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Jack Davenport
Specialty: Droll, Dashing Cads With Hyphenated Names
It seems weird -- or, at least, North America-centric -- to call Jack Davenport a H!ITG!, given that, in the UK, he's a very well-known screen star and, as BBC America aficionados will know (as well as, you know, BBC aficionados -- the internet reaches the world!) plays the lead in the popular TV comedy Coupling, which over there makes him roughly the equivalent, fame-wise, of David Schwimmer or Ray Romano.
To North American audiences, though, he's best known as that droll cad with the hyphenated name, possibly wearing breeches. He turned up as Peter Smith-Kingsley, Matt Damon's tender British squeeze, in The Talented Mr. Ripley, but most Americans know him as the stuffy officer, Norrington, who got thrown over by Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Poor Jack Davenport -- always unlucky in love. We're not sure what his character in the upcoming The Wedding Date is like, but we do know his name is Edward Fletcher-Wooten, which means he's no doubt some combination of (a) foppish; (b) droll; (c) stuffy; and (d) caddish. And he won't get the girl. Which is a shame, because with his floppy forelock and his sandpaper wit, Davenport is the archetypical British sex symbol, i.e. handsome and charming without being particularly steamy, i.e. Hugh Grant.
And because Grant has a stranglehold on stammering and/or caddish British male leads, and because Hollywood (thankfully) can only make so many versions of Mickey Blue Eyes, Davenport must content himself -- in the context of Hollywood, at least -- with stammering and/or caddish supporting roles. Which is also a shame: he so perfectly personifies that acutely appealing brand of English charm that we keep forgetting he wasn't actually in Four Weddings and a Funeral as one of Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas's endearing entourage. But he wasn't.
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