Sunday, July 31, 2011

First Pics of Jude Law preparing for 'Anna Christie' play at Donmar Warehouse

finally understood that Jude Law kept the beard to perform the play...ouuf thats a good news, so now he have to wait for October to see him him without

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Amazing Interview with Jude Law, Guardian Source

"Jude Law: 'I was a great champion of the human spirit. I lost that for a time'

Jude Law has been one of Britain's foremost actors. But with fame came intense press scrutiny of his private life. Now, at 38, he says he is looking forward to his 'most productive decade' – starting with a West End play

Jude Law: ‘I am in some sort of bracket with people who have won reality shows and chefs and socialites, and it’s just not something I see myself as’. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

Jude Law can't speak about phone hacking. I'm told this by his publicist before the interview. And when I bring it up during our chat – it's the day after the Murdochs and Rebekah Brooks have given testimonies to the Commons committee – Law smiles and makes a zipping action with his finger across his lips. "I just can't because I'm in legal proceedings and it's in various stages with various people, and part of that is classified, and they've promised to keep it quiet if I keep it quiet, so I've got to be really careful. But believe me, there's an awful lot I want to say, though. An awful lot."

But then he can't not speak about it either, because he's right at the very heart of it all. The peak phone-hacking years coincided with the peak Jude Law tabloid-mania years and he has not one case pending against News International but three. It's a very big deal, not just to him – his relationship with the tabloid press, and particularly News International, has both defined and circumscribed his life for much of the past decade – but a big deal, too, in terms of what will happen to Rupert Murdoch's media empire. His cases are the very crux of the story.

We're in an empty meeting room at the Jerwood Space in south London, where Law is in the thick of rehearsals for his new play, an Eugene O'Neill revival, Anna Christie. It starts at the Donmar Warehouse this week, and his head is full of it: it's a gritty love story set in 1920 between a prostitute and a ship's stoker. "I've got really sucked into the world of the play," he says. "So it's very much get up, go to rehearse, go home, learn lines, go to bed." And watch the news. He's right in the middle of one drama – he plays the ship's stoker, Mat Burke – but, of course, he can't help but be compelled by the other thrilling spectacle playing itself out on the television news. "I mean, of course I'm watching it," he says. "Who isn't?"

It's just so dramatic, I say, isn't it?

"It's a movie. It's a scene from a movie."

And you've already got your role sorted, I say, meaning that, of course, if it ever was a film, he could simply play himself. But he doesn't catch my drift.

"James, you mean?" And then realises his mistake. "Oh! You mean myself? Oh dear. I can't believe I said that." But, of course, he'd be brilliant as James Murdoch. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before. He's specialised in characters who have an edge, a slightly slippery elusiveness, and there are obvious overtones of what is still, perhaps, his most famous role – the role that saw him burst into public consciousness in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley in 1999: the heir to a shipping fortune, Dickie Greenleaf. There really is more than a touch of Dickie Greenleaf to James Murdoch, isn't there, I say.

"Oh dear," he says. "I've got to be really careful what I say here."

He's obviously itching to speak about it. Phone hacking, privacy, press intrusion – these are matters that he has thought long and hard about, but because he can't go into detail, he ends up delivering slightly gnomic one-liners. "The thing is," he says, "it involves us all." What do you mean? "It involves us all. All of us. That's the closest I can come to talking about it. We're all involved. We're all complicit. On some level, if you think about what has happened and what will come out in the end. I think it's easy to think that things are mending if we think, 'Oh things are over now.' Or: 'It's their fault.' But we're all complicit."

Do you think it's just the beginning, I say. "I hope it's just the beginning." And he makes the zipping action across his lips again. "I don't want to quote myself so I'm going to quote someone else. There was an interesting Thought for the Day on Radio 4 yesterday. I came in halfway through so I don't know who it was, but he was talking about Murdoch being sorry. No, not being sorry, he was saying that he was asking for atonement. He was asking for forgiveness. And the guy said, he hasn't been judged yet. He hasn't any right to ask for that yet because we still have to judge him. And judgment is what this whole thing is about. They judge people. Those papers have judged people. I have been judged. They have yet to all be judged, and I hope they are ready for it."

