Heat - October 1999
Anna Friel - The Heat InterviewTo the British press she's still tragic Beth Jordache, but Anna Friel's taken Broadway by storm, stars in an about-to-be-released Britpic and is in heavy demand in Hollywood. `The transition is coming 'she tells Alexis Petridis.
Anna Friel is running late. Her schedule is packed. You sense that maybe her life is always like this nowadays, when she divides her time between Britain, New York and Hollywood, where her career as a movie actress is burgeoning. She is hot property. She is on the way up.
So you wait your turn until you're ushered in ("You have 20 minutes, don't ask personal questions," admonishes the press officer) and there, surrounded by empty coffee cups, bottles of mineral water and an overflowing ashtray, is Anna Friel. Cropped hair, big eyes, Marlboro Lights, so small she seems enveloped by the overstuffed seat, her PA keeping careful watch. She is strikingly pretty rather than untouchably beautiful. Her voice is surprisingly forceful. She has a strong Rochdale accent and addresses people, charmingly, as "darlin'". She apologises for being in a hurry. She has five days in England, all photographs and reporters and chat about her latest film, Mad Cows, and then she's off to film her first big romantic comedy in San Francisco and LA.
"It's called Boys And Girls," she says. "Freddy Prinze Junior from She's All That is in it. It's like a contemporary version of When Harry Met Sally, it's a teen film, a romantic comedy. But I'm more the Billy Crystal character and he's like Meg Ryan. It'll be fun, I'm playing a strong character for a change. And they get together. There," she grins. "I ruined the end for you."
As everyone with a television knows, Friel first registered in the public consciousness as the doomed Beth Jordache, the girl who made Brookside Close fleetingly sexy. The on-screen eruption of Beth Jordache, who was not only good-looking, but shagged girls and offed her dad as well, was incongruous and exciting. The Beth Jordache saga, which ended with a mysterious heart attack in prison, left an indelible mark on virtually everyone who saw it.
HEAT: So, Anna, what do the following events have in common: the outbreak of the Gulf War, the murder of John Lennon, the Watergate scandal and the release of the Guildford Four?
ANNA: They've all been made into films ?
HEAT: They all came lower than the Brookside lesbian kiss scene in Channel Four's 100 Greatest TV Moments Of All Time.
ANNA: [Genuinely bemused] "You are joking ! Are you serious ? It wasn't even like a proper kiss ! I can't even remember doing it. S'funny, though, innit ?"
HEAT: Do you think you'll always be remembered as Beth Jordache in Britain?
ANNA It's not about escaping it, it's just that I'm doing something more interesting now and I want to talk about that. I don't want people to be interested in me because of the famous people I hang out with or kissing another girl or love affairs I've had. I want people to be interested because hey, she's British, she's done it herself, she's grown up in front of a camera lens and she seems to be keeping her head together, we're proud and we want her to do well. That's what I want. I want to be respected. I think that transition is now coming - the press have started saying Land Girls star rather than ex-Brookside. [Sighs| I think we get the message. We know she was in Brookside, for god's sake !".
Beth Jordache was so memorable that a tragic hint of her seems to cling to Friel's public image. The British press is fond of depicting Anna Friel as a victim. Poor Anna, jilted in public by her former fiancé, grinning You Bet! oaf Darren Day. Poor Anna: getting entangled with Robbie Williams then in the midst of his drugs and booze hell. Poor Anna: all that fame and money and beauty and she still can't get a man.
"That was the Worst thing", she says. "Oh, poor old Anna. Give it a rest " All that's happened is that somebody's left you, you've had a few miserable relationships. It's not a tragic thing. They went right over the top. But I am truly happy now. We've come to the next stage."
The "next stage" is America, where Anna Friel has suddenly become hot property, thanks to her role as Anna in the Broadway production of Patrick Marber's sex, lies and Internet play Closer. She was turned down for the part in England - "they told me to go away and live a bit " - but her Broadway performance has caused a remarkable reaction. The play has been garlanded with awards and praise from both critics and actors. She is, according to at least one English newspaper, the Toast Of New York. Steven Spielberg came backstage. So did Al Pacino and the Cruises. Jack Nicholson allegedly said, "Until I sleep with her, I can't concentrate."
HEAT: So how does fame in the US compare to fame in England?
ANNA: It's so beautifully different. It's made me a little embarrassed that I had to have America's respect before Britain would take me more seriously. I'm only doing what I've done before. If they carry on, they'll lose all their artists to America. They didn't now about Brookside or my treacherous love life. They saw what was in front of them, a girl who's never been on stage before and did the job well and won two awards. It gave me a real boost, because before I thought I was so boring that people just wanted to talk about two relationships that were two years old."
HEAT: Has your life become more glamorous since your career took off in the States?
ANNA: [Frowns] It's got less glamorous if anything. It's hard to impress me. I can really admire an actor, but when you meet them in a room, you're with a person, not all the characters you've seen. If that person doesn't impress you, it doesn't make any difference. I was with stars constantly, they became personal friends, but it was work. I was learning my trade. I was doing it for me. New York came at exactly the right time. I found myself again. It was hard to know why I was doing things or what I was doing them for. But New York was like going back to drama school. I grew up. I realised I didn't want everything right now, because I'm only 23 and if I get it all now, where am I going to go ? We ended book one, a few dodgy chapters in the middle. We're on book two now.
