In 1987 she appeared as Mary Shelley in Gothic, Ken Russell's lurid take on the visit by the Shelley's and Lord Byron to the Villa Diodati which resulted in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein.

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On film Branagh cast him as Bardolph in Henry V (1989), as Stephen Fry's father in the comedy Peter's Friends (1992), Don Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the blind grandfather - playing opposite Robert De Niro's Creature - in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).

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During one particularly eventful summer in 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Polidori rented the Villa Diodati manor in Cologny, near Lake Geneva.

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"This is something interesting, " Weinstein says with typical understatement, lifting three volumes of a first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the store safe sitting next to a page from a Gutenberg Bible and a signed Jules Verne.

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In 1987, hankering for more serious roles, he joined Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company where he took on a number of stage roles and appeared in Branagh's films of Henry V and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Read the classic gothic horror story in a whole new light.

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Much of Ms. Montillo's journey is familiar, since Mary Shelley was quite explicit about the sources for "Frankenstein, " especially in the revised 1831 edition.

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