TO the 54th BFI London Film Festival where a little bit of Hollywood glamour intrudes from time to time on the serious business of movies programmed by festival director Sandra Hebron, who grew up in North Yorkshire.

How better to kick of the festival – and gather lots of first night premiere pix – than chose a film with not one, but two, attractive and talented British actresses?

Step forward on the red carpet Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligant. The Pirates Of The Caribbean meets An Education. Never Let Me Go is the film, based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro.

He turned out for the opening festival press conference, along with Alex Garland who adapted his novel. While Ishiguro was in expansive mood and clearly pleased with the movie, Garland could be categorised as grumpy young man. Then again, it’s a difficult position sitting next to the man whose work you’ve adapted.

★MUCH more usually cast in the role of grumpy old man is British filmmaker Mike Leigh, another festival visitor with his new film Another Year, starring Lesley Manville and Jim Broadbent.

I didn’t witness it, but Leigh apparently made an unforgettable entrance at the festival press conference by falling flat on his face. Hearing no one laughing – aren’t you always tempted to giggle at other people’s misfortunes? – he commented that it was a difficult audience to please.

Leigh has, in the past, proved a serious interview although one of his stars told me that on set he’s a bundle of laughs. This seems unlikely. He questions every question, declares some irrelevant, and challenges assumptions made by questionners.

Perhaps that’s only to be expected from someone who makes films through solo discussions with actors and improvisations. But he was in good humour for the round table interviews, not exactly laughing and joking, but more benign than in the past. On the last occasion he reprimanded the waiter for bringing in his tea while he was talking.

★FILMING schedules meant young Let Me In star Chloe Moreta, who played Hit Girl in Kick-Ass, didn’t make the press interviews, although she did walk the red carpet at the premiere.

Her equally young co-star Kodi Smit- McPhee was around for press interviews for the film, a remake of the hit Swedish vampire thriller Let The Right On In.

For someone who makes such a big impression on screen, he’s remarkably small in real ife – well, he is only 14 – but makes up in confidence what he lacks in size. And the green suit he wore for the London premiere was something that few young men, famous or not, would dare wear in public.

★ALSO met and was captivated by Violante Placido, George Clooney’s leading lady in The American, a minimalist drama in which Clooney plays a hit man hiding out in Italy. Embargos mean I can’t report anything Placido said about the movie, but she did admit she’s been cast in Ghost Rider 2 opposite Nicolas Cage. A good move for her, but as the first Ghost Rider hardly set the box office aflame it’s hard to see how it’s got a sequel.

★SOME Hollywood style glamour came courtesy of Hilary Swank, in town to promote her new movie Conviction.

It’s a truelife tale of a woman who became a lawyer so she could free her brother from prison. Two-time Oscarwinner Swank put on her best frock to walk the red carpet in London’s Leicester Square, the mark of a true star. Also on hand were co-stars Sam Rockwell and Minnie Driver, although their press conference turned into something of a luvvie-fest. They couldn’t stop telling each other how great they were to work with.