Her death in Brookside was a damp squib1 but ANNA FRIEL hopes the movie world will shower her with accolades

Taylor Parkes finds out if there's life after Beth

 She looks like a rabbit. I wonder if she'd be cross if I told her

"Dry cleaning."

Not some kind of cutesy chocolate-egg-type flopsy/mopsy bunny rabbit or anything. Just a rabbit. Without the ears. She's got slightly scared eyes, and there's a tiny, almost imperceptible wobble in the voice. Would you be cross?

"Dry cleaning. Don't let me forget. When I leave, just say to me - dry cleaning."

I was sitting at a table in a prearranged cafe; I saw her coming, trying to cross the King's Road through powerful traffic on a hot afternoon, and I almost felt concerned. She didn't look safe out there. It's that rabbit thing. Seriously, do you think she'd be cross? I imagine she can probably look after herself considerably better than I can. And I'd be cross.

"I really, really mustn't forget."

She'd probably think I meant she looked timid or twitchy or meek-and-mild, or that I fancied her or something. You don't just tell strange girls that they look like rabbits. It's not on. I scribble DRY CLEANING on a scrap of paper and buy her a coffee so that we've both got one.

"Thanks."

Seriously, a rabbit. Or perhaps - just perhaps - a girl held together by other people's lust.

"It's so hot, isn't it?"

In conversation, she has an aversion to the word "me" rivalled only by nuns and Rastafarians. Instead, she says things like this:

"They'd wanted to touch on the subject of lesbianism for a while, but they wanted it to be a strong character who turned out to be gay. So they chose Beth. But it all happened at exactly the right time. Suddenly it was cool to be gay. People started talking about lesbian chic and so you started to get pictures of Anna in baby doll dresses and things like that, in magazines, and suddenly all you heard was 'babe babe babe'. It was like 'Hello? I'm an actress, actually!"'

Did you catch that? "Anna". In the third person. If I challenged her, I imagine she'd say she's adopted this curious, unmissable verbal kink to differentiate herself from "Beth", the dead lesbian. But they've got more in common than she thinks: after all, neither of them really exists

"People were only ever interested in Beth. And I had a lot of restrictions placed on me when I was on Brookside. A lot. Whenever I was interviewed, I was always told to talk about how Beth would view certain subjects, not Anna. But finally, people have started asking about Anna."

But Anna doesn't exist. There's a girl in front of me, talking, but she's only pretending. As much as she visibly relaxed on meeting me - realising I was barely older than herself, and probably not given to slobbering or lying or whatever - she's talking in riddles, absurdly self-conscious, watching every word, detached as hell Playing Beth Jordache, Liverpool teenager, innocent murderess and lesbian ikon, she was pretty good. Playing Anna Friel, some stupid idea someone at a tabloid newspaper once had for an assured, precocious ultra-babe, she's terribly unconvincing.

She doesn't fool me. I switch on a tape recorder and wonder what to say to this real girl, in a real place, who has to shop in sunglasses in case someone mistakes her for Anna Friel, some stupid idea someone at some men's magazine once had for a girl held together by other people's lust

"I did used to get old ladies coming up in the street, saying 'Don't worry dear, you'll be back to normal soon. Oh it's such a shame.' But Beth did alter a lot of people's ideas about lesbianism."

Well, yes. If she'd altered people's ideas about, say, disability, I wouldn't be sitting here now,

Did you never worry that there was something slightly sinister about making lesbianism acceptable to the media by selling bulldykes down the river? That you were, just perhaps, strengthening male dominance of the way sexuality is represented, turning sexual difference into simple titillation?

"I don't think I agree with that"

Remember the male gay couple in EastEnders? A few months of The Sun on their backs, and they were gone. It's the people who threw up their hands at that who made Beth into what she was, not lesbians.

"Maybe that's true, but I think that's outweighed, really, by the help it gave to girls who were having trouble coming to terms with their sexuality. But I always asked people what they thought of what we were doing. And, yeah, a few people said Beth made them feel as if they were somehow inadequate if they didn't wear make-up and stuff..."

Then, suddenly, more than to change the subject, I'm sure:

"Oh God, did you see the Sunday Mirror yesterday?"

The Sunday Mirror yesterday published some photographs, taken with a hidden camera, of Anna Friel sunbathing with her boyfriend on a blanket somewhere in Chelsea. In one of them, Anna's boyfriend has playfully removed her bikini top. Sort of sub-Dejeuner sur L'Herbe And the admittedly amusing headline "Darren Frees The Brookside Two".

Yes, I saw the Sunday Mirror yesterday.

"Hahahahahaha! I was so embarrassed! But that headline was so funny - I just laughed and laughed..."

Um, really?

"God, yeah." (She is blushing) "I just hope my Grandma and Granddad don't see it, that's the only thing. That and the fact the shots were so bloody unflattering!"

