1
December 2005
Here are Anna's
upcoming TV appearances for December:—
Perfect Strangers
and Timeline
continue to run throughout the month on SKY Movies' even-numbered film channels,
while the episode of Cadfael featuring Anna can be seen again on
ITV3 this Saturday (3rd December).
US visitors should check out
this link
for all of Anna's cable TV appearances between now and the end of December (Timeline
and
Sunset Strip).
2
November 2005
Anna's next movie is
released in cinemas this month. Here's the press release:—
"Niagara Motel
stars Anna alongside Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects) and Craig Ferguson
(Saving Grace), as Denise, a young mother fresh out of rehab and desperate to
get her baby back from social services. All her attempts at presenting
herself as a reformed model mother seem to backfire, taking the story further
into blackly comic farce.
NIAGARA MOTEL will be opening at:
Odeon Panton St
Genesis Mile End
Vue Shepherds Bush
Cineworld Sheffield
Vue Cardiff
Vue Bristol
Vue Birmingham
and other cinemas nationwide on 11th
November."
The film has an official site featuring a trailer, a game,
character profiles and press comments. Click
here to go
there.
1
November 2005
Here are Anna's
upcoming TV appearances for November:—
Perfect Strangers
and Timeline
continue to run throughout the month on SKY Movies' even-numbered film channels,
while the episode of Cadfael featuring Anna gets no less than three airings on
ITV3, all on 28 November.
US visitors should check out
this link
for all of Anna's cable TV appearances between now and the end of November (Timeline,
Watermelon
and
Sunset Strip).
23 October 2005
Thanks
to James for dropping me
this link to another online interview, this one from the Motoring section at
The Times!
Anna
Friel, 29, was born in Rochdale, Lancashire. She attended a theatre workshop
in Oldham, but her career took off when she played lesbian Beth Jordache in
Channel 4’s Brookside. She courted controversy again in the late 1990s by
dating Robbie Williams and partying with Kate Moss and has starred in films
including Rogue Trader, opposite Ewan McGregor, and A Midsummer Night’s
Dream with Michelle Pfeiffer. She has a baby daughter with fellow actor
David Thewlis and lives in Windsor
Anna Friel is so intent on waving hello when she parks her new Saab
convertible that she inadvertently backs it into a post. When she realises
what’s happened she lurches the car forward in a panic and leaps out to
inspect the damage. She breathes a sigh of relief — there’s no sign of a
scratch, just a bit of wood dust on the bumper.
“Don’t put that in the interview, I’ll die of embarrassment,” she says,
squealing with laughter. “I’m a very good driver usually. I’ve never even
had so much as a knock before.”
Blame it on a lack of sleep. Her baby daughter Gracie has been disturbing
her twice nightly for the past nine weeks. But when she picks her up and
strolls over to her favourite spot by the river in Windsor, where she lives,
she looks remarkably composed for someone who hasn’t had a full night’s rest
for weeks.
Baby Gracie is the primary reason for buying the Saab 9-3 Aero. Having
always hankered after a convertible, Friel read in Which? that Saab produced
the safest model in the range she was looking at and that sealed her
decision.
Born and raised in Rochdale, Friel shot to fame at age 16 playing Beth
Jordache in Brookside and bought her first car, a Peugeot 106, a year later.
She moved from soap star to sex symbol after making British television
history by planting the first on-screen lesbian kiss.
When she left the series 10 years ago she remained in the public eye for all
the wrong reasons: her party-girl friendship with Kate Moss and romantic
entanglements first with Robbie Williams and then Darren Day.
But in 2000 she moved out of London seeking a quieter life in Windsor and
soon afterwards met the recently divorced David Thewlis, an actor whose
credits include Naked, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Kingdom
of Heaven.
“We’re definitely going to stop taking film projects at the same time as
each other,” she says. “At least in Gracie’s early years we’re going to aim
to accompany each other on set and make sure one of us is always available
to her.”
