Two Of A Kind

The career of singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley was brilliant but all too brief, cut tragically short by his drowning death in 1997. In the years since his passing, there have been any number of attempts to get a Buckley biopic off the ground, but Greetings From Tim Buckley takes an innovative approach that both pays tribute to the artist's work and provides some insight into his background, his motivation and his inspirations.

The title refers to Buckley's father, a celebrated musician in his own right. But Tim's dedication to his craft saw him neglect his wife and young son, with Jeff left feeling somewhat estranged and alienated from the man as a result. The film, written and directed by Daniel Algrant, follows the younger Buckley as he prepares for his public performance debut at a 1991 tribute concert for Tim – a concert that would launch his own career – while struggling with his father's legacy, dealing with the estrangement he feels and gradually coming to terms with the past.

Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley plays Jeff Buckley, while Ben Rosenfield plays his father. And cast in the pivotal role of Allie, a young woman working at the tribute concert who helps Jeff gain some deeper understanding of his father's life and work, is UK actress Imogen Poots, whose diverse body of work includes 28 Weeks Later, the Fright Night remake and the recent Steve Coogan-Michael Winterbottom collaboration The Look of Love.

Poots was well aware of Jeff Buckley's work – her brother gave her Buckley's seminal album, Grace, for her birthday when she was a teenager – but she was not so up to speed with the elder Buckley, so a crash-course in his back catalogue was required, in which the actress found herself becoming just as much of a Tim Buckley fan. “I listened to Tim more during the making of the film because I thought that was appropriate,” she says. “And I think I may prefer him. I really enjoyed going through all his records and trying to understand the man he was. He was quite extraordinary – this beautiful voice and these beautiful lyrics.”

Poots was drawn to Greetings From Tim Buckley by the writer-director's “ideas, energy and passion”, and what she viewed as the film's unconventional take on the biopic formula. “I just adored the way this script was written,” she says. “I thought it was really clever in terms of what it is to make music, and the similarities and differences in the two eras of Tim and Jeff.” Aside from the back catalogues of the two generations of Buckleys, there wasn't a lot of research Poots could undertake, given that the lives of both men were cut short.

“It's very difficult to find enough information about someone, especially someone like Jeff Buckley,” she says. “It's hard to find information about someone like Jimi Hendrix, even, who was so prolific and who died at the same age as Jeff. And Buckley's fame was far more fleeting. So it is difficult to find the real stuff, the real deal, but you just got to go from what you can.” She admits her co-star Badgley had an easier task of it, and admires his boldness in meeting with some of Jeff Buckley's friends and contemporaries. “I thought that was quite a bold thing to do, his performance being his take on this iconic figure,” she says.

Greetings From Tim Buckley is in cinemas from Thursday 1 August.