Faces of the week

Our regular look at some of the faces which have made the news this week. Above are Oliver Stone (main picture), with Jude Law, Andrea Levy, Charlie Dimmock and Cyril Fletcher.

Oliver Stone

As his latest film, Alexander, is panned by the critics and ignored by filmgoers, is director Oliver Stone about to face his own Nemesis?

According to the historian Arrian, Alexander the Great was stubborn, utterly ruthless and convinced of his own divinity. To his critics, of whom there are not a few, Oliver Stone is cut from the same cloth.

His films are accused of being both inaccurate and tendentious. Stone is portrayed as self-obsessed, inconsistent and, horror of horrors, anti-American.

Today, those who have often led the chorus against the director are crowing. Far from conquering the world, Stone's $150m big-screen biopic of Alexander the Great, starring Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie, has failed even to make it out of barracks.

Takings have been disastrous - a mere $41,000 in the US over the Christmas holiday weekend - and the critics have fallen over themselves to put the boot in.

"How could a film go so wrong?" enquired the San Francisco Chronicle; the Financial Times called it "misconceived" and the New York Post says that Alexander is "a travesty and a bore".

Stone's stars: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie and Val Kilmer

Portraying the king as a bisexual has provoked a furore of its own. Conservatives in America's Bible Belt, and some Greeks, wanted the gay references removed, while campaigners for homosexual rights complained that the director had been too timid.

A cowed Stone says: "I still think it's a beautiful movie, but Alexander deserves better than I gave him. There was a clear resistance to his homosexuality."

All in all, Oliver Stone's latest outing is par for the course in what has been a rollercoaster career.

The well-heeled Yale alumnus, who won the Purple Heart after serving as an infantry private in Vietnam, learned film-making at the knee of Martin Scorsese, then teaching at New York University.

He burst upon the scene in 1978, winning an Oscar for his writing on Midnight Express. This was followed up with, among other things, the screenplay for the risible sword 'n' sorcery movie Conan the Barbarian and the distinctly illiberal Scarface.

A Saturday night with Oliver is basically pagan Rome, 26 AD. Robert Downey, Jr.

But 1983 brought a brace of triumphs, a best director Oscar for Platoon, a thoughtful - if hard-hitting - reflection on the Vietnam conflict, and the lesser-known Salvador, which provided cinemagoers with a provocative insight into US involvement in South America.

From that point, whether as writer, producer or director - often as all three - Stone concentrated on revealing what he considered to be the true nature of America's dark underbelly.

His intention was clear: "I'm trying to figure out my own place in the world and I guess I have a very corrupt picture of America."

There was greed (Wall Street), the cost of war (Born on the Fourth of July), conspiracy (JFK), the media and violence (Natural Born Killers) and all of these and more in Nixon.

All of these were big hits, and Stone won his third Oscar for directing Fourth of July. But, boy, did he get up the noses of America's right wing.

Best Buddies: Fidel Castro and Oliver Stone in Cuba

Denounced as a communist, an accusation which his friendship with Fidel Castro did nothing to dispel, Stone was damaged by claims of at least 84 inconsistencies in JFK.

And Oliver Stone's seeming obsession with his work has brought comment even from his friends.

Michael Douglas, whose portrayal of the oleaginous Gordon Gekko came to define the yuppie phenomenon of the 1980s, says: "I think Oliver Stone creates because he has to - to conquer his own personal demons, survive his own madness, grapple with his outrageous nature."

And in private, Stone's tendency to Alexandrian excess has landed him in trouble over drink and drugs. Another friend, Robert Downey, Jr., himself no stranger to the bacchanal, has said: "A Saturday night with Oliver is basically pagan Rome, 26 AD."

One thing is for certain. Even with a huge turkey on his hands, Oliver Stone will almost certainly bounce back.

The man who once quipped: "If I were George Bush, I would shoot myself", still has the anger, the drive and the vision to create fine, relevant, movies.

Surely, even Alexander the Great would be impressed with talent like that.

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Jude Law Christmas played Cupid for Jude Law, whose Christmas Day proposal was accepted by 23-year-old American actress Sienna Miller. She fell for his charms on the set of last year's remake of Alfie, in which Law played the title character. Twice nominated for an Oscar, Law, 32, was recently named "the sexiest man alive" by American magazine People. He was previously married to British fashion designer and actress Sadie Frost. They have three children. Full story

Andrea Levy Andrea Levy's novel, Small Island, having won last year's Orange women's prize for fiction, has now won the Whitbread Novel of the Year award. Levy, born in Britain to Jamaican parents, achieved the unexpected by beating the Booker prize winner, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Small Island, about the sometimes comic experiences of immigrants to Britain after World War Two, is now the favourite to win the overall Whitbread Book of the Year title. Full story

Charlie Dimmock Television's Ground Force gardener, Charlie Dimmock, spent a distressing week, fearing the worst about her mother and stepfather, who are missing after the Asian tsunami disaster. Sue Kennedy and her husband Rob were in the Thai resort of Phuket when the huge waves swept ashore. A family liaison officer has been in contact with 38-year-old Charlie at her home in Romsey, Hampshire.

Cyril Fletcher Famed for his "odd odes", comedian Cyril Fletcher died at the age of 91. He began reciting his unusual poems - recited in exaggerated nasal Cockney tones - as after-dinner entertainment. Fletcher made his first radio broadcast in 1936 and, 60 years later, said he had never had a day out of work. Cyril Fletcher will probably be remembered by most people for his role in the TV show, That's Life, in the 1970s and 80s. Full story

Compiled by BBC News Profiles Unit's Andrew Walker