Despite winning huge success on Broadway in 1999 playing in the stage
version of Patrick Marber’s Closer (taking the part played by Natalie
Portman in the film), Anna has failed to make the kind of impact on the
cinema screen that will secure big roles from casting directors — something
she hopes will change with her new film, Goal! Someone must believe in the
success of the movie because work has begun on filming the sequel and a
third instalment is planned for next year. Friel is due to return to work in
a few weeks and gossip columns have been rife with comments about her figure
and reports that she is trying to lose weight for nude scenes in the sequel.
“It makes me so angry because there isn’t a shred of truth in what’s being
printed,” she says. “Someone asked a producer what would happen to my
character in part two, and the reply, clearly a joke, is that I’m going to
be having a lot of sex and nude scenes. The next thing I know I am being
accused of being an irresponsible role model to young women. But no one
actually called me to check whether the reports were true.”
As their first joint investment she and Thewlis split the cost of a BMW X5
three years ago, but Thewlis is the one who drives it, leaving Friel to cope
with his older Mini. Up until now this hasn’t been a problem — she’s quite
enjoyed nipping around town in a smaller car — but since there isn’t much
room for a pram she’s been keen to switch to a larger car.
“The Saab drives really well,” she says. “I didn’t want another BMW or a
Mercedes because everyone has one of them. I never liked the old Saabs,
which were very straight, but the newer model has got sleek curves and
that’s very important to a woman.
“I used to have an MG and I love having the roof down — it’s the sexiest way
to dry your hair. But I never felt very safe in it. It was tinny and light
as though it could come off the road at any moment, so I’m relieved the Saab
feels so chunky and solid.”
She is careful, she says, to prevent her natural caution on the road (she
has no points on her licence) from extending to nagging when she is in the
passenger seat. Thewlis — whose father used to drive racing cars — knows
London like the back of his hand so won’t tolerate any advice or directions
from the passenger seat, she says.
“That’s one way guaranteed to get him cross,” she says. “At the moment we’ve
got a bit of an argument going about the indicator — I always put it on to
let drivers know I want to pull out, but he only puts it on when he actually
moves out, having waited for a space first. We debate who is right and who
is wrong and I think I’m right because I’ve done the driving test more
recently.”
She is surprisingly open about intimate aspects of her life — even to the
extent of explaining why she won’t open her mouth to smile for the
photographer. She is wearing braces to close gaps in her teeth brought on by
mouth sores that her doctor has told her are due to a hormone imbalance.
“They’re really big and horrid — look,” she says, peeling back her upper lip
to reveal lumps between her teeth. “I’ve had to have them cut out without
anaesthetic four times and now they have created gaps in my teeth so I’m
wearing braces. I feel sorry for every teenager who ever had to endure them
— they are so painful.”
Nice to know that Hollywood hasn’t glossed over her northern directness.
On her CD changer
I usually choose something classical: orchestral music by Debussy, or a Bach
concerto. Driving is my thinking time and music like this doesn’t get in the
way. I’ve also got into X&Y by Coldplay, although I didn’t like it at first
13 October 2005
With the publicity
that always surrounds a new movie release — even
movies as commercially unsuccessful as those that Anna usually gets involved in —
there have been several interviews and new pictures published on the back of
Goal!.
The pictures I've seen and collected so
far are already newly online of course, so here's a roundup of the current crop of
online news, views and gossip, together with web links to the original stories.
As usual I've copied the full text here
with the links anyway, in case they disappear over time.
First off is an
extensive interview from
The Independent Online dated 7th October . . .
'The problem with the
films I'm in is that nobody bloody sees them," says Anna Friel, still
remarkably loquacious after an exhausting day of press interviews. "If I
mention most of them to people they say, 'which one was that?' and look at
me with this gormless, blank expression, so I'm hoping that this movie
will change all that." The movie in question is Goal!, a big-budget
football extravaganza that, backed by FIFA and sponsored by Adidas, stars
the handsome newcomer Kuno Becker as Santiago Munez, a young and dirt-poor
Mexican Los Angeleno who, against all the odds (and common sense), becomes
the star of the Newcastle football squad.
