That is, he decides to keep walking, past the post office, out of town and another 500 miles.
But along the way, he decides instead to deliver it by hand to Queenie’s hospice. Recalling the “stout, plain-looking woman,” he composes a bland note of condolence and walks over to the post office. That grim stillness is disrupted on the opening page with the arrival of a “letter that would change everything.” Queenie Hennessy, a woman Harold worked with 20 years ago, has written to say goodbye she’s dying of cancer. Their once-promising son never calls, never visits. “Days went by and nothing changed only his waist thickened, and he lost more hair.” Worse, after 47 years of marriage, he and his wife, Maureen, live like strangers in their spotless home, where the air is thick with blame. “He never did the unexpected,” Joyce writes. Harold recently retired from the local brewery, and now has nothing to do. It begins on a spring day like any other in a small English village in Kingsbridge. Joyce was an actress for 20 years before she started writing plays for BBC Radio, but “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” is not a story of much drama. The loyalty inspired by this unassuming story is surprising. If your friends don’t like it, you may have to stop returning their calls for a little while until you can bring yourself to forgive them. In addition, appearances in the Harry Potter franchise, in the Bridget Jones franchise, and - as Archmaester Ebrose - in Game of Thrones have established him as one of TV and film's most recognizable faces.Rachel Joyce’s first novel - about a retired Englishman shuffling off to visit a dying colleague - sounds twee, but it’s surprisingly steely, even inspiring, the kind of quirky book you want to shepherd into just the right hands. More prominent roles followed, including opposite Judi Dench in Iris (2001) for which Broadbent won an Academy Award and a BAFTA nomination opposite Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and in multiple roles in the Wachowski sisters' and Tom Tykwer's adaptation of the David Mitchell novel Cloud Atlas (2012). Although Jim Broadbent cut his teeth in comedy, with several well-received appearances in well-loved British sitcoms such as the original series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Blackadder, and Only Fools and Horses in the 1970s and 1980s, he came to the attention of Hollywood with supporting roles in films such as Terry Gilliam's Brazil(1985) and alongside John Goodman in The Borrowers (1997).
It is a testament to the high regard in which the original novel is held that the film has attracted two of the biggest names in the British film industry to play the leads.
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