The Calendar Girls story was inspired by the real-life story of the Rylstone and District Women's Institute, an organisation that strives to "seek happiness in achievement." 

In April 1999, when the group published their 2000 calendar, they knew they might raise a few eyebrows, but they didn't expect much drama.  The calendar was published in the hope of raising a few pounds for the local hospital, which had cared for Angela Baker's husband John who had recently died of leukemia.  Angela, her friend Tricia Stewart and fellow members of the WI wanted to give something back to the place and the people who'd treated John at the end of his life. To boost sales, Tricia suggested that the calendar have a more original theme.  It would feature the women engaged in traditional Women's Institute activities, such as cider-pressing, cake baking and flower arranging, but the novel element was that the models, all of a certain age, would be in the nude.

The story hit the headlines immediately the calendar was published and spread through Yorkshire, down to London and even across the Atlantic to Hollywood.   The calendar was a huge story in all the British media, across Europe and in the USA where stories ran on the front page of the New York Times and on CBS' 60 Minutes, the Today Show, 20/20 and in People Magazine among others.  Everyone everywhere wanted to know more about the courageous - and outrageous - women of the Rylstone and District Women's Institute. The calendar was such a success that by early 2003 it had sold nearly 300,000 calendars, raising nearly £600,000 for leukemia charities.  It also turned the women into national - and international - celebrities.

"We had no idea that we would get so much coverage when we launched the calendar;" says Angela Baker, whose husband John's death inspired the calendar; "we just thought it would only appeal to our friends and family."   

The women could not have been more wrong about the impact of the calendar and before long Hollywood came knocking at the door. Their story, combining heart-rending drama and gutsy determination, was a natural for the big screen. And yet it surprised the women when the offers started flooding in. Given the subject matter, the women of Rylstone were understandably cautious.

"The idea of a film was quite nerve-racking," explains Baker. "I thought it would be very hard on me and my family to watch our story unfold on the big screen; it was so very personal and I wasn't sure I wanted anyone to share it. I was worried it might be too intrusive coming so soon after John's death."

When Suzanne Mackie, Juliette Towhidi and Nick Barton, from London-based Harbour Pictures, visited the women of Rylstone WI, it soon became clear that they had the women's interests at heart. "Angela and Tricia really put us through our paces on the first meeting," says Mackie. "We told them we were struck by it being a very funny story, but more importantly a very moving human drama and that the substance of story came from Angela's husband's death from leukemia. That's what gave it depth and meaning and took it from being a jokey, frivolous story to a poignant and universal story.

"What also appealed to me was the fact that it was a woman's story," Mackie continues. "My initial reaction was, good on you, girls for having the guts to shout from the rooftops: 'Just because we're over 40 it doesn't mean we can't look beautiful!' There's a very strong sense of female camaraderie in the story, which I found enormously appealing. These women really support each other in every way."

Once Angela Baker and Tricia Stewart were on board ("When I met Suzanne and Nick, we just clicked," recalls Baker) the producers then began negotiations with the members of the group to secure rights to the individual women's stories. Alert to how sensitive the issue was, they made several visits to Yorkshire to get to know the group and to assure them of Harbour's intentions. Screenwriter Juliette Towhidi, began working on a screenplay, basing characters on the real women, but changing their names and turning the village of Rylstone into the fictional Knapely.  After months of careful discussion, the majority of the Rylstone WI women and the photographer Terry Logan, whose daughter is married to Angela and John's son, all signed on with Harbour Pictures.

It was in December 2000 that director Nigel Cole joined the project.  "We had a list of several directors, but we knew that Nigel would bring the right sensibilities to the film"  Mackie says. "He would allow the comedy to come out of the drama and create a character-led and emotionally layered film: a human story both funny and poignant."

Much in demand since his feature debut SAVING GRACE, starring Brenda Blethyn, premiered to huge acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, Cole chose CALENDAR GIRLS over a number of other Hollywood projects in development.