Written by Ian La
Frenais and Dick Clement, the film appears to be an attempt by the gods of
soccer to spread the word Stateside, sell loads of merchandise, and make
loads of sequels. "It looks as if this film will have a damn good go at
really popularising football in America," says the actress. "But we'll
see. They were clever choosing Kuno, who is not the obvious choice, but
he's got that sort of Robbie Williams, Antonio Banderas thing and he is
kind of warm and sensitive. All the female journalists are loving him."
Friel plays Roz Harmison,
Becker's nurse, love interest and link to reality." It was not the most
taxing role I've ever done," admits the actress, smiling gently.
"But it came at exactly
the right time and I'd never played a Geordie or a nurse and I'd never
done a football film or even been to a football match." But, for Friel,
such seemingly unchallenging work is a means to an apparently more
important end. "There are still a few good American movies being made with
the good writers and good directors," she says, her soft Rochdale accent
still remarkably intact. "And you need to be a bigger name to be
considered for parts, and to be considered you have to be in film that
does well, and I want to be considered.
The critics have not
been kind to the film, but Friel is upbeat: "Goal! is a nice,
all-round feelgood film that the dads can take their sons to and enjoy it.
It's very harmless; a nice switch off, don't think too much, sit back and
be entertained, kind of film."
For Anna Friel, after
years of diligent slog , it might be the break she has long deserved. "I
started acting what seems like light-years ago," says the 29-year-old
actress, dazzlingly Pre-Raphaelite in a bustier and curls. " My drama
teacher at school thought I had talent and said I should go and
investigate it, so I did these classes in pure improvisation. I wanted to
become a barrister, but acting was something I loved. I was good at it and
I wanted to get better at it so I stuck with it.
"I got a part from my
first audition, when I was 13, in the mini series GBH."
In 1992 Friel was cast
as Poppy Bruce in Emmerdale and, the following year, aged 17,
accepted the role of Beth Jordache in Brookside, a part that
dominated both the show and, for a while, the headlines. "My family were
all cool even though I was halfway through my A-levels." reflects Friel.
"I stayed with my mum
and dad and drove to Liverpool every day. They were very concerned that I
kept two feet on the ground." As Beth Jordache, Friel's popularity soared,
and so did the show's ratings, as the storyline revealed that Beth and her
sister had been the victim of their father's sexual abuse. When Beth and
her mother killed him and buried him under their patio, Brookside's
popularity rocketed. Then Beth revealed her sapphic sensibilities and
snogged the actress Nicola Stephenson on prime-time TV.
"My grandma hated me
kissing that girl," remembers Friel, chuckling. "She said: 'Now I hope you
won't be doing that anymore!' But the controversy that kiss caused was
ridiculous. It was on the news and in the papers and, because of that, I
am still 'her from Brookside'. But, looking back, the show made people
know who I was. I never want people to forget I come from Rochdale but I'd
like them to forget I did Brookside."
After Friel left Brookside in 1995 the show never quite recovered, while the actress
went from strength to strength, starring alongside Rachel Weisz and
Catherine McCormack in her movie debut, The Land Girls and then
earning fantastic notices for her performance, as Alice the young
stripper, in Patrick Marber's Closer. The play proved so successful
in London that, in 1999, Friel found herself performing on Broadway
alongside Natasha Richardson, Ciaran Hinds and Rupert Graves. "I was
scared shitless," laughs the actress. "But I loved it and I think I
handled it well, but wish I could do it again now that I'm a bit more
mature. Broadway is something else and New York was life-changing for me,
as people started to know me for my work and not all the Brookside stuff and the ex-boyfriends and da-de-da."
That same year Friel,
having won the prestigious Drama Desk Award for Best Supporting Actress on
Broadway, capitalised on her critical success and broadened her horizons
by starring in A Midsummer Night's Dream. "I think that sort of
changed things for me, especially in America, because the cast was really
great - Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale - and people
started to think, 'if she's working with them she must be doing well'."
