FRIEL SPIRIT
Anna Friel sweeps into the library bar at the Covent Garden
Hotel with a glass of Champagne in her hand. Her long chestnut hair is
faux-messy and she looks like Bambi, all eyes and long, skinny, pale legs and
a body as small as a fawn. She is followed by David, her stylist, who is also
carrying a glass of Champagne, plus a range of assorted bags with things like
Moschino and Catherine Walker written on them. "Are we late?" says Friel in
her Rochdale accent. "We are, aren’t we? I’m so sorry." "Anna was having her
hair done," says David. "I was having my hair done," says Friel. "Anyone want
a glass of Champagne?"
Being around Anna Friel is a non-stop party. She barely sits still. Quite
often she jumps up and, apropos of nothing very much, takes her dress off and
stands quite happily naked apart from the world’s tiniest flesh-coloured
G-string, waiting for David to give her something else to wear. An American
couple in the otherwise quiet bar are transfixed. "Who is she?" asks the man,
alarmed by the sight of Friel, legs akimbo, showing off more than she should,
writhing on the floor for the photographer.
"That’s Anna Friel," I say. "She’s an actress," says David. "Wow," says the
man. He then takes a photograph of her with his new mobile telephone.
"Do what you want with it," says Friel smiling. "I really don’t mind."
"Wait till my friends see this!" says the man.
That’s how Friel has always been. Men, particularly, go doolally over her.
They seem to love her brand of sexy, loopy childishness. She drinks. She
smokes (well, she did up until seven weeks ago, when she quit). She wears tiny
little dresses that she looks as if she’s about to fall out of. Often she’s
pictured snogging friends of both sexes. When she’s a bit tiddly she goes all
droopy and touchy-feely.
She’s pretty tactile anyway. She kisses everyone hello. She seems to have no
problem with people invading her personal space. In fact, she seems to
positively encourage it. "You’re very pretty," she says to the make-up artist,
draping an arm around her. When she sees that I’m heavily pregnant, she gets
down on her knees and kisses the bump. "You must call her Gracie," she says.
When she’s not doing that, she likes to show off a bit: acting and singing and
mimicking accents. So much so she often loses her train of thought. "What was
I saying?" she asks David who, most of the time, isn’t really listening. They
met years ago. "She was with Robbie [Williams] then," says David. "Bless
Robbie," says Friel. "She looked so ... so …" says David. "Pretty?" says Friel.
"Defenceless," says David, handing her a beautiful summer, ruffled, crepe
dress. "Put this on Anna, baby, please." She puts it on. "What do you think?"
she says, twirling around and pouting. She looks amazing. "I love her," says
David. "I love him," she says. "He’s my best friend."
Well, in the fickle world of television and film, it’s good she has such a
friend. Although, it has to be said, Friel has always had about a million
friends. In the past she became the object of gossip after apparently kissing
Kate Moss full-on in the Groucho Club.
The two of them used to be very close. They went to Italy on holiday together.
Friel hung out with her and the Natural Nylon set - Sadie and Jude and Jonny
Lee Miller et al. But she doesn’t see much of them these days. "Don’t know why
really," she says, popping on a pink jacket that skims her G-string. "I
haven’t even seen the baby. I’m not in touch with Kate any more." Instead, she
now sees Brenda Fricker, who has been her mother in two movies, the latest
being Watermelon, for ITV.
"I love her," says Friel. "She’s the coolest woman. She gives me lots of great
acting tips, but I’m not allowed to say what they are." Friel scrunches her
hands up to her mouth like a child trying to stop itself from telling a
secret. "I so want to tell you but I can’t. I promised Brenda."
Dustin Hoffman is also a friend. They met when Friel was in Patrick Marber’s
play, Closer, in New York just over three years ago. "I met them all! Steven
Spielberg and Nicole Kidman and Al Pacino and Tom Cruise and Madonna!" says
Friel, who, with her brother, Mike - the Hovis boy pushing his bike up the
hill - would go for dinner with her in Manhattan.
Then, during the nine-month run of the play on Broadway, their beloved
grandfather died, so, after the funeral, they brought their "nana" back to New
York to hang out with them.
"She’s very funny," says Friel. "She kept on calling Madonna ‘Redonna’. ‘Now
then, Redonna,’ she said one night. ‘What do you do for a living?’ "
Anyway, Friel doesn’t see so much of Madonna now either, but she does see
Hoffman. "He’s been for tea with my parents," she says. Her parents, Des and
Julie, both teachers who still live in Rochdale, don’t seem to be fazed by any
of this celebrity stuff. "My dad’s from Belfast," says Friel. "He’s very
plain-speaking. He met Ali G the other day. I was like ‘Oh God, dad, no’. But
off he went into one about the youth of today."
Friel’s life is a bizarre combination of homely normality - she is very close
to her brother and parents and nana - and celebrity. She says she has her feet
on the ground. "My parents would come after me pretty soon if I started
talking shit." But she has spent the past 14 years, since she was in Alan
Bleasdale’s GBH as Michael Palin’s daughter when she was 12, in the spotlight.