"It's pure coincidence that both films I've directed are about women," Cole says, "but I do like working with women. I won't ever be a man's director because I'm not much of a bloke. There are other directors who would do a better job of doing violence. I like to mix comedy and drama and COLD FEET, SAVING GRACE and CALENDAR GIRLS all have that in common. I like making people laugh and cry. I'm a bit of a softie at heart and get a bit sentimental, but I get embarrassed about that so I like to puncture it with a joke. Romantic comedy is a genre where you can do both.

"The fact that this film is inspired by a true story brings its own challenges and pressures," Cole continues. "It's always important not to have a patronizing attitude towards your characters, because the audience can sniff that out a mile off.   Because it's a real story, we all wanted to remain true to the spirit of that story but we also wanted to make a good film, so we knew we had to take some liberties."

Unfamiliar with the world of the Women's Institute, Cole says he was unsurprised by what he found when he visited the ladies of Rylstone. "They turned out to be exactly as I had expected," he says. "They were funny and bright and not at all conservative and dull. These women are in their mid-late 50s, so they were teenagers in the 60s. In the real story, there was very little opposition to what they did, but drama is about conflict, so we had to create some paper tigers - like with the board members at the WI conference in London whose approval they need to go ahead who, at first appear horrified by the idea but then come round.

casting the film
"When it came to casting, we wanted a couple of real movie stars," producer Nick Barton says. Sometimes what you want is what you get. Among the first actresses to be sent the screenplay were Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, for the roles of Chris and Annie respectively. The Academy Award-nominated stars needed little persuading to sign up.

Says Mirren, "All great films have a combination of humour and seriousness and this screenplay managed that balance beautifully. I was immediately aware of how sensitive Tim Firth and Nigel Cole were to the delicacy of the subject matter. I loved the character of Chris and after meeting Tricia, I realised that Tim had certainly tapped into her dynamism and energy. Chris is the kind of person who would jump into the wrong end of a swimming pool. She jumps before she thinks, she's spontaneous and gets over-excited about things that mean a lot to her. But that spirit gives her the courage, commitment and passion about what she does."

For Mirren, working on the film brought rich rewards. "I've never worked on an ensemble film like this. A film about a group of women in middle age is a very rare beast and it's been fantastic working with a group of such experienced and talented women. And such a group of actresses could have proved intimidating for a director. But Nigel handled us with exactly the right mix of charm and humour. I called him Our Fearless Leader."

For Julie Walters, the part of Annie posed an unusual problem. "When I first read the script, I thought 'Who is Annie?' because Chris is so much larger than life that Annie disappears into the background. I was very keen to meet Angela Baker on whom Annie is based, not to do an impersonation of her, but to witness her relationship with Tricia, who is the model for Chris. I met all the women together and they are all very funny and witty. At first, I thought Angela was very shy, but first impressions are misleading. She's not shy, she's actually a strong, clear person. Then I realised what made up Chris and Annie: Annie sits back and watches whereas Chris barges in almost without thinking. And Annie loves that because it's the opposite of her.

"With a film like this, which is based on actual events and where the characters are inspired by real people," says Walters, "you have a much greater responsibility, so we've had to be extra sensitive. But Angela was very open and talks about what happened with great candour. And that has made it easier for me to get to grips with the character of Annie. It's been a great relief for me to play her because I normally play the one who rushes in and never stops talking. It's been the most relaxed film I've ever done!"

The decision to cast against type came from director Nigel Cole. "Probably the best call I made was offering Helen Mirren and Julie Walters the roles of Chris and Annie in that order," he says. "Helen usually plays the quiet, sad one - GOSFORD PARK and LAST ORDERS were low energy, understated roles and in PRIME SUSPECT she's quite dour. Julie usually plays the loud, active one - look at PERSONAL SERVICES and BILLY ELLIOT. I knew that Helen's vulnerability would soften Chris, while Julie's wicked sense of humour would liven up Annie."

the look of the film
Nigel Cole's decision to cast the film with "real movie stars" was designed, he says, to elevate the film beyond the "small British film" pigeon-hole. That ambition also informed the design and look of the film. For Cole's collaborators, production designer Martin Childs and director of photography Ashley Rowe, the change of location from the natural beauty of the Yorkshire Dales to the manufactured glamour of Los Angeles allowed them to realise that ambition.

