<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  &amp;quot;When you really want to do something, you should go ahead and do it,&amp;quot; Tom Ford says. &amp;quot;I feel fear, but I never let that stop me.&amp;quot; Ford, 48, who breathed bold new life into Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent before starting his own award-winning label, isn&amp;#039;t talking about fashion but about making a feature film without prior experience. A Single Man, a beautiful heartbreaker inspired by the Christopher Isherwood novel, is set in California in 1962, when simply to be gay was to live at risk. Shot with an austere elegance reflecting Ford&amp;#039;s style and the sensibility of his main character, A Single Man has won awards and sparked Oscar buzz for Colin Firth&amp;#039;s performance as George Falconer, an English lit professor secretly suffering the death of his lover (Matthew Goode).  Firth gets fine support from Julianne Moore as Falconer&amp;#039;s one-time flame, but the movie&amp;#039;s revelation is 20-year-old Brit Nicholas Hoult, incandescent as an audacious American student who enters Falconer&amp;#039;s life as his carefully concealed anguish turns to despair. Hoult, who played Hugh Grant&amp;#039;s 12-year-old pal in About a Boy (2002), became a heartthrob in the UK as the alpha male on Skins, the acclaimed teens-gone-wild television series. He capped that triumph last year with his West End debut in the comedyNew Boy. A Single Man will surely extend his reach, but it almost didn&amp;#039;t happen. Ford had already cast Jamie Bell when he saw Hoult&amp;#039;s audition tape. &amp;quot;He was so perfect, I felt a little sick,&amp;quot; Ford says. But Bell bailed before shooting started, and Hoult jumped in. &amp;quot;When I next saw Jamie,&amp;quot; he says, chuckling, &amp;quot;I thanked him for dropping out.&amp;quot; The result? The film&amp;#039;s brilliant endgame, as Firth and Hoult play off each other, conjuring the kind of movie magic the most experienced director can only hope for.  CLICK HERE TO READ KAREN DURBIN&amp;#039;S INTERVIEW WITH TOM FORD. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a10799/tom-fords-double-coup-391840/>