Back in the UK, after
Friel had dated Robbie Williams, hung out with the likes of Kate Moss and
dined with Madonna, the tabloid press dubbed her a party girl. "I didn't
party that much!," protests Friel. "I went out a few times. If hear that
question one more time, you know - 'Are the party days over?' - I will
just... just... keel over and die. But, these days, you have to live in a
convent if you're in the public eye otherwise you're called a party
animal. But I was young, single, and in the big city - what else was I
going to do? I had lived a very work-orientated life until I was 20. I
didn't go out at all. I was very single and I didn't want to stay in on my
own, so I went out and had some fun."
In 2001, maybe as a
reaction to the press attention, Friel went back to do what she was made
to do. She found herself in a converted bus station in London's King's
Cross, playing the title role in Frank Wedekind's disturbing play, Lulu.
Written in the late 1890s, the play was formerly split in two (one half
was most famously adapted for the silver screen in 1929 by GW Pabst as Pandora's Box and starring Louise Brooks), it's lead role considered
by many to be one of theatre's most exacting female roles.
"Going back to the stage
to do Lulu was really terrifying as it was such a hard part,"
admits Friel, taking a big gulp of coffee.
"It was very dark; I got
murdered and raped by Jack the Ripper every night and I was physically
very sick for a lot of the production, but I liked it all the same. In
fact I am determined to get better at stage-work because, if you can be
that dedicated and tell the same story night after night after night, it
really improves you as an actress. I just spoke to my bloke David
[Thewlis], and, although he hasn't been on the stage for 15 years, he is
doing a play in LA right now written by Charlie Kaufman - the writer of Adaptation - especially for him alongside Meryl Streep. He rang me and
he said: 'When theatre is good it is really good; you have this power in
your hand that is indescribable', and I agree and I want to do more."
One thing that Friel
doesn't seem that keen on repeating is American television, having
recently starred in the Fox network's The Jury." I did An
Everlasting Piece in 1999, which was directed by Barry Levinson,"
remarks Friel. "And he asked me to work with him on a TV show called
The Jury, in New York last year. He was producing, directing and
starring in it and it was like nothing I've done before. Everyone was
saying, 'you will never believe how much hard work it is', and I was
telling them not to worry because I'm used to it having been in Brookside and a lot of low-budget movies, but my God were they right.
I didn't ever see my trailer. You run off the set from one scene and get
changed and run back on. It is so fast and so very well organised but it
is hard, hard bloody work.
"But they do it so
well," adds the obviously impressed Friel, after a moments reflection.
"Especially with shows like The Sopranos, that make British TV look
really small. I think they can achieve such great results because they
start off thinking, 'this is going to be a hit', and throw money at it. In
the UK it's like, 'lets see if it's popular, then we'll put some money
into it'. In my opinion the US now makes better TV than movies. I think
all the great writers have moved to TV because it makes more money and is
more accessible.
"David and me just
watched the whole first series of 24 in about a week. It was like,
'shall we watch another one?', 'Mmm, OK!'. It was the same with The
Sopranos and Desperate Housewives - the writing is so good, and
they are great at creating these hooks that keep us watching."
It's lucky for Friel
that she finds such TV so appealing as she and David Thewlis, her
boyfriend of five years, will be staying in a lot more now since their
baby daughter, Gracie, was born on 9 July.
"Being a mother really
puts things in perspective," declares Friel, glowing with joy. "It's not
that I couldn't care less about my career, it's just that I now I feel
more confident because, if I can cope with this gruelling promotional
press schedule on three hours' sleep with breast milk pouring out all over
the place and be a good mum then I can do anything. But I adore being a
mum. I love it, and seeing my baby's lovely little smile is the best way
to start and the best way to end the day. She is upstairs right now and I
miss her so much. As soon as I go to my room I will have a little cuddle.
I am very happy where I am now. I am at a good stage."
Next an article
from
Female First dated 1st October . . .