He's referring, of course, to the time when, for a while, he was one half of the most glamorous couple on earth, the Jude Law-Sienna Miller coupling, a gift to tabloid editors and celebrity magazines everywhere. He was the Oscar-nominated, chisel-jawed actor (he was shortlisted for his part in The Talented Mr Ripley and Minghella's next film, Cold Mountain), and Miller, whose face launched a million boho skirts, was his golden-haired consort. They seemed to embody beauty and talent and a certain slightly louche London-LA lifestyle at the heart of the Primrose Hill-Hollywood Hills nexus, right up until the News of the World printed a story which detailed how Law had had an affair with his children's nanny and all tabloid hell broke loose. Miller left. Law made a public apology. Soap opera ensued. And then just as that was dying down, in 2009, another story in the News of the World detailed he'd had a fling with an American model, Samantha Burke, who was subsequently carrying his child.

They're obviously not incidents that Law is particularly proud of, but they're also not incidents which have got anything to do with his day job – acting – and what the phone-hacking case seems to have done, I say, is to throw open the whole concept of privacy. Of precisely who is entitled to a private life and what that means. "Well, again I use this word judgment. It's someone thinking that they have the right to have a moral judgment when a) there is no recourse. I'm not going to be able to morally judge them back and say, 'Well, let me look at your life.' And b) is that healthy? For everyone reading that… what about the person reading that who's done a similar thing. You know it's part of life. Don't make moral judgments, just give me some information. Give me some facts. Get off my page."

Jude Law shot at the Jerwood Space in London. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

