British GQ April 2016

Red alert: Amy Adams photographed for British GQ at Milk Studios, Los Angeles, by Norman Jean Roy AMY ADAMS UNLEASHED HER INNER SEX SYMBOL IT WAS A REVELATION Some films you just know you’re going to want to see again and again and again. In the case of American Hustle, I knew I wanted to see it more than once having just seen the poster. It wasn’t only the cast – although a screen full of the likes of Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner and Louis CK sets quite a high bar already – and it wasn’t simply the fact that it was set in the Seventies, a decade that, sartorially at least, creeps closer to redemption with each passing month. And it wasn’t just the fact…

Ellen VON UNWERTH Ellen von Unwerth might be best known for her photographs of women, but for our feature on the second outing of Miles Kane and Alex Turner’s band The Last Shadow Puppets, she captured a more masculine sensibility. “I love British music, so working with the band was so exciting,” she says. “We clicked straightaway, shooting all over London’s 100 Club while listening to their last album. AA GILL More people are killed by lightning in Colorado than by cars, yet that didn’t stop Contributing Editor AA Gill from taking to the exposed tees of the state’s Fairway Pines golf course with two highly competitive players. Gill did not share the desire to win but discovered the joy of cheating. “I forgive myself for it with an easy largesse,” he writes…

Am I the only one who thinks Spitalfields in London’s East End is overrated? But I find myself there for a somewhat random, somewhat work-orientated party. So I’m already annoyed. The girl on the door cannot find my name. I repeat it numbly, before scanning the list myself. The bar is bedlam. I’m too sober, too cold. I make a beeline for a friend and ex-work colleague of my partner’s, already lifted by the thought of batting around some banter. He blanks me. Blanking – the ugly stepsister of looking over your shoulder – always has context, like my whinge. We’ve all experienced the chill, but we react paradoxically. Psychotherapist Noel Bell gives this example. “One person says, ‘Why did the receptionist ignore me?’ Another: ‘What receptionist?’ Ten people blank you…

92% INCREASE IN GOOGLE SEARCHES Increase in the number of Brits searching for “grime music” on Google over the past 12 months. Do call it a comeback... ALONG with Dizzee Rascal and Wiley, Kano was one of grime’s pioneers. Now, after three years on Channel 4’s Top Boy, the east Londoner is returning to music. “This is my most autobiographical album,” says the 30-year-old of Made In The Manor, which features Damon Albarn. “The key to acting is vulnerability and maybe that’s influenced the record.” So ten years ago, did he imagine that grime would still be in such rude health today? “At the start we never expected anything to come of it – let alone money: we’d pay to go on pirate radio.” Now, Kanye and Drake pay tribute to the scene.…

THE breadth of writerdirector-producer Judd Apatow’s work (Anchorman, Trainwreck, Girls) suggests he might just be the most connected man in comedy. His new book, Sick In The Head, in which he interviews everyone from Mel Brooks to Chris Rock, proves it. It’s funny (natch), gossipy, pageturningly readable and packed with hard-won observations about showbusiness and life. We asked him to elaborate on six of them... 1 Seinfeld is still the king “I used to go see him in New York and his act was perfect; he would annihilate the place,” says Apatow. “He’s still the same. He went on Letterman recently and did this perfect routine about how terrorists seem to love monkey bars. Every terrorist compound, always the monkey bars.” 2 Don’t be scared of it going badly “Jon Stewart talks about how…

Almost a year on from his election defeat, how is Ed Miliband finding life on the backbenches? My mole reports that he tells friends, “Well, I’m not as busy as if I had been prime minister.” For all its foibles, Labour never was bad at spin. John McDonnell’s description of Labour moderates as “hard right” infuriated Ian Austin MP, who faced the shadow chancellor in the Commons and asked, “I’m hard right am I, John?” Note to McDonnell: Austin’s father escaped a Nazi concentration camp. David Cameron has no servant more loyal than his parliamentary private secretary, Gavin Williamson, whose enthusiasm for carrying the PM’s bags has earned him an unkind nickname from colleagues: “Uriah Heep”, after Dickens’ obsequious character. Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler have fallen out over who gets…