Friel has several movie projects lined up, including Boys And Girls and a part in the new Robert Altman film, where she stars with Richard Gere and Helen Hunt. British actors have a tendency to complain about the falseness of Hollywood, about shoddy treatment at the hands of clueless studio execs. Friel, on the other hand, seems rather enamoured with the place. Perhaps you would be if Tom and Nicole were your new mates and Jack Nicholson was going round telling people he wants to shag you.
"Hollywood has been great,' she enthuses ."They've cottoned on to something that they think's worth investing in, which is good, because I feel I'm worth investing in as well. There's not that many good scripts around. That's why I've done smaller films, played loads of different characters. I'm turning down the big action films. I've got the basis of something, but it needs some, real fucking work. When I feel I've got something to offer, then you'll see it in a big film."
Until then, Friel's film CV remains uneven: deathless love cult saga The Tribe, Land Girls, Rogue Trader, and her latest film and first lead role as Maddy in the celluloid adaptation of Kathy Lette's best-selling novel 'Mad Cows'. A fast, daft British comedy ("The first time I watched it, it was so quick, it was like being on speed," says Friel ), it boasts Joanna Lumley reprising her Patsy routine from Absolutely Fabulous, a few quirky special effects and a string of high-profile Swinging London cameos from Jodie Kidd, Sophie Dahl, Tara Palmer Tomkinson, Meg Mathews and even Mohamed AI Fayed. Friel's wide-eyed performance as the Australian ex- pat single mother who ends up in prison is, frankly, the best thing about it.
HEAT: Why did you choose this for your first leading role?
ANNA: I didn't think, "Right, I'm going to choose this for my first lead role", it was something that came along at the time. It wasn't about the character, it was about the story and the director [Sara Sugarman, whose previous experience extends to Valley Girls, an acclaimed short about Welsh cleaning ladies] saying,"I want you to make her, I want you to find all these things about Maddy within yourself."
HEAT: Like what ?
ANNA: A silliness. When I allow myself I can be quite silly. It was the whole way in which it was done, six weeks, 16-hour days, six days a week. Knackering, but it was the way she wanted to do it. It was all part of the journey Before, if I made a mistake, they could edit it out and it wouldn't be the end of my career. This time, they couldn't edit me out. [But before this] I was frustrated with being part of an ensemble, I was sitting in my caravan and I wanted to be on set. I wanted my own film. Not from a vain standpoint but I wanted to see if I could carry a film.
HEAT: Quite a lot of Mad Cows is devoted to close-ups of your heaving cleavage. It looks, well, smaller in real life. Did you have to wear false breasts ?
ANNA: "I did, ha ha. She had to have big breasts. My mum had massive breasts when she had me which I'm excited about, because it might happen to me. They use your breasts, but they push them up with silicone implants at the side of the bra. They weighed a ton. I had severe backache."
Spend anytime with Anna Friel - even 20 minutes - and talk turns to the tabloid press. Until she went to Broadway, Friel was rarely out of the papers, which would devote half a page to the news that she'd had a haircut. Only days before this interview she appeared in a mid-market tabloid scotching rumours of a more than just good friends relationship with Kate Moss.
HEAT: So how bad are our press?
ANNA: Compared to America, they're dreadful. In England, we've got some great journalists, but it's the other ones, the fuckers, who make you very cynical. I've had to learn to be cynical, but if things went wrong, the only person I can blame is myself. I went to those places {where the paparazzi hang out} and some of the people I went with are famous and the press are just doing their job. People are going to be interested in personal things. Unfortunately, a lot of these things are going to be untrue. I think the difference is about respect. I never felt they thought I was a bona-fide actress with some clout. Maybe that's my fault because of the kind of press I decided to do.
HEAT: You used to take your clothes off a lot in magazines and you've stopped doing that now.
ANNA: It wasn't so much about taking my clothes off. It wasn't a big deal, but I was naive to think that wasn't going to put me in a certain kind of bracket. I've never had a publicist, I had to make those decisions myself. In America, it's not like that. You can have your clothes on or have your clothes off and no one's going to say, "Oh, she's that kind of person". I've come out the other side. And if you want to see me with my clothes off, I've just done it for Cancer Research. But you can't see anything. As long as I'm not doing it for any... selling reasons. In England, they're interested in sleazy details. In America, they want to hear about the good things. Mind you, I prefer reading English newspapers to American ones...
HEAT: One particular source of never-ending interest is your part in the Primrose Hill Mob (Noel and Meg Gallagher, Kate Moss, Sadie Frost, Jude Law et al). What's the attraction of hanging around with famous people?
ANNA: [Tetchily] I've got friends from all over the place.
HEAT: But an awful lot are young, beautiful and famous...
ANNA: It's because we've all done the same thing, we've got the same outlook on life and there's a freedom between us. We don't have to think, "Oh God, are they going to tell someone I said that" .They've got the same passion and love for acting it's nice to talk about it. I admire and respect that and I want to be around those people.
And that's it. Our time is up. Anna Friel gathers her bags and fags and watchful PA and scurries off into Soho. She's running late. Her schedule is packed. Anna's going to be very famous.
Mad Cows is out 29 October .