The new play, Anna Christie, is part of the final season of the Donmar's artistic director, Michael Grandage, who in 2009 directed Law in Hamlet, a role that saw him feted by the critics and nominated for an Olivier award. He started out in the theatre and was a successful stage actor long before he was an international film star: he was nominated for his first Olivier (best newcomer) for his first West End play, Les Parents Terribles.
I wonder if he's nostalgic for that period of his life: when he had success without this all-encompassing fame. "I don't really look back, if I'm honest. I've always been someone who's really tried to live in the here and now. My memory isn't very good so maybe that's why, but it just seems like I've been living this life, my current chapter, for a really long time and I don't really remember what it was like before. It's just been sort of ingrained in me. What I deal with day to day."
He has a whole slew of new films coming out later in the year, but he was also determined to go back to the theatre.
"I was still very excited by my experience of playing Hamlet and was keen to keep the relationship with the theatre up. I'd really dropped the baton and had a gap of about seven years and I didn't want that to happen again."
So he's back and while Hamlet was a great triumph, it was overshadowed in some ways by the Samantha Burke episode ("Jude knows he's been a Bard boy" was one of the headlines), and this time around, it's inevitable that phone hacking will also cast a certain light. But then the play, he says, and his character in particular, is about youth and experience, and loss of innocence, and the gaining of knowledge, themes which are close to his heart too, and which have preoccupied him for much of the last few years.
His 30s (he's 38 now) have been, at best, a mixed time. "I think everyone goes through chapters in their life and there was a time when I wasn't feeling terribly positive about what I was contributing to film, or wasn't feeling as if I was going in the direction I wanted and I re-evaluated what I was doing. I've never been a fan of just doing. I like to do things for a reason."
As a young man, he was a self-described idealist. "I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general."
What, I say? Everybody? The entire human race?
"Well, yeah. I just felt a little bit down on what people seemed to be interested in. And down on what the general consensus of what the interesting things were. It was just so far away from what I found interesting and what I was interested in and what I found fascinating about people. It just felt like this slurry pit."
And at the heart of the slurry pit was the tabloid press. It's hard to overstate how profoundly his experience of the press seems to have affected his life. And how profoundly, potentially, his life could now influence the press. Because the three cases he is bringing against News International are some of the most crucial, and possibly damaging, of them all. The first accuses the News of the World of tapping his and his assistant's phone in New York in 2003: the first case to be brought that is alleged to have happened on US soil and which opens the way for News International to be prosecuted in the US, potentially jeopardising Murdoch's entire American news operation. Another is against the Sunfor allegedly hacking into his phone in 2005 and 2006 – when Rebekah Brooks was editor – and which suggests the problem went much wider than just the News of the World. And the third is against the News of the World which has been selected to be a test case in a civil litigation action brought by 30 public figures. His case was selected to determine how far up the chain of command the decision went: Law's QC alleges it was a "very senior News of the World executive" who authorised Law's phone to be hacked.
But it goes even deeper than that. When looking through old cuttings, I find an interview that Jude Law did with the Observer in 2003 before any of this came to light, in which he talked about two instances in which he called the police to the house he was then sharing with his wife, Sadie Frost, and their children, and which subsequently ended up in the newspapers. And another instance in which his decree nisi was sent directly from the high court to a British tabloid "before it was sent to me". It was, he claimed, "the high court and then the police selling stories, so how are you going to live in the country and feel safe?"
I read back his quotes to him and he nods. "That's right, yeah. That's where I've been. That's where a lot of people in this country have been living for years."
You really felt like the establishment wasn't working? That it was corrupt?
"Yes. Truly. That's certainly how I felt. I was aware back then that certain avenues, even the most official ones, would ultimately lead to media exposure so you were left with a situation where you don't know quite where to go. I've been in scenarios, several times, often involved in being chased, often involved being stalked, having my privacy infringed upon, and not been able to go to the police because having done it in the past I knew that those stories would then end up being leaked.
"Having said that, I've also been treated really well by the police where they've been really respectful and really helpful, so it's clearly individuals."
But it's a fundamental pillar of democracy, I say, to have a police force that you can trust…
"Apparently, yes. It's funny, isn't it? It does come down to fundamentals. I still believe in the democracy of our parliament. Even though none of it has clearly been working. But I still believe in it, I have to. I also, for the first time for a long time, wouldn't want to live anywhere else, even though it seems like the pillars of our institutions are crumbling. I went through a long period of feeling really uncomfortable in this country, in this town in particular, just feeling really harassed and chased, and really hating it.
"And I couldn't move because my children are growing up here, and their mum lives here, and we've got a really good setup where we have a very healthy 50-50 custody arrangement and we live close by, so moving abroad was just impossible. But I came back in 2009 from New York – I'd been living there for three months with the kids – and I completely fell in love with London again."
What he's done, he says, is to "work out a way around the system". There's been a process of renegotiation, of finding a way of being in the city with his children – Rafferty, 14, Iris, 10, and Rudy, eight (he's also supporting Sophia, 22 months, his daughter born to Samantha Burke in the US). "I've created a haven that works for me and my family that hasn't necessarily involved the law. That's just my way of doing things. Having said that, it's not like I've been a prisoner in my home. I don't want some sort of sob story. I still enjoy a very normal life with my kids. We use trains and buses and that's often the best way. If you build up some sort of psychological bubble around you, I think you're asking for trouble."
In some ways, it sounds as if Law has got his midlife crisis out of the way early. But then he's done everything early. Growing up in Blackheath, south-east London, with his teacher parents and an older sister, he joined his first theatre at 12 – the National Youth Music Theatre – left school at 17 to film his first television series, Families, and had his first child by the age of 23.
"People often say that to me [that he did things early]. Especially about being a father, but it was just the way I did it. It never felt like an issue at the time… But I really feel that the years between 40 and 50 are going to be the 10 most productive years of my life. It's just a great age to be an actor. It's a bit of a minefield being 20 because you've got all these aspirations and ideals. Well, I had. I had all these aspirations and artistic ideas that I wanted to fulfil. And then you get cynical. And for me, my 30s have been about re-evaluating what I'm doing. And my 40s and 50s, I think, will be a really interesting time. I want to get back into production, which I've done a bit of, and I've always been interested in directing and my kids are all at an age where I don't have to be tied to London necessarily."
