship with a fellow company member.
Three years ago, while visiting an ex-girlfriend in London, Bosch took the opportunity to audition for the English National Ballet, where he's been working ever since. While taking part in a photo shoot for them, he was spotted by an agent who called a few days later to ask if he'd be interested in auditioning for a film. "I had no idea what it was, but I had the Saturday off so I thought I'd go along. I had nothing to lose. They got me to talk to the camera, to take my t-shirt off and dance a bit, then said, "Thank you very much, we'll be in touch'."
A few weeks later, Bosch was recalled from holiday in Spain to meet director Oliver Stone at Pinewood Studios. That's when he realised he might be onto something big. "They told me it was the story of Alexander the Great, and that I was up for the role of Bagoas. After a seven-hour wait (), I saw Oliver in a tiny room, where he was sitting on a sofa. He just said "Seduce me...', so I danced for him and again it was, 'Thank you very much'."
When he was finally given the role, Bosch was whisked off to Morocco to meet the rest of the cast. "I'd heard of Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie, but Colin Farrell was unknown in Spain at that time, so I had no idea what he was like. The first time I met him, he was sitting in the hotel bar, and he said, 'I'm so happy to meet you! I've heard so much about you!' (обожаю Фаррелла ), which was very strange, as he was the star. After that, we spent a lot of time together, but all of it was work. Our love scene was beautiful, but you know what happened to that. Oh, well... maybe it'll be on the dvd one day.