Given the question: Build a movie plot around this: What does Stella Bradshaw's mother leave on her pillow as a baby? A string of pearls wrapped around a rose
The answer is:
In the film's prologue, a hotelier ushers a child into a bomb shelter during the Liverpool Blitz. We see a brief flashback to a woman leaving her baby in a basement surrounded by flickering candles. Before departing from the house, she quickly drops a string of pearls on the child's pillow, twined around a single rose.Years later, 16-year-old Stella Bradshaw (Georgina Cates) lives in a working class household with her Uncle Vernon (Alun Armstrong) and Aunt Lily (Rita Tushingham) in Liverpool. Lacking an adult in her life to whom she feels close, she frequently goes into phone booths to "speak with her mother", who never appears in the film. Her uncle, who sees a theatrical career as being her only alternative to working behind the counter at Woolworth's, signs her up for speech lessons and pulls the strings to get her involved at a local repertory theatre. After an unsuccessful audition, Stella gets a job gofering for Meredith Potter (Hugh Grant), the troupe's sleazy, eccentric director, and Bunny (Peter Firth), his faithful stage manager.The impressionable Stella develops a crush on the worldly, self-absorbed Potter, whose homosexuality completely eludes her. Amused, he gives her the small role of Ptolemy the boy-king in Caesar and Cleopatra but ignores her otherwise. Potter reveals himself to be a remorseless, apathetic man who treats Stella and everyone else around him with scorn and condescension. He reserves his greatest cruelty for Dawn Allenby (Carol Drinkwater), a desperate older actress whom he callously dismisses from the company; she later attempts suicide. Potter also has a long history of exploiting young men. Stella is quickly caught up in the backstage intrigue and also becomes an object of sexual advances for men around the theatre company, including P. L. O'Hara (Alan Rickman), a brilliant actor who has returned to the troupe in a stint playing Captain Hook for its Christmas production of Peter Pan. In keeping with theatrical tradition, O'Hara also doubles as Mr. Darling.O'Hara carries...