He wasn't even sure, for a time, if he wanted to carry on being an actor. "But I'm a father and I have to provide and that's my job." He was named after Jude the Obscure ("my mum just liked the book") and what he wanted more than anything was to be recognised by the world "but I don't know if I do any more. I did and I think any performer who claims not to have, at some point in their career, is probably telling a fib. But there's part of you, or at least part of me, where you think, 'Oh God. What will people make of this?' But it doesn't have a bearing on why you're doing it. It certainly didn't when I was doing Hamlet.
"It was the doing it which was the achievement. It was a very inner experience."
As a younger man, Law struggled against being defined by his looks. At 38, even heavily muffled by the beard he's been growing for Anna Christie, he's still an undeniably handsome man. But there's a wider range of roles available to him now: he had the looks of a romantic lead, but always hankered after the character roles. "I just think that I felt a bit disappointed that that's what people wanted me to be, whereas I felt that I had lots of things to offer so I wanted to choose roles that went against it."
Growing older has possibly come as something of a relief. His new films due out later this year include Anna Karenina, with a new script by Tom Stoppard, in which he plays not dashing Vronsky, but cuckolded Karenin opposite Keira Knightley. He is also reunited with two of the cast of The Talented Mr Ripley – Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow – in a hotly anticipated Steven Soderbergh thriller about a killer virus, Contagion.
And his role in Anna Christie has made him think about ageing too. "I guess part of it is simply wising up. Growing up. There's an interesting scene in the play where my character criticises his father, Chris, because he blames the sea for making his life a misery, whereas Mat loves the sea, the sea is everything. You rove the earth, he says, and you don't give a damn for landlubbers, and yet what you're actually hearing is the innocence of youth. And what's happened to Chris is that life has happened to him. He's lost his wife, he's lost his brothers, he's lost his father… life has an effect on us all. It's why we don't look younger as we get older."
In Law's case, getting older, has been accompanied by a rather enforced getting of wisdom. It's been a long, hard, public process, although I'd read one interview in which he'd described the washing of his dirty laundry in public as "liberating" in some ways. "Well, what else are you going to do? I mean, it's either going to force you into a hole and you're going to be a hermit and you're going to be in some sort of state of shame. Or you are going to go, oh well, all right, then. So what? Well, sorry. Am I saying sorry? I don't know. It also makes you look at things on a broader level. Don't tell me there isn't anyone who has done things they regret, or done things they shouldn't have. Or done things that are silly. Or said silly things. That's life, right? That's what's wonderful about life. We all do this stuff we shouldn't do. And then we say, I won't do that again. I mean, so be it."
The other effect of it has been that he's wary not just of the press, and interviews, but of talking about anything; his life, his work. "I just want to be seen doing my work and I'm just a bit tired of being talked about for what I'm wearing, or what I'm not wearing, or what my hairline is doing, or who I've been seen with. Any of that. Jesus. I don't want any of this. I don't even want to talk about my acting, because I think the acting should just talk for itself." He even doesn't really want to talk about the causes he supports.
I've met Law before, on two occasions, when he's come out to support the work of the Belarus Free Theatre and its artistic director, our mutual friend, the dynamic Natalia Kaliada. On both occasions, he was notably unstarry, simply turning up when asked and doing his best to be supportive in a commendably low-key way. He just doesn't seem to play the A-list celeb, but then he "hates the word celebrity… which means that I am in some sort of messy, mushy bracket with people who have won reality shows and chefs and socialites, and it's just not something I see myself as. I don't invite people into my home and I've never courted the press unless I'm talking to them about some work I'm doing. And I don't do that very much. I used to talk to the press about things like this and I even find that pretty hard now, because there's just been so much cynicism. Why are you banging your drum about this? Or why are you going on about that?"
His other big cause is Peace One Day, an organisation which is attempting to make 21 September recognised as a day of peace throughout the world. In many ways it's an outlandishly ambitious idea, dreamed up by an Englishman called Jeremy Gilley. Law agreed to make a video appeal for Gilley back in 2007 and ended up travelling out to Afghanistan with him to try and make the ceasefire actually happen. What's interesting to me about this is that for all Law's world-weariness, his talk of the "slurry pit" and the self-described "cynicism" that has marked his 30s, this is not the action of a cynic. Two weeks ago, at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, I heard Gilley talk about how he came to set up Peace One Day – a preposterous tale of how he'd had this idea "because basically I was really worried about humanity" and had tried to organise the whole thing from a bedroom in his mum's house. And how for a decade he struggled to get anyone to pay any attention to it at all, until, that is, he got Law involved.
Gilley is an idealist. A dreamer through and through. And to be sucked into his world, I say, it seems quite obvious to me, that you'd have to be something of a dreamer too. And in some ways, it seems as if the trip marked Law's return to himself. "It's interesting. Because I've never really put those pieces together like that," he says. "But yes." And he's rightly proud of the trip: in 2007, Peace One Day managed to broker a one-day ceasefire between the Taliban and UN forces and to arrange for 1.4 million children to be inoculated against polio on that day. A similar result was achieved in 2009 too.
But then he's wary again. "I have to be careful. I don't want to be too highfalutin. It's also been that working with people in my field has reignited the possibilities of what you can do in acting. I've just had this fantastic experience in Cannes, judging these incredible films from around the world. They were just great pieces of art and it really made me believe in the medium all over again."
If Afghanistan seems to have been one turning point in his life, the phone-hacking cases will almost certainly be another. "I think people in the public eye are often seen as cosseted and spoiled. This idea of what have you got to complain about? But when you come down to it, it's basic civil rights and basic demands of privacy. The argument that 'We write about you so we make you money' is just not true. And what blew this all open was the public outcry about the appalling abuse of people in heightened places of anguish. And yet in a way, people's privacy being invaded, whoever they are, is always the same issue. And if you turn it around and say, 'Well, would you like that done to you?', you really wouldn't. Because the bottom line is that it's your life being invaded, being used to make stories, not to report stories, but to make stories."
So, does it constitute a revolution, I ask him, as some people have suggested? "We'll have to wait and see, won't we? You never know when you're in the middle of something. You can only tell later." And the same probably applies to him too. It's yet to be seen what the net effect of this will be on his life. But he could be right – his 40s may well be his best years yet."

