"If you do Hello! as a family, which we were offered, you can't then close the door on that, you can't go back. You look like parents enjoying your child's success and then you would be accused of hypocrisy if you turn down requests for further personal interviews or object to intrusion. As it is, people think you must have something to hide if you don't do the personal stuff."At the very start of filming the Clarks were door-stepped by reporters from the tabloids and their neighbours were questioned about the family. It could also have opened him up to every local loony."Ivan Clark, who works in the media as an advertising executive, says he and his wife, who is a writer, were always aware that it would be easy to portray them as showbusiness parents and the whole family as fair game. "Not much coverage and yet they would, because they are local, have to identify the boy's school and where he lived. Then it's in the public domain, giving others the green light to use it later.
"You have to ask yourself what, in this instance, you're getting from a local interview," says Borkowski. "For example American Teen Vogue was doing a big feature on up-and-coming actors and they wanted to shoot Barney with another young English actress. But Mark pointed out that we had no idea who she was or what might happen to her career, and yet Barney could have been defined by the photograph and linked to her in the cuttings files for ever."Similarly, the family refused the film company's offer to set up an interview with Barney's local paper, the Hackney Gazette. He was there to look after Barney's interests, not Sony Pictures' investment in the film."There were certain things where the advice was invaluable," says Ivan. But you have to be extremely pedantic and stick to your guns."The Clarks took the unusual step of employing their own publicity adviser in the form of family friend and London PR man Mark Borkowski. They would set up photo shoots with his mum and brother and be extremely flattering and persuasive, telling us 'we're all doing it for Roman'.
He talks about acting and he talks about working with Roman Polanski. But he never talks about his family, his school or his private life."It meant that we were often accused by the film company's publicists of spoiling the party; they said things like 'the film's bigger than Barney'. "What we did was secure an agreement in advance with the film company that we wouldn't do any publicity of a personal nature He is committed to doing publicity for the film. They are the rare young stars whose parents managed to regain some control on their lives after the filming was over.The parents of Barney Clark, the 12-year old star of Roman Polanski's new screen version of Oliver Twist, are hoping to follow these positive examples. They believe they have found the way to minimise the intrusion into their lives that comes with having a child in a $60m film: they have developed their own media strategy."You have to set out what your publicity agenda is going to be at the start and stick to it as firmly as you can," says Ivan Clark. In Hollywood there is even a charity and helpline for child actors.The survivors, like Foster, Brooke Shields or Natalie Portman, are often the ones who step out of the limelight to go back to school. People can be standoffish about backroom staff putting themselves on television.