Anna
Friel has been forced to wear a dental brace - after her pregnancy left her
with a gap in her front teeth.
The stunning actress, who recently gave birth to baby daughter Gracie,
suffered tumours between her teeth brought on by her pregnancy and now she
has to wear a brace to repair the damage. .
She confessed: "They were really bad. The tumours grew and made a gap
between my two front teeth. Which I didn't mind that much, but everyone else
was, like, 'No, you're a leading woman, they don't have gaps!'" .
However, Anna admits she hates wearing the brace, and tries to keep her
mouth closed at all times so no one can see it.
She revealed to Britain's Sunday Telegraph Magazine: "I'm, like, 19! I keep
going round with my lips pulled together. The brace is horrific, really
painful, like a vice. I've become incredibly paranoid about it I don't want
a picture of my metal mouth!".
We have the
BBC's website, which features a 6-minute
video interview . . .
Anna Friel has never been
far from the headlines. Whether sharing saliva with another woman in TV's
Brookside or dating the tabloids' favourite love rat Darren Day, she's
always been good for coverage. She's been working constantly since the age
of 16 - including opposite Ewan McGregor in Nick Leeson biopic Rogue Trader
- but has tended to save her best performances for the stage. She recently
became a mother for the first time, with partner David Thewlis, and is now
delivering a Geordie accent as wide as the Tyne itself in Goal!
And the report from FilmFocus on
Anna's pitch for a part in the next Harry Potter movie . . .
While
Anna Friel needs no introduction, she's perhaps best known to Harry Potter
fans as the wife of Prisoner of Azkaban's David Thewlis. Talk has been rife
on Potter message boards that she'd make the perfect Tonks, who (and if
you've not read the sixth book yet, skip to the next paragraph) has somewhat
of a romantic involvement with Thewlis' Remus Lupin in Half-Blood Prince.
Tonight she confirmed to FilmFocus that it was a possibility and not only
that but she told us the role would be ideal. "I don't know if it'll happen
but I'd absolutely love to play Tonks," she said, "I'd absolutely love to.
It's my dream part!"
But Friel, who recently celebrated the birth of a new baby girl with
Thewlis, was typically dismissive about her chances. "I'm sure they're going
to go for some bigger names," she told us, "but I'd like to." Doesn't sound
right to us - for our money Friel would make the perfect Tonks. We'll keep
our fingers crossed and, of course, update you as we hear more.
Finally the
Manchester Evening News on Anna's technique for getting her perfect
figure back
WE'VE
all tried holding in our stomachs to look thinner - but film star Anna Friel
took things a stage further to regain her figure after childbirth.
The Rochdale-born actress, who shot to fame as Beth in Brookside, used a
state-of-the-art slimming machine that combines a wetsuit and vacuum to
shift the pounds.
The bizarre device sucks out the air between the body and the suit,
supposedly increasing blood flow around the stomach area and thereby
absorbing fat.
And it seems to have worked - Ms Friel has shrunk back to a size eight only
three months after the birth of her daughter Gracie three months ago.
Ms Friel, 29, told an Italian magazine: "I wear this space-age wetsuit that
wires me up to a suction pump as I walk a treadmill.
"You are judged if you gain it [weight], you are judged if you lose it. I
just wanted to get into my natural shape."
Ms Friel - whose film credits include The Land Girls and A Midsummer Night's
Dream - was under pressure to lose weight in order to shoot nude scenes for
her latest movie.
She turned to the machine, called the Vacunaut, as an alternative to
liposuction or hours of hard graft in the gym. Instead she has been using
the contraption for light workouts of just 30 minutes or so a few times a
week.
Slimming experts are still divided on whether the Vacunaut is a miracle
device or just a short-term fix that simply removes liquid from the body.
Ms Friel, whose partner is actor David Thewlis, is due to start filming in
the next few weeks a follow-up to her most recent movie, Goal!
09 October 2005
A free DVD of Anna's
movie
Rogue Trader
is included with every copy of today's Mail on Sunday.