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Saturday, July 30, 2011

Jude Law look over the years

Jude Law with Sadie at the premiere 1994 of 'Indiscretions' in NYC

Jude with Sadie at 'Tony Awards' 2005

Jude with Sadie at the premiere of 'Wilde' 1997

The wisdom of crocodiles 1998

Jude with his Sadie Frost at the premiere of 'The talented Mr Riplay' 1999

With Sadie Frost March 2000 Jude was nominated for the best supporting actor for 'The talented Mr Riplay'

With Sadie attending the premiere of A.I 2001

With his son Rudy at Primrose Hill for Shopping 2002

With Sienna Miller, Alfie 2003

Skate style 2004

With his ex girlfriend Sienna Miller 2004

With his children London 2005

Wake up from the bed 2005 but still amazing

With his daughter 2006

SLEUTH premiere 2007

At a backstage of theater 2009

Modern British style 2010

Cool Style at Cannes 2011

James Bond Style at amfAR 2011

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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Jude Law upcoming move 360 is officially in the list of the Toronto International Film Festival

Jude looks old with the grey hair..I'm sure they did some makeup (wrinkles) to make him look that way!

The Toronto International Film Festival just announced their 2011 line-up this AM, a deluge of cinematic riches and thanks to their website, we have an overabundance of first look riches too. So here’s your first look at Jude Law and Rachel Weisz in “360,” the new film byFernando Meirelles, known for “City of God” and “The Constant Gardener.”

The cast also includes Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Jarnel Debouze, Karl Markovic, Maria Flor, Juliano Cazarr and it was penned by Peter Morgan (”The Queen”).

The only TIFF info listed so far is the brief synopsis in the press release line-up.

Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s classic “La Ronde,” in 360, director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Peter Morgan combine a modern and dynamic roundelay of original stories into one, linking characters: from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century. Starting in Vienna, the film beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative. Stars Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz and Ben Foster.

The other slice of info is that, while called a relationship drama originally, the TIFF site describes it as a “dramatic thriller fueled by the notion of how sexual relationships can transgress social boundaries.”

No word on a release date yet as there is no distributor yet. That will likely land during TIFF ‘11. More info when we have it.

Source: Indiewire

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Monday, July 25, 2011

Jude Law To Play Dracula In "The Last Voyage of Demeter"?

some rumors are saying that maybe Jude Law will play Dracula in 'The Last Voyage of Demeter', ohhhhh yes pleaaaase! in fact Jude Law played already a sort of vampire or Dracula, not clearly specified in the movie 'The wisdom of crocodiles' , he was soooo brilliant, excellent, incredibly sexy and hot, very irresistible, God knows how much I love him in that story, it's weird how Jude can switch quickly from the angel face to the demon one!
And please you don't have to compare him to Robert Pattinson in Twilight because there is no relation between them, as I always said: Rob is a kitty, Jude is a lion..grrr!
Here is some pics and trailer of Immortality
Look at this http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1190527257
and this!