"In my very first meeting with Nigel," says Childs, "we talked about how the calendar changes the way the two women, Annie and Chris, see one another, how it reveals things about them, and how certain aspects of themselves are brought to the fore by the process and the result of making the calendar." Childs, who won a Best Production Design Academy Award in 1999 for his work on SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE says, "It's all there in the dialogue and gestures but, in addition to that, going to America was an opportunity to alter quite drastically the look of the film. Annie's not just a fish out of water, she's someone who's beginning at last to face her grief; Chris, on the other hand (as ever) takes control, but here in America there are things she can't control.

"First impressions of Los Angeles are that, yes, it has glamour, but it also has buildings that look and feel rather temporary, almost skin deep," Childs continues. "Yorkshire, by contrast, looks like somewhere that's been there forever and will stay there forever. We spent a lot of time in the early days driving around Yorkshire talking about the look of the film, and the emotional truth of the story and how you can get closer to that through the way people live, the houses they live in and the landscape.

Childs' proudest achievement on the film was the sets he designed and had built at Shepperton Studios. For the village hall, for example, Childs and his team "had a lot of fun with the details - years and years of paint upon paint. We installed old radiators with portable gas heaters in front of them to show they no longer work, balloons and tinsel left over from a Christmas party, old conduit, switch boxes that stopped working decades ago, Cora's mad old art deco piano."

For award-winning cinematographer Ashley Rowe, the vagaries of the weather conspired to create less than ideal shooting conditions. Rather predictably, the sun refused to shine in Yorkshire, but Rowe made the most of what little sun there was, to create a film with a summery feel. Just as Martin Childs had done with the design, so Rowe was keen to give the Yorkshire and Los Angeles locations a very different look.

" We used stockings over the lenses for all the English scenes to give it a softer, gentler tone," explains the cinematographer. "We had to buy up the entire stock of tights from a shop in Wales because theirs were the only ones we could find which didn't have a lycra mix in the nylon - lycra glitters in the light in a way that you can't disguise."

For the scenes in America, Rowe used a naked lens and, thanks to the bright Los Angeles sun, the film takes on a harder, cleaner edge with more shadow contrast and a fiercer tone. "Hollywood has a glamorous image but the reality never lives up to the myth," says Rowe.

shooting the calender
"It was the hardest thing I've ever done," says Nigel Cole, of filming the calendar scenes. "Many of the actresses have never taken off their clothes on screen or in public. Many are considerably older than actresses who are prepared to take off their clothes on film, and we couldn't and didn't want to use body doubles. We did it mid-shoot because that gave us time to get to know each other and avoided having it looming over us throughout the whole shoot."

The original calendar was, says the director, the biggest help in giving both the cast and the crew inspiration for what they had to achieve and how the end result had to look. Cinematographer Ashley Rowe consulted with photographer Terry Logan on how he had lit the scenes. "Terry used just a 1000 watt lamp and the look was very natural. We had to use more light for the filming, but we just boosted the natural light sources and really tried to keep it very simple and unfussy. The stockings over the lens gave more softness and helped even out skin tones because we were very keen for the women to look as beautiful as possible. I've done nude scenes before, but this was different, partly because of the age of the actresses but also because there would be a permanent reminder of the scene for the calendar. But these women are professionals with years of experience and they know how to look their best."

For the actresses themselves, it was an experience both intimidating and liberating. Says Julie Walters, "If Angela, Tricia and the other women could do it, how could we not do it? They were the brave ones, the pioneers, not us. And being part of a group made a big difference.  By the time we got round to doing the group photo, we were all quite blasé about it!"

Annette Crosbie agrees: "We were apprehensive, partly because we had to take our clothes off not in front of just one man, but in front of a whole crew. Strangely, during the taking of the group photo, a man whom I'd never seen before kept appearing behind me. It turned out he was the man in charge of the gas fire. There must have been something seriously wrong with the fire because he came back three times to look at it!"

"One of the characters in the film says 'You can't see anything in the photos, but I expect there'll be considerably more on display in the room!'," says Cole. "That's what concerned them. But the actresses had come up with a pact that they would all go naked if needed or not, to support each other. Some could have been wearing a bikini but they didn't because of that group solidarity."