Daily Mail - Schoolboy Stars Small But Set For Monster Hit (2007)
Daily Mail
23rd November 2007
By Baz Bamigboye
Alex Etel, a 13-year-old British schoolboy, is about to receive a lot more recognition than he bargained for.
Alex plays the bright-eyed ragamuffin Harry Gregson in the BBC1 Sunday night drama Cranford opposite Philip Glenister, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Imogen Stubbs, Francesca Annis, Simon Woods and many others.
Last Sunday viewers caught just a fleeting glimpse of him, but his role grows in this Sunday's second episode and the further two installments. And that's not all.
He's also the main lead in The Waterhorse: Legend Of The Deep, an engrossing tale based on a Dick King Smith tale (he also wrote Babe) about a boy who adopts by a sea creature which starts off as a mini-monster and grows as big as Nessie.
The film, directed with great charm by Jay Russell, opens on 3,000 screens in the U.S. on Christmas Day. It opens here on February 1.
The Water Horse is set in the Highlands during World War II, although all of the scenes involving the creature itself were filmed in New Zealand, where Alex and his co-stars Emily Watson, Ben Chaplin and David Morrissey spent most of their time acting in front of blue screens for special effects shots.
The movie, produced by London-based Ecosse Films, makes a virtue of its old fashioned story-telling style.
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