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Jude Law next films and apparitions 2011 part 3 Sherlock Holmes A Game of shadows

Hello everyone (in fact every time i say that I remember the movie 'Final Cut', real fans will understand me!), It's been a long time since I wrote an article, so I'm decided today to continue in the saga of Articles 'next films and apparitions' which I already began with the play 'Anna christie' and the movie 'contagion'. well, this time, even I'm sure you that fans knows already everything about his next movie Sherlock Holmes 2 I will do my best to bring some new things and my private analyzes related to the most waited movie of Jude Law.

Sherlock Holmes 2 A Game of Shadows

Definition

By 'Guy Ritchie' like the first part, The story is about the new enemy of Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty who is preparing a villain plan, to be honest I don't know the story, but people who are big fans of Sherlock in the past, they will maybe recognize the story, The professor is in fact as smart as the detective and intellectually equal to him.

Date of release:

16 December 2011

Actors:

- Jude Law: Dr Watson (The sexy and hottest Dr in the world!, the mustache suits him..anyway he is awesome whatever the style he got)

- The Robert Downey Jr: Sherlock Holmes

- Jarred Haris : The villain Professor Moriarty

- Noomi Rapace: Fortune teller Sim

Analyzes:

from the fist pictures and videos released, we understand that Dr Watson will get finally married to his fiancee, that made Jude Law in the first scene of marriage in his career, hahah :) I'm thinking Jude Law never accepted scenarios of movies where he is getting married at the end..happy ends is not his taste..

let's analyze..he preferred ends where he is dying (final cut, repo man, cold mountain, Gattaca, Midnight in the garden of good and evil, the talented Mr riplay, Road to Perdition, Sleuth, The wisdom of crocodiles..) or where he is such an asshole (Breaking and Entering, Closer, Alfie, I heart Huckabees, Road to Perdition (where he is also dying and in that movie he was the devil himself))

There are only one movie of Love 'The holiday' and we adore it, it's like the bonus! of course there are other old movies when he was young like 'A song from another room' or 'I love you, I love you not' with claire danes. but the scenarios are too bad, you can watch these films only to stare at the incredible beauty of our handsome Jude.

Videos:

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Friday, July 22, 2011

Hilarious video of Jude Law in a deleted scene from the movie 'I heart Huckabees'

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FBI to contact Jude Law over phone hack claim "Article from BB news"

Ow Jude, you will never stop entertain us, you are the best! you will be the first actor dealing with the FBI! OMG!
Here is the article from BBC this morning!

The FBI plans to contact the actor Jude Law following claims that his mobile phone was hacked during a visit to the US, officials have told the BBC.

It is alleged that a 2003 story by the News of the World newspaper was based on information from Law's voicemail.

If the accusation were true, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation could face charges in the US.

The FBI is already investigating claims the Sunday tabloid tried to hack the phones of victims of the 9/11 attacks.

It was alleged in a lawsuit filed by Law last week that his phone and that of his personal assistant, Ben Jackson, had been hacked by the News of the World while the pair were at New York's John F Kennedy Airport.

Detailed account

An article in the News of the World published on published on 7 September 2003 gave a detailed account of the actor's communications with his assistant.

Law's phone would have been using an American mobile network if used in the US, which could open the door to charges under US federal law, says the BBC's Steve Kingstone in New York.

The 38-year-old actor's British publicist declined to comment on the matter.

Law has also taken legal action against the Sun newspaper, a stablemate of the News of the World. He claims the Sun hacked his voicemail for four articles published in 2005 and 2006.

News International, the UK newspaper arm of News Corporation, said last week those claims would be "defended vigorously".

"We believe this is a deeply cynical and deliberately mischievous attempt to draw the Sun into the phone-hacking issue," News International said in a statement.

"The allegations have been carefully investigated by our lawyers and the evidence shows they have no foundation whatsoever," it added.

The development came as evidence on phone hacking given to British MPs by News International chairman James Murdoch was called into question.

He told the media committee on Tuesday he had not been "aware" of an email suggesting the practice went wider than a "rogue" News of the World reporter.

But Colin Myler, a former editor of the Sunday tabloid, and ex-News International legal manager Tom Crone have now said they "did inform" him of the email.

The News of the World was shut down this month after allegations surfaced that it had hacked the phones of a murdered schoolgirl, the victims of London's 2005 terrorist bombings and the families of dead British soldiers.

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