Heathcliff actor fails to attend court for sentencing over abuse of ex-partner

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/26/heathcliff-actor-court-sentencing-partner

Version 0 of 1.

Magistrates have issued an arrest warrant for the Wuthering Heights film star James Howson after he failed to appear for sentencing over the racial abuse of his former partner.

The unemployed 24-year-old, who won the role of Heathcliff in last year's remake through a Jobcentre advertisement in Leeds, has gone missing after a period of treatment under the Mental Health Act.

Howson's solicitor, Anthony Sugare, told Leeds magistrates court that his client had been discharged from a hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Thursday and was aware of the duty to attend the hearing.

Howson pleaded guilty in January to shouting violent abuse at Shakira Ramdihal and banging on the window of her home in Leeds when the relationship turned sour after she became pregnant.

He won critical praise for his performance in the 2011 version of Emily Brontë's classic, although his voice was dubbed by another actor.

His break as the first black actor to play Heathcliff came when the film's director, Andrea Arnold, announced she wanted a young man matching Brontë's original description of Heathcliff as a "dark-skinned gipsy in aspect and a little lascar" (an old term for Indian sailors).

He beat hundreds of other applicants to the role at auditions organised by the casting director, Gail Stevens, who had previously chosen the local children used in the 2008 Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

Howson's background – from a broken home, expelled from school at 14 and serving jail terms for theft and drug offences – mirrored that of the young Heathcliff. After the film's launch, he attended engagements at the Venice film festival and elsewhere, but his relationship at home in Leeds was falling apart.

His abuse of 23-year-old Ramdihal became so serious that he was banned from the maternity unit after their baby daughter was born. Leeds magistrates had been due to sentence him at the end of February but were told he had been compulsorily admitted to hospital for 28 days observation.

He is now being sought by police.