The Big Issue 18-24 October 1999

The Friel Thing

Anna Friel has gone from Brookside to Broadway, so why would she want to play a Mad Cow ? - by Xan Brooks

Today is the day I interview Anna Friel. Outwardly I'm playing it cool . Inside I'm turning cartwheels. Anna Friel: Brookside-icon-turned-Broadway-sensation, turned bona fide film star. Charming, bright, pretty, popular, and (it transpires) running fashionably late. Our rendezvous is scheduled for 10.30am but it's 11am, its 11.15am and I'm hunched in the film company's office like some stood-up school boy while the receptionist throws contemptuous looks in my direction. Then, when I'm finally ushered in, it turns out that Anna's brought a mate along - that old teenage standby when you've agreed to meet somebody you don't really want to. "This is Rebecca", Anna tells me from around the edge of a Marlboro Light. "She's one of my best friends. I've known her since we were at school". Outwardly I'm all "Hello Becky, hello Anna". Inside I'm desolate.

then again, any audience with Anna Friel is a rarity right now. The 23-year-old actress has spent 1999 playing eight shows a week in Patrick Marber's New York production of Closer. She landed in London two days ago. Two days from now she's off to make a Hollywood comedy (Boys & Girls) alongside Freddie Prinze Jr. A week later comes news that she's bailed out of the picture, claiming it was too "corny" for her. These are roller coaster, lust-for-glory times. There's not enough of her 5'2" frame to go around.

So Anna Friel curls on the couch and goes into interview mode ("you get so bored of yourself"). She's wearing heels and a black, backless number, and heavy mascara that has crusted in the lashes of her right eye. Her looks are pixie-adolescent, her delivery a machine-gun Rochdale. Put them together and you have the essence of the Friel appeal: the projection of a certain girl-next-door attainability which is (I reckon) the cornerstone of her success. A recent readers' survey in The Sunday Mirror rated her the number-one choice to question "Who would you most like to take home to meet your mum?". Screen goddesses like Gwyneth Paltrow or Uma Thurman radiate a pristine other-worldliness. Anna, by contrast, is one of us.

Except that she's not - not any more: "There was a time when I was really wanting to stay normal and I was so unprotected. But then I realised that my job is not normal and I've had to protect myself/" These days she moves at that rarefied altitude where the likes of you and me (and our mums) are seldom permitted. She's dated Robbie Williams and holidayed with Kate Moss. She has a Hollywood agent and a copy of Vanity Fair with her face on the cover. While in New York, she was wined and dined by Al Pacino ("the coolest man in the world"). Jack Nicholson met her and then famously remarked: "Until I sleep with her I just can't concentrate". Friel winces at the memory. "Yeah, where did that come from? I'm very flattered if he does. I think he might be a little too old for me". She she had no inkling when she met him ? "Well, he's a flirt. That's how he is with every single woman - a charmer. But I only met him for 10 minutes".

In hindsight, New York could be seen as the making of Friel. Actually she first auditioned for Closer on its London debut but lost out to actress Liza Walker. On Broadway, though, the former soap star played the part to sell-out crowds and rave reviews (trade magazine Variety hailing it as "a star-making performance"). Unsurprisingly, she feels the move Stateside was the best thing she's ever done. "I felt I was respected for the first time in my life. Over here, the press was on my side and people were like 'Yeah, Anna's great', but never with respect, never that she was a serious actress. Maybe because of soap, maybe because of what the journalists chose to write about me. But in America they saw the performance. They saw the grown-up Anna". Legitimate theatre it seems was not too much of a technical hurdle. "It's exactly like film", she says. "You just talk to the person as if they're hard of hearing".

In truth, Anna Friel (the daughter of two Rochdale teachers) has always been a pretty good actress. It's just that - Closer and her career-making stint on Brookside apart - she's had trouble finding roles that stretch her. The girl-power comedy Mad Cows (adapted from the book by Kathy Lette) at least does that . "It was my first film in that it was my film", she points out. "Everything else I've been part of team. Here, I was the lead and I was expected to carry it. It wasn't as if they could cut me out if I was bad. So it was an added pressure". Mad Cows finds Friel playing an Aussie single mum in swinging London. She maintains a flawless accent, gives a charismatic performance and just about manages to hold together an otherwise wackily insubstantial outing.

Until now, the media has focused on Friel's love-life (with both Darren Day and Robbie Williams) and her relationship with Kate Moss (provoking tabloid speculation of a lesbian affair). Before leaving for New York, she was a central component of a hip London scene. These days, she defends her friends ("they're brilliant, amazing, talented people, most of them"), yet insists that the up-all-night era is behind her. "Been ther. Boring. I'd rather stay indoors, thank you very much".

Later, Anna Friel fires up another fag and starts telling me about her granddad's death. She was in New York at the time, preparing to go on stage. "It was awful", she says. "I was thinking: 'You're disgusting. Your grandfather died and you're dressing up in stupid costumes, saying stupid lines. You're disgusting'. But it toughens you up. I'm so lucky with my job because however you're feeling, you can translate it into your work. Those tears that night were the most real tears I've ever shed on stage and probably one of the best performances I've ever done". Perched on a nearby table, best-friend Becky nods in silent agreement.

This reminiscence seems to highlight the twin urges at work within the new "grown-up" Anna Friel. On the one heand, she's grounded and informed by her North Country roots. On the other, she's pushing towards some lofty Disneyland of Hollywood deals and Oscar-night speeches and million-dollar salaries. "You can make anything happen", she tells me seriously, like some hard-ball self-help manual. "You can make yourself a successful actress, or have money or be famous. But you can't make love happen. You can't make happiness and friendship and trust and loyalty happen, and there's no point kidding yourself. But", she adds, "there are times when you might have other priorities and think 'No I can't have a love-life because I'm going to have to work' and that's where I am at the moment - knowing that one day I'll commit to it".

For the moment, then, ambitious Anna is in the ascendancy. For the moment she'll hang out in Hollywood and sell her wares to the big studios. she is, if you like, striking while the iron is hot; compromising to get ahead. Later on, she might relax; return to being one of us once more.

So Anna Friel looks into her crystal ball and tells us what she sees there. "At 50 I want to have had children", she muses. "I want to be married. I want to have a flat in New York. I'd like to have my own production company, but I'd still like to be acting. I'd like to be able to pat myself on the back and say 'Hey well done you', and mean it. I'd like to be the puppeteer", she says, "and not the puppet".