The media frenzy around her started in earnest when she played Beth Jordache
in Brookside, a role which culminated with her having an eight-second lesbian
kiss on primetime television. "People still go on about that," she says. "I do
a lot of filming in Ireland, which I love, but I always get that ‘Ooh, you’re
Beth Jordache’ there. I don’t really mind but it was ten years ago."
Since then, there have been some pretty close shaves in her love life. At one
point she almost married "love rat" and light-entertainment "personality"
Darren Day. Now she’s with actor David Thewlis - serious, artistic, considered
one of the most talented actors around. They met three years ago at a dinner
party and, in their first year together, spent only four nights apart. "I love
David," she says. "He’s very sexy in Naked, don’t you think? That’s his best
film."
I imagine Thewlis is part of the reason Friel has calmed down . I can’t
imagine an actor of his calibre hanging out at the Groucho Club with Moss and
her friends. "We like to stay in and eat curries," says Friel. This is
somewhat of a change from her party-girl image. In her pre-Thewlis days she
always seemed nervy, edgy and difficult to please.
And there were all the stories of her being drunk and lonely in New York. "I
was not," she says. "I loved New York. I used to hang out with Rupert Graves
and Judi Dench and Natasha Richardson. It took a bit of time but I had this
great apartment and I’d look out the window and think ‘God, I’m here’."
But the rumours of a deeper unhappiness refused to go away. Perhaps part of
the cause is her fluctuating career. There is no doubt about her ability as an
actress. She’s done television and film (Land Girls, Mad Cows, Rogue Trader)
and theatre, but has not, as yet, broken into the superstar mould in the style
of someone such as Kate Winslet.
"You know what really annoys me?" she says. "People who keep asking me ‘what
are you doing back in England?’ I went to LA to make a movie a while ago and
then everyone assumed I’d failed in Hollywood because I came back. Then, when
Closer finished, I came back from New York and everyone started asking the
same questions all over again. Why can’t people understand that when a job is
finished you come home? What was I supposed to do? Stay there for ever and
just hang around waiting for someone to offer me some more work. It really
pisses me off."
She also gets cross at those who lingeron the roles she didn’t get - she was a
bat’s squeak away from landing the role in Gangs of New York that went to
Cameron Diaz. "I’d rather people talked about the roles I have done," she
says. The problem is she seems to be slightly in limbo. "Oh, everyone asks me
why I do TV," she says. "I did Fields of Gold when I came back from doing Lulu
on stage in Washington and I was criticised for ‘selling out’, but I was
interested in the subject."
In fact it seems her relationship with the politically astute Thewlis, plus a
burgeoning friendship with Trudie Styler and Sting, has led to her becoming a
bit of a revolutionary. "Ooh, nothing that serious," she says. "But I’m
anti-GM food and I eat organically and that kind of thing." She and Thewlis
are against the war. They marched on Saturday, along with friends and family.
"I don’t want to become a spokesman about this, but I feel worried and very
ill-informed by the government," she says. Thewlis is, apparently, a lot more
fearful of the results of a war than most. "He says it’ll be apocalyptic. He
says it’s World War Three. He knows lots of things, David, so it really
worries me." Just then Friel’s mobile rings. David, the stylist, picks it up.
"It’s your David for you!" he says. "My David!" yells Friel. "My lovely
David." They chat for a while. "I love you," she says to him at the end.
However, it’s not marriage and children, yet. She’d love to have children, she
says, but at 26 she’s still too young. And, with Thewlis being 13 years older
than her and obviously rather protective, I should think she’d have to get out
of her own part-time childlike state first.
Her main dilemma is that she still wants to concentrate on her career. "If I
have children I know I’ll probably wonder why I’m bothering to be an actress.
I’ll probably want to be with them, not on some boring old set." She has a
Hollywood blockbuster, Timelines, coming out this summer, plus a project she
is mysteriously just about to sign a contract for. "I don’t want to jinx it,
but it’s going to be great if it all happens." she says. And she’s also got
involved with the Haven Trust, a breast cancer charity, and its fundraising
Little Black Dress charity auction. "I bumped into John Rocha in Dublin. He’s
one of my favourite people. He asked me to model a little black dress for the
charity. It’s beautiful but a bit too big."
After a bit more posturing and posing she says she has to go. Thewlis is
waiting for her in their flat in Clerkenwell. "He hasn’t ordered the curry
yet," she says. "What should I go for?" "Chicken korma?" suggests David. We
all then hum and ha over what she should wear to a press screening of
Watermelon, which she is attending the next day.
More clothes are put on and stripped off. We decide on a pink jacket and jeans
and high heels. David will, of course, be there in the morning to tweak. Then
he’s off to Munich and she’s off to the Canary Isles with her mother and
father on holiday.
Friel adds: "I have a house in Windsor. I moved there to be near my
godparents. I remember spending holidays with them as a child. It was a
magical place for me, so I’ve moved back there. But today I was stopped three
times by the police!"
That’s the problem with childhood dreams though, surely. They’re always
impossible to replicate all those years later. "Oh, do you think so?" she
says. "Please don’t say that. Please." And, for a fleeting second, with those
long bare legs, she looks about six years old.
Then she gathers herself together and, along with David and the bags and some
refilled Champagne glasses, wanders off into the night.