10 Oct 2011 08:48:44
An array of Oscar-winners and A-list stars have signed up to narrate literary classics of their choice for the rapidly growing audiobook market. Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Dustin Hoffman and Colin Firth are among Hollywood's biggest names to set the trend.
Not so long ago, audiobooks were the poor cousins of the publishing world, particularly in the UK, where "talking books" were largely abridged. Jobbing actors were usually recruited as readers. Now, with worldwide demand soaring, the stars want to be heard reading unabridged books.
A dozen A-list names have already been cast as narrators, inspired by the chance to read a favourite book. Seven are Oscar-winners. Winslet, who won the 2009 best actress award for The Reader, has long wanted to film Zola's gripping murder story Thérèse Raquin but, as Hollywood is yet to be convinced, narrating it is the next best thing.
Winslet said: "As a listener, being able to tune out and be taken into another world, an atmosphere, an environment that is being created entirely for you by somebody else's voice, is a wonderful, magical thing."
Kidman, who won an Oscar in 2003 for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, will record Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Firth, fresh from his recent Oscar success with The King's Speech, has chosen Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, "a record of hate far more than of love", as one of the characters observes.
The recordings will be launched next year by Audible, the UK's largest provider of downloadable audiobooks, and a US subsidiary of Amazon. Its founder, Donald Katz, told the Observer: "Colin Firth could read me the back of a Marmite jar and I would listen… I'd pay Dustin Hoffman to read from a cereal box."
Katz believes big-name narrators could inspire new interest in classic literature. "Great actors add nuances and make these performances their own," he said. Winslet's recording has, he said, turned a dark, erotic tale into a compelling experience.
Katz is intrigued by Hoffman's choice of book, Jerzy Kosinski's Being There, the story of a simple gardener called Chance whose utterances are mistaken for deep political metaphors. It was turned into a film starring Peter Sellers in 1979. Katz said he was particularly thrilled by the choice because it is "one of those under-appreciated novels".
In 1980, Hoffman won the best actor Oscar for Kramer vs Kramer when Sellers had been expected to win for his performance as Chance. Katz says Sellers "was not happy" and wonders at the reason for Hoffman's choice of novel.
Other readers include Kim Basinger (narrating The Awakening, Kate Chopin's 1899 novel set in New Orleans) and Samuel L Jackson (Chester Himes's 1965 book, A Rage in Harlem). Recordings take only a few days, fitting nicely into breaks between actors' other projects.
Audible has more than 50,000 titles, with sales growing by more than 40% a year, and its recording studios are working day and night to meet the demand for more titles. Katz recalled Annette Bening at a reception jokingly complaining : "You're hiring all my friends and you haven't hired me." Bening is now recording Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. "She told me it's going to be a labour of love," Katz said.