Well, they were taken by someone sitting in a bush some distance away, with a stiff neck and an erect telephoto lens.

"Which means that they must have followed us from Euston Station, which is pretty scary. I mean, there was no one else around at all. I was actually joking about it, saying, 'You shouldn't have pulled that string on my bikini, the press were probably watching!' Then I look at the paper - oh my God! I just imagined this bloke sitting in a bush with pound signs in his eyes, thinking 'Yes! I don't believe it!' What a sad man! I'm amazed he could keep his hands still enough to press the shutter!"

You must have been trailed for about six months.

"Well, yes, but that's the scum press for you."

(You still think you're listening to Anna Friel? Anna Friel would have sued, or died. The girl I'm with laughs it off, through natural exuberance, or else to hide an embarrassment so huge you couldn't discuss it with people you don't know -besides, she brought up a subject I was genuinely worried would, at the last minute, cause the interview to be cancelled.) Then she laughs again, needlessly.

Beth's dead, anyway.

"You want the full story ? This is the first time I've told anyone, actually. Basically, my agent was advising me to leave Brookside last year, in case Beth completely obliterated Anna, you know, typecasting. But the producer begged me to stay, saying that they wanted to see the storyline through, which made sense. So I signed for six months instead of a year. I think they thought I'd change my mind.

"July was approaching, and I still didn't know what was going to happen, because you have no control over the storylines whatsoever. No one would say how they were going to write her out. They came up with a couple of ideas, but they kept changing their minds. Eventually, they came to me with this idea, which I can't tell you about, saying 'Yeah, we want to make it more issue-based, concentrate on the realities of domestic violence', or something. Then finally, at the last minute: 'No, actually she's going to drop down dead.' Oh. Right. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it"

I read that Beth was going to commit suicide.

"Maybe someone floated that idea in the press to grab people's interest. I dunno. A lot of weird things go on in publicity. No, I think that would have been way too negative and cancelled out everything we'd done with the character. She was supposed to be a strong girl."

Nonetheless, it was the most pathetic death in TV history.

An immediate look of disgust swirls up through her face, beginning with a wrinkled nose, spreading outwards, appalled, in every direction, then suddenly vanishing, pop, like a bubble on a needle.

"Don't even talk to me about it! You know, that was the only episode I didn't watch. I thought the way they handled it was laughable. It was pathetic. Totally negative, totally horrible. And there was no drama whatsoever - just bang! Oh dear, she's dead. I'd have wanted her to die like a suffragette, under the king's horse or something! But then I thought about it, and I thought OK, maybe they have killed off what was - for a lot of people - an ikon, but at least they've created a martyr"

No, to be a martyr, you have to die directly as a result of unjust punishment for your beliefs.

"Yeah, but she refused to plead diminished responsibility, didn't she? If she had, she might not have been in prison, and if she hadn't been in prison, she mightn't have died."

I assume my caring, carefully-practised funeral look. You're just desperately trying to look on the bright side of something that's really upset you, aren't you?

A brief, non-dramatic pause.

"Yes."

"Since I left, I've done a short film called You Drive Me, which is going to be shown at the London Film Festival, and then as a support film for big movies. I've had a lot of offers, but a lot of it's been rubbish. Ideally, I'd like to act in America, in Hollywood, although I don't want to be the traditional English rose type. I'd rather do something a bit more offbeat. I love all that, Tarantino, or beautifully filmed things like The Piano..."

Rabbit, rabbit.

"I'm absolutely terrified that the attention might be behind me now, that Beth was the thing, and no one's interested in Anna. Like all those bands who're really popular, flavour of the month, then you never, ever hear of them again. I'm a complete pessimist. I worry about the future too much to enjoy the present, that's my big fault. But all you need in films is one break..."

I like her a lot, which has, for some reason, put me on my guard.

"I can't watch a film or a TV show the same way anymore. I can see the lights and the cameras just out of shot, I can see 20 or 30 people standing behind the lens. It's not a bad thing, but I'll never be able to watch a film in the same way again..."

Rabbit rabbit rabbit. If this was Anna Friel, she'd be cocky / ruthless / manipulative / calculating /desperate. Convincing.

"People don't know what it's like to be scrutinised 24 hours a day, have at least one person looking at you at any given moment whenever you're out of your house, what it's like to be totally paranoid about every move you make and every word you say. I get self-conscious walking round my flat.."

If this was Anna Friel, she'd be loathsome.

"I hope for the best, but expect the worst. That way you're never disappointed."

As I say goodbye, we shake hands and I say "Good luck". I never say "Good luck". What was I thinking of? "Good luck"??? I think about the nature of fame, and the nature of the famous, for about three seconds, then I notice a scrap of paper that's blown onto the floor.

Anna?

"Yes?"

Dry cleaning.

"Oh God, thanks! I'd have forgotten!"