Les Mis premiere hits high note

The film’s main stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were all out greeting fans on a chilly red carpet.

Director Tom Hooper took to the stage at the Empire Leicester Square and said he was especially proud to be there since it was a cinema he used to attend as a kid growing up in London. He called the production “the experience of a lifetime”.

Producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working Title, and newly independent producer Debra Hayward also took to the stage along with musical impresario Cameron Mackintosh and the stage musical’s lyricist Alain Boublil and composer Claude-Michel Schonberg.

We were extremely proud of the way one of this year’s Screen Stars of Tomorrow, Samantha Barks, held her own on such an A-list red carpet, posing in her glamorous gown like she’d been doing it for decades. She got a lot of love from the hometown crowd outside and inside the cinema. We knew she was a remarkable singer, but considering this was the first time she’d been on a film set, we were especially blown away by her on-screen performance. Star of Today, indeed.

The afterparty at Camden’s Roundhouse initially struck us as an odd location…until we walked inside and saw the space transformed with impressive candelabras, fake snow on the floor and the largest floral arrangement we’d ever seen.

Champagne was flowing and guests enjoyed very generous amounts of delicious French food - beef bourguignon, coq au vin, Toulouse sausage, ratatouille, crepes, mounds of French cheeses and much more to fatten us up for the winter. Put this on the shortlist for ‘premiere of the year’ already!

Other starry attendees included Gillian Anderson, Rosamund Pike, Ellie Goulding and Matthew Morrison.

The last time Team Screen experienced a film premiere this posh was Mamma Mia!’s Greek-themed party in 2008. Another Universal one, we note…