Interview Magazine - 1 April 1999

FRIEL, at last....

Anna Friel likes challenges. With four movies featuring Friel out this year, America better get ready for this seductively straight-forward actress, who's also making her Broadway debut

Twenty-two-year-old Anna Friel has cut a figure of fascination in her native Britain since she was fourteen. The broad spectrum of parts she's played - from a groundbreaking TV lesbian in the gritty Northern soap Brookside to a feisty Jodhpur-wearing farmhand in the wartime film drama The Land Girls (1998) - has made her one of the most versatile and fearless of the crusading new generation of English actresses. A succession of movies set to open this year is about to lodge her in the collective American consciousness. She plays Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, an early-'70s fashion designer in Sunset Strip, the wife of the man who broke Barings bank in Rogue Trader, and a crazy Australian in Mad Cows.

But first she'll appear on Broadway as a troubled lap dancer in Closer, this year's hotly anticipated theatrical import by British playwright Patrick Marber. Rehearsing the play's fight scene has exacerbated an old acting injury. She nurses her wound as she sinks into an armchair as the bar of New York's Paramount Hotel. Between a stop at the hairdresser's to tweak what she describes as her "demure and urchiny" bob and a trip to a strip club for research, the busy actress pauses to give Interview her version of the Anna Friel story so far.

Edward Helmore: How did you hurt your back ?

Anna Friel: The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.

EH: Did you have implants for the part.

AF: No. You can now buy ones that go on top of your breasts, with nipples that go hard if it gets cold. They're not just for actors, they're for anyone - you just put them in your bra. They feel totally real but they're just so bloody heavy.

EH: Some actresses have surgery for roles.

AF: I wouldn't go that far. It;s really important to draw the line on what we do as actors. I'm twenty-two and I've got a life ahead of me.

EH: Are you looking forward to Closer ?

AF: I'm petrified, basically. I've never been onstage in my life. But if I wasn't terrified, I'd be an arrogant fuck. It's exciting; I can't wait to go to rehearsal each day. Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.

EH: You've never been onstage before ?

AF: Actually, no I lie. I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal. This is my first time on Broadway, in a twelve-hundred seater". The best thing is , I'm actually getting to rehearse. I've just done several films back to back, and none of them had rehearsals. For Closer, we've had five weeks. You go into every single word because it's very, very concentrated dialogue.

EH: What's Closer about ?

AF: It's four people - two couples - who meet accidentally and become entwined. It questions love, sex, relationships and whether honesty is always the best policy. In England, when they leave the theatre, men have said to women, "I'm not really like that, am I ?". There's something in the play that everybody can relate to. It's very dark and depressing, but it's so truthful and frank that it's quite horrifying. You think, My God, is there any romance in this world ? Is there any love ?

EH: You've done four films in the last year. Was it time for a change ?

AF: This is a whole new challenge. You can get very enticed by and mixed up with the film world, and I don't want that. I want to do something for myself, not because someone says, "It's good. You should do this. You'll earn that much money", or "It;s with this director or with this person". Working in LA, I realised now easy it is to become a commodity. I look at being an actress as being like a mummy: You're bandaged up and preserved as soon as you start making other people money.

EH: You seem to like challenging stereotypes.

AF: I've always chosen incredibly difficult roles and things like that are often quite offbeat. That way you're not limited. I get bored with this dead, wimpish. "I'm a little girl" character. I don't like that. I love to see personality. And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist. You can see when an actor gets bored: their eyes go dead. I promised myself I'd never let that happen. If it does, I'll go and live on a desert island for a year.

EH: Your first real brush with fame in England came as Beth Jordache in Brookside.

AF: She didn't start out as a lesbian, but this huge story line developed as she questioned her sexuality. I said I'd do the story line as long as she remained gay, as long as it wasn't just a phase she was going through. It was a watershed when she came out - it made the front page of the papers. The show was watched by such a wide scope of people, from four-year-olds to eighty-year-olds, so when it hit , it made me a household name. We didn't do it for shock, but three years ago in England everyone was going, "Oh gosh, this plain-Jane girl next door is gay!"

EH: Was it difficult to be accepted as a "proper" actress after being in a soap ?

AF: It was a bit of a fight at first. People were like, "Oh she's a sap actress and she's not been to drama school. She wont be able to do it" Or "You've got a Northern accent. You're not well-studied in Shakespeare and all the plays of theater" and la-di-da. And then I got a BBC film called The Tribe (1995). After that, they went, "Oh, she can do it once we give her a chance". That started the ball rolling.

EH: Is it difficult to balance being a media babe and a respected actress ?

AF: I am not interested in just being babe Anna Friel - in England it's very easy to do that if you're a pretty girl. I learnt that lesson early on. When I left Brookside, at first nothing happened. I did some interviews and photo shoots that were kind of like, "Hello, I'm still here, I'm doing stuff". I looked at some of the things afterward and thought "Oh, my God, how did they convince me to do that ?" I stopped doing all those bikini things at the same time I cut my hair off.

EH: In Britain you've had your romances splashed across the front pages, your every break-up and makeup documented in the gossip columns.

AF: I got dumped by my boyfriend about two years ago. He went off with this other girl, but rather than allow me to just get on with what I was doing, it was on the front cover of every paper. Then there was this whole thing with him and this new girl... Oh it was just awful. People became more interested in my love life than in me, and that has a certain effect. You start to feel very empty and worth nothing, you start to become a piece in a board game you never wanted to play.

EH: Is it a relief to come to the comparative anonymity of America ?

AF: I'm not known so there's no gossipmongering about me here. In LA, when people asked, "What do you do?" I found myself saying, "I'm a student" because I really couldn't be bothered getting into that thing of, "Oh you're an actress". At first I thought, I don't know if I like this - I've got to prove myself all over again. But it doesn't matter what they know, just what they see.

EH: Does potential fame in America alarm you ?

AF: Scares me shitless. I honestly don't know if I want to go through here what I went through in England, but I also don't know if I want to be a humble actor who just hides away.

EH: You can't go around criticizing and slagging everything off here.

AF: No, you wouldn't want to do that, It's etiquette. It's placing your words carefully, and keeping everything nice, kind of hidden behind a smile. People don't want to see your insecurities here. But I'm too honest. Too truthful. I play a character every day of my life, and I don't want to play a character as myself. They can judge me as an actress, not as a person. I'm not a spokeswoman for Anna.

EH: So what's your secret ?

AF: Hope for the best, expect the worst. That way you're never disappointed. Love like you've never been hurt before. Work like you don't need the money. And dance like nobody's watching.