Call it an ode to what might have been.
事情真是阴差阳错。
As Lady Rose Aldridge née MacClare, the ravishingly feisty Crawley cousin on “Downton Abbey,” Lily James might have appeared the embodiment of a spoiled-rotten stepsister when auditioning for Disney’s “Cinderella.”
莉莉·詹姆斯(Lily James)在《唐顿庄园》(Downton Abbey)中饰演克劳利家的表亲——活泼迷人的罗斯·阿尔德里奇·麦克克莱尔夫人(Lady Rose Aldridge née MacClare)；为迪士尼的《灰姑娘》(Cinderella)试镜时，她本该饰演被宠坏的继女。
And as Daisy Mason, the series’ scullery maid turned assistant cook and budding revolutionary, Sophie McShera might have seemed the ideal candidate for the orphan girl sentenced to cleaning fireplaces and scraping plates until being rescued by Prince Charming. (But not before rescuing him first.) Then Kenneth Branagh, the film’s director, heard Ms. James speak.
《唐顿庄园》里的女帮厨黛西·马森(Daisy Mason)，后来成了大厨助手，还酝酿着革新。该角色由索菲·麦西拉(Sophie McShera)饰演，或许她才是饰演灰姑娘的理想人选——被迫清扫壁炉、刷盘子，最后被白马王子拯救（但她得先拯救王子才行）。但是后来《灰姑娘》的导演肯尼斯·布拉纳(Kenneth Branagh)听到了莉莉·詹姆斯的声音。

“I loved the quality of her voice,” he said in a phone interview from London. “I loved the warmth, tone and range in it. I found it very expressive.” He especially loved that, across the drawn-out process of auditioning and screen testing, “she kept her good humor and she kept her patience and she kept finding a playful quality that in itself seemed to me like a great harbinger of good fortune for the part.”
“我喜欢她的音质，”布拉纳在伦敦接受电话采访时说。“我喜欢她声音里的温暖、音色和起伏，我觉得很有表现力。”经过长时间的试演和试镜，他格外喜欢这一点，“她一直保持良好的幽默感，一直都很耐心；她一直都在寻找一种戏谑的特质，我觉得这是个好兆头。”
That’s when he dangled the Swarovski crystal slipper before Ms. James — and later cast Ms. McShera (who, alas, never got to try the Cinderella role on for size) as Drizella, one of the wicked stepmother’s demon spawn — setting their upstairs-downstairs-at-Downton dynamic on its head.
于是他把施华洛世奇的水晶鞋放在詹姆斯面前，后来又找来麦西拉，饰演邪恶继母的坏女儿德里兹拉（麦西拉并未试演过灰姑娘这个角色），这下《唐顿庄园》里的等级秩序倒过来了。
“It was an easier leap of the imagination for me to play an ugly stepsister than the princess,” Ms. James said, her lilting cadence on full display as she explained her initial reluctance to step into the title role of the film, which opens March 13. “I was actually really looking forward to playing the off-center part, to not having to watch how I look or what I say.
“对于我来说，想像自己饰演丑恶的继女姊妹要比想像自己是公主容易得多，”詹姆斯说，她解释自己为什么一开始不愿意在这部3月13日上映的影片中饰演灰姑娘，声音中充满轻快活泼。“我其实不想演主角，不太想去过分关注自己的样子或是台词。”
“I see it now as the right fit. And in the scenes where I’m tightening Sophie’s corset and cleaning her plate, I think she loved bossing someone around. There was a real sense of gratification that she finally had the upper hand.”
“我现在觉得这个角色安排很合适。有一场戏里，我得帮索菲穿紧身衣，给她洗盘子。我觉得她喜欢支使别人。能占我的上风让她很高兴。”
Ah, sweet revenge.