16 September 2005
Anna attended the
premiere of her latest movie release
Goal in
Leicester Square last night.
The sequel starts
principal filming next month, with second-unit shots already in the can.
01 September 2005
As ever you will find
multiple showings of Anna's films on TV this month. Between SKY Movies and
FilmFour you can catch
Perfect Strangers,
The Land Girls
and Timeline
no less than 37 times between now and the end of October.
US visitors should check out
this link
for all of Anna's cable TV appearances between now and the end of September
(Timeline,
Rogue Trader,
Sunset Strip,
The War Bride
and a rare(ish) outing for the TV drama
Watermelon).
28 July 2005
Anna's TV appearances
for August include what I think must be the UK TV premiere of
Perfect Strangers.
It's on SKY Movies 2 at 6:20am on Monday 22 August, repeated at 15:20 that
afternoon on the same channel. If those times are inconvenient check SKY
Movies 4 the following Friday, when it appears twice more. The male lead
is Rob Lowe, but of more interest to most visitors is the fact that the gorgeous
Sarah Alexander also features.
There are of course the
usual multiple showings of
The War Bride
and Timeline
— check your favourite TV listings for dates and
times; they are too frequent to bore you with here.
US visitors should check out
this link
for all of Anna's cable TV appearances between now and the end of August
(Timeline, Rogue Trader, Sunset Strip and A Midsummer Night's Dream).
12 July 2005
Congratulations to Anna
and David on the birth of their first child, daughter Gracie. Today is
also of course Anna's 29th birthday, so a double cause for celebration.
An official announcement about the
birth will be made on Friday,
apparently. I've no idea what that means, especially given that it appears
to have taken a few days for the news to come out as it is, but tremendous news all round.
Gracie Ellen Mary Friel was born
at Great Portland Street Hospital, London at 11.55am
on Saturday 9th July, weighing 7lbs 4oz.. Anna's dad Des
— aka Gramps now I guess! —
has confirmed that both mother and baby are
doing well and are now back at their London home after the birth on Saturday.
He also revealed
that Gracie isn't named after Rochdale's most famous entertainer
Gracie Fields, but after Anna's great great
grandmother.
15 June 2005
Thanks again to Dave C
for the two most recent scans of Anna, added to the site today.
Seeing her looking so heavily pregnant is a
clear reminder that Anna is more than likely going to be a mum before her 29th
birthday dawns on the 12th of next month.
03 June 2005
Zoo magazine nominated
Anna their "Hot Babe Of The Day" yesterday.
Here's the link and, as usual, in case you're reading this in 3 years time
and it's long since disappeared, here's the article . . .
Who’s this lady?
She rarely does smiling, but Anna Friel always does looking sensational – hence
we reckon it’s time she was named Babe Of The Day.
But why here, and why now?
The former Brookie birdie found fame by lezzing up onscreen, and has never
looked back. She’s now expecting her first kiddie with actor bloke David Thelwis,
meaning the days of rolling out of clubs and into the papers are probably behind
her – but we can at least reminisce.
And where can I see more of this young lady?
The Anna Friel Homage Page dwarfs any other online offering, with almost 2,000
pics and 150 clips of Anna in action. Her official site is naff in comparison –
then again, it was last updated in October 2001. That said, do take a second to
admire the two very decent arty photo shoots. If you’re more interested in
personality than seeing said lady in her smalls, The Anna Friel Reference Site
offers an impressively vast selection of interviews and magazine articles.
01 June 2005
Another link to an
interview with Anna today,
lifted from
The Times web site . . .
YOU HAVE to hand it
to Anna Friel. Though she’s seven months pregnant and suffering from something
truly vile, the 28-year-old has trooped to Kentish Town, North London, from her
home in Windsor to be photographed in a Tommy’s T-shirt. Tommy’s is a charity
that funds research into premature birth, stillbirth and miscarriage, and it is
bringing out a black sleeveless T-shirt to raise money.
