Despite her success on both stage and screen, Anna Friel is still searching for that elusive hit movie, says Ed Polton

She boasts a pair of gorgeous saucer eyes, the figure of a classical nymph and legs that The Time's theatre critic has described as "built for wrapping round male waists". This genetic headstart is reinforced by a chattering Lancastrian wit, a hefty ego and a designer boyfriend, the actor David Thewlis, who is photographed with her in their hip Clerkenwell loft for the current Burberry advertising campaign. She can even act a bit. All Anna Friel needs now is a hit movie. Just one lousy hit.

The decade-long career of the 25-year-old from Rochdale has been evenly spread between the three acting disciplines of television, theatre and film. But, no doubt to the chagrin of this most fervently ambitious of starlets, her most high-profile successes have come in the two less glamorous categories.

Of the four big British soaps, Friel is missing only EastEnders on her CV, having made appearances in Coronation Street (1991), Emmerdale (1992) and, most memorably, Brookside (1993-95). She was 18 when her eight-second kiss with her co-star Nicola Stephenson sent the nation into a frenzy, helped her to win the 1995 National Television Award for Best Actress and banished all thoughts of a career as a barrister. Ratings plunged when she left the show.

Her subsequent stage career has had its fair share of high points, too. Her portrayal of a 19^th-century tart in an Almeida production of Lulu attracted almost universal praise earlier this year. She also described a six-month run in Patrick Marber's Closer on Broadway in 1999 as "the most brilliant time in my life, being the toast of the town and getting recognition from Pacino and Madonna". But would Al and Madge love her even more if she had made it as a movie star?

"I've been good in everything I've donw," Friel insisted recently of her film career. The only problem is that everything she has done has been either depressingly mediocre, heart-stoppingly awful or has failed to make even the tiniest of blips on the cultural radar.

She followed her debut in an obscure Anglo-Russian film called The Stringer (1997) with roles in a trio of uninspiring period pieces: The Land Girls (1998), St Ives (1998) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999). The woefully underwritten role of Lisa Leeson to Ewan McGregor's Nick in the dire Rogue Trader (1999) saw Friel spend the majority of her screen time cooing helplessly over hubby's descent into financial oblivion. Then came Mad Cows (1999), an adaptation of the Kathy Lette novel, in which she sporadically amusing as a neurotic single mother. Unfortunately, Friel's Ab Fab aspirations were dismissed by one critic as "ad dread".

Such a dispiriting CV would be enough to crush the hopes of your average wannabe film star, but there are signs that Friel's perseverance may be paying off. She was under serious consideration for lead roles in Fight Club (1999) and the forthcoming From Hell, as well as Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Though she narrowly lost out each time, the fact that she was beaten by Helena Bonham Carter, Heather Graham and Cameron Diaz bodes well. Add to this the fact that she has worked with her first big-name director, Barry Levinson, the creator of Good Morning Vietnam, in An Everlasting oiece, which was released in America at the end of last year, and things are certainly looking up for Friel.

However, her most immediate chance of breaking her movie duck may come in the more modest shape of the low-budget Brit flick Me Without You, in which she plays a hedonistic, free-spirited young woman careering through the cultural maelstrom of London and Brighton during the Seventies and Eighties.