啊，甜蜜的报复。
“This time I had all the gorgeous dresses, and I was the one who was speaking properly,” Ms. McShera said giddily, her Yorkshire accent thick. And for an actress whose regular job requires her to go cosmetic-free, save for a smear of fish mousse or turnip purée, the three hours it took to apply Drizella’s ginger ringlets and scarlet Cupid’s bow were a kind of movie-set Nirvana.
“这一次，我有各种漂亮衣服，我成了那个说话体面的人，”麦西拉操着很重的约克郡口音笑着说。她在《唐顿庄园》里的角色一般不需要化妆，只要在身上涂点鱼冻或者萝卜酱污渍就够了，然而德里兹拉的红色长卷发和鲜红双唇需要三个小时的化妆，在片场简直要出人命。
“We wore so much makeup,” she said, “that when I washed my face, I nearly didn’t recognize myself in the mirror.”
“我们的妆化得很浓，”她说，“洗脸的时候，我都快认不出镜中的自己了。”
Harnessing the phenomenon that is “Downton Abbey,” which on Sunday wrapped its fifth season on PBS’s “Masterpiece,” might seem like savvy, even cynical casting.
《唐顿庄园》在PBS的“杰作”栏目里播出，到本周日，第五季就将结束。从这部剧中选演员似乎很讨巧，甚至是鸡贼的做法。
“For all of their youth, the great bonus was their experience in ‘Downton’ as performers rather than the fact that they happen to be in a hit show,” Mr. Branagh countered. “These were young people who were coming to me having been in front of the camera a great deal. And I knew that these two girls were on a daily basis exposed to Maggie Smith and Penny Wilton and Elizabeth McGovern and Phyllis Logan, and that they had very strong examples of terrific acting” — experience that helped when performing alongside Cate Blanchett, as Cinderella’s stepmother-tormentor, and Helena Bonham Carter, as the fairy godmother. “They turned out to be very responsive as a result.”
“她们很年轻，但额外的优势是因为她们在《唐顿庄园》中出演角色，而不是因为她们在热门电视剧里亮相，”布拉纳反驳说。“有很多来找我的年轻人都很有表演经验。但我知道这两个姑娘每天都和玛吉·史密斯(Maggie Smith)、潘尼·威尔顿(Penny Wilton)、伊丽莎白·麦戈文(Elizabeth McGovern)和菲利斯·洛根(Phyllis Logan)打交道，这些人都是表演的好榜样。”这样的经历对于她们和凯特·布兰切特（Cate Blanchett，饰演灰姑娘爱折磨人的坏继母）以及海伦娜·伯翰·卡特（Helena Bonham Carter，饰演仙女教母）一起表演很有帮助。“这能让她们做出机敏的反应。”
Taking their cue from the Perrault folk tale and the 1950 animated Disney film, Mr. Branagh and the screenwriter Chris Weitz set out to conjure a contemporary heroine empowered by the conviction of her choices, however antiquated they might seem. (A 21st-century teenager who doesn’t rebel at being banished to an unheated attic, let alone forbidden to attend the prom? So not happening.)
电影故事来源于佩罗(Perrault)民间故事与迪士尼公司1950年的动画，布拉纳与编剧克里斯·韦兹(Chris Weitz)塑造出一个有现代性的女主人公，她因为坚持自己的选择而得到力量，虽然看上去可能有些过时。（一个21世纪的青少年还会因为被罚关进没有供暖的阁楼而愤怒吗，更何况是不被允许参加舞会呢？这太不可能了。）
As for “have courage and be kind,” the mantra that some have suggested reduces Cinderella to an anti-feminist milquetoast, Mr. Branagh likened it to the nonviolent resistance of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
有些人认为“保持勇气，保持善良”这句箴言让灰姑娘显得像个反对女权主义的胆小鬼，布拉纳把这句话和小马丁·路德·金(Martin Luther King Jr.)、纳尔逊·曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)与圣雄甘地(Mahatma Gandhi)的非暴力抵抗相提并论。
“I liked its simplicity,” he said. “It’s a challenging request to do something very simple, which is also very difficult.”
