Thanks to Elizabeth and lady Isabella for making these caps -please e-mail Me (Hannah) before taking these for any sort of a website (to e-mail me see bottom frame)

Pictures 7-10 are from the Official Vanity Fair website
And pictures 11 & 12 are taken from Getty Images when Vanity Fair was shown at the London Film Festival 2004. Jonny is with his Girlfriend Renna Hammer.

Extras from the DVD

When Reese Witherspoon started filming Vanity Fair - Thackeray's sprawling comic masterpiece about the charming, but ruthless social climber Becky Sharp-she was four months pregnant with her second child to actor Ryan Phillippe.

However, as her character doesn't have a baby until roughly halfway through the 800-page novel, her condition required the production team to employ a number of clever tricks. Costumes were designed to try to hide her bump and often during filming little boys stood in front of the 28-year-old star. 'In the end I tried to take advantage of it,' saying Indian-born director Mira Nair, whose pervious films include Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala. 'I altered the timing of the storyline a little so I could have a pregnant Becky saying goodbye to her husband, Rawdon Crawley [played by James Purfoy], before the battle of Waterloo. Nothing is more poignant than a man leaving his lover for war when she is pregnant

'This was the last day of filming and I said to Reese, "your gift to me must be this scene in which Rawdon kisses you're stomach". By this point James and Reese had developed a wonderful level of comfort with one another and the scene was beautiful.'

A year before Nair became involved with the project, Witherspoon had expressed an interest in working with her, so when Nair came to direct Vanity Fair, she thought that the Legally Blonde star would make her ideal Becky.

'Thackeray describes her as a minx', say's Nair. 'Seeing Reese's intelligence and knowing her wit, I immediately saw her as Becky.

'Becky makes lots of mistakes, but she lives life fully, and she is a survivor. I want young girls to go and see this film, and not see Vanity Fair as a museum piece.'

Nair had clear ideas about which actors she wanted in the other roles. She cast Romola Garai as Becky's best friend Amelia Sedley and JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS AS GEORGE OSBORNE (Amelia's cad of a husband) on the strengths of their previous work and without meeting them. She told Jim Broadbent he could take any role he wanted, 'even Becky Sharp', she jokes. She also secured the best of the British talent such as Purefoy, Bob Hoskins, Geraldine McEwan, Eileen Atkins, Natasha Little and Douglas Hodge, and irish actor Gabriel Byrne. But there was one member of the team the studio had problems with. 'I really had to fight for Rhys Ifans [as Dobbin ]', she says. '[the studio] couldn't see it because of his past roles. But I know him as an actor, not just a comedy actor. I wrote a series of very strong eloquent letters and in the end I secured him.'

Shooting started in the spring of 2003 at various locations around Southern England. Bath's Holburne Museum doubled as the marquess of Steyne's mansion, Beauford square became the Osborne residence and Great Pulteney Street, also in Bath, stood in for London's Curzon Street.

'Great Pulteney Street was the most challenging shoot, as planning it was like a military operation,' says producer Janette Day. 'It took us nine months to get permission to close the A36 through Bath for 48 hours and then when the day came, Reese fell ill with the flu. 'There was no way we could reorganise it- the road had been closed, the street covered in sheeting and gravel, Windows and doors had been painted and period lamps had been installed. 'Reese had lost her voice, but we couldn't give her medicine as she was pregnant. She agreed to carry on, so we used a lot of make-up - she did a voice over at a later stage'

Nair's strength is the richness of her aesthetic vision. She describes the novel as a 'great banquet', and brings a painterly quality to the film. Each shot is a riot of colour and sensuality. There are wonderful set pieces -an outrageously decadent party at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens with sitar players, peacocks and fire throwers; a lavish ball in which Becky appears in a seductive red gown; and an erotic slave dance performed by Becky at the house of her wealthy but sinister patron, the marquess of Steyne (Byrne) in front of the king.

'My philosophy is to try and maximise everything,' says Nair, 'I always cut my cloth to size. The budget for this film was $23 millions (£12.5 million), but the challenge is to make you believe that I had all the cloth in the world. I wanted to take the story out of the drawing room, away from being claustrophobic period drama, and right into the streets. I always say my movies should smell.'

Nair also invests the film with an authentic Indian feel -bright colours, rich fabrics, exotic jewellery, even curries. If purists object to this, the director points out Thackeray was born in Calcutta and that his novel overflows with Indian details. 'I didn't invent any of it,' says Nair, 'I just maxed it. Everything in society then was mercantile, the money was coming in from other colonies. And, after all, if anyone who understands class better than the British, it is probably the Indians.'

'Vanity Fair' opens Nationwide on January 14 2004.

PLEASE DO NOT TAKE WITHOUT ASKING FIRST AS IT TOOK AGES TO TYPE UP AND (WILL) SCAN THE PICTURES