“我喜欢它的简单质朴，”他说。“化繁为简是非常困难的。”
He added: “I’m proud that a sophisticated, intelligent and passionate girl emerges out of a classical framework where her empowerment is not at the price of becoming like a man. I think it celebrates her specific femaleness in a way that encourages people to be who they are, not necessarily in competition with the opposite gender or with an attempt to be what other people appear to wish them to be.”
他补充说：“我感到骄傲的是，从经典作品的框架之中，我们塑造出了一个世故、聪慧而又热情的女孩，她最终得到力量，但没有因此而变得像个男人。我觉得影片赞美了她的女性特质，它鼓励人们做自己，而不是和另一个性别去竞争，或者试图去成为别人希望他们成为的样子。”
Cinderella’s gentle qualities may not be as obviously superhuman as those of some other Disney princesses — say, Elsa’s cryokinetic powers in “Frozen” or the anti-aging qualities of Rapunzel’s hair in “Tangled” — “but I think her inner strength is something anyone can possess,” Ms. James said. “She’s not armed with swords or weapons to be strong. It’s from within, and any child can do that.
灰姑娘温文尔雅的性格似乎不像迪士尼的其他公主们那样，带有清晰的超人色彩——比如《冰雪奇缘》(Frozen)里艾莎召唤冰雪的能力，还有《魔发奇缘》(Tangled)里长发公主令人保持青春的能力——“但我觉得她内心的力量是每个人都能拥有的，”詹姆斯说，“她没有佩戴刀剑和武器，好让自己显得强悍，她的力量来自内心，每个孩子都能做到。”
“And the journey she goes through at the end, where she realizes that the greatest risk is to be who you truly are — that’s something we all want to be. If only I could have that for myself.”
“到最后，她在旅途中发现，最大的冒险就是成为真正的自己——我们都希望做自己。但愿我也能做得到。”
Their days of living in near anonymity, as both Ms. James and Ms. McShera once claimed to, are nearly over as Vogue and InStyle interviews, a licensing agreement with M.A.C. Cosmetics, and a luxury shoe collection are unfurled. BoxOffice.com recently estimated that “Cinderella,” to be introduced on screens by a new animated short based on “Frozen,” Disney’s 2013 blockbuster, will gross $68 million in ticket sales on its opening weekend in North America.
詹姆斯和麦西拉前不久接受了《Vogue》和《InStyle》的访谈，她们默默无闻的日子就要到头了，报道中写到同M.A.C.化妆品公司的合同，以及奢侈的鞋子收藏。《灰姑娘》将同《冰雪奇缘》（迪士尼2013年的轰动之作）的最新动画衍生短片一起上映，BoxOffice.com网站最近估计，上映当周周末，北美票房将达到6800万美元。
Then there are the towering billboards, and the requisite kerfuffle about whether Ms. James’s tiny waist was digitally whittled down even further. (She and Mr. Branagh insisted it was merely the magic of bone structure and corsetry.) “It’s incredible, seeing your face three-stories high,” Ms. McShera said. “That’s when you really get a sense of the enormity of the film.”
还有大幅广告牌，詹姆斯纤细的腰肢是否经数码处理过，届时免不了又会掀起争议（她和布拉纳都说，这只是裙撑骨架和紧身衣带来的奇妙效果）。“看到你的脸有三层楼那么高，真的很惊人，”麦西拉说。“你会觉得这部电影真的不一般。”
Sighing with what might have been delight — or was it trepidation? — Ms. James said: “No one recognizes me — ever — and now this. I see myself soaring above Sunset Boulevard and Times Square, and it’s just the weirdest thing.”
詹姆斯叹了口气，不知是由于快乐抑或不安：“以前根本没人能认出我——现在就变成这样。看到自己的照片挂在日落大道和时报广场，感觉真是超怪的。”