So Friel has come, small, verdant, fertile, in a blue Alberta Ferretti dress and
flat round-toed gold sandals, to be photographed wearing it. When she shows me
her teeth I can’t believe she left the house. “I’ve had such a good pregnancy,
but I’ve got really bad sores on my gums. Can you see?” she asks, flaring her
lips to reveal numerous bleeding, warty lumps nudging like moss between her
teeth. I blanch in horror.
“Oh, these are nothing!” she cries in a rapid, flat northern voice. “I just
underwent four hours of surgery to have the first lot cut out so the infection
didn’t get to the baby. All these doctors kept saying: ‘It’s fine, they’re just
these things called pregnancy tumours.’ But they were just getting bigger and
bigger. I found a gum specialist and she said: ‘You must get them cut out.’
“But you’re not allowed anything when you’re pregnant, so she did 12 injections
in the roof of my mouth. She said ‘Are you OK?’ and I said ‘No! I can feel you
cutting my gums with a scalpel.’
“It was awful. David (Thewlis, her boyfriend of five years), bless him, was
holding my feet. But the tumours have just started to come back. It’s incredibly
embarrassing — you’re eating a meal in company and your mouth fills with blood.”
By now she has straightforwardly greeted all the people waiting for her — the
T-shirt designer, the photographer, the girl from Tommy’s — and is sitting in
the office beside the photographic studio, having tried to give me the only
comfortable chair. “Do you have any biscuits or hot chocolate, because I’ve not
had lunch?” she asks, and then starts talking, in the same calm, rapid tone,
about absolutely everything in her life — her new film, her last film, her baby,
how she got pregnant (“a happy mistake”), and David Thewlis.
He is a much respected actor, having starred in Naked, The Big Lebowski and now
Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom; she has done 16 films that few people have
seen. Yet she is by far the more famous, thanks to a stint in the 1990s as Beth
Jordache in Brookside (she had the lesbian kiss), a notorious ditching by Darren
Day (he ran off with Tracy Shaw, who played a hairdresser in Coronation Street)
and a track record of going out with Robbie Williams and hanging out with Kate
Moss.
I have to admit, I wasn’t excited about meeting her. Brookside babe, I thought
glumly. Pretty girl about town, made lots of duff movies, not very interesting.
But she is uplifting. Maybe it’s because she’s so happy, or maybe it’s her
northern-ness, but I’ve not seen a celebrity so comfortable in their skin. There
is no attempt to hide anything. She is warm and down-to-earth, with a nice
streak of saltiness, like the rim on a glass of tequila. “I’m a bit stubborn. I
don’t like being told what to do,” she says of the criticism of her friendship
with Kate Moss and Robbie, “and I’m not going to not hang with people because it
makes me look bad. They’ve got great, successful careers, and if they want to
have that kind of lifestyle the only people they hurt are themselves.”
At 42, Thewlis is 14 years older than her. They met on a flight to Cannes. “It
was the best of British: Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Rachel Weisz. All
on the same plane. Can you imagine? ‘Britain’s film industry goes down!’ We were
laughing about it on the plane. And we got on really well, I think because we
were the only two northerners. He’s Blackpool and I’m Rochdale. But nothing
happened.
“Then we met again two years later, but he had a girlfriend and had just split
up with his ex-wife. It was two years after that we were taken to dinner by
Bradley and Damon who own (the film production company) Natural Nylon. David had
just finished his novel — just typed, literally, ‘The End’ — and they said: ‘We
think you two would get on really well.’
“And we did. He came to my house that night and he never left!” Friel grins
through shiny, swollen lips. “I’d stopped hanging out with Kate Moss by then and
calmed down. I’d bought my place in Windsor. He came and said, ‘It’s really not
what I expected’. I’m very grown-up with my house. I collect lots of antiques
and Pre-Raphaelite paintings.”
I ask what she liked about him, and she says, promptly, his calmness. Then she
says: “He had this thing when I first met him, that he kept rocking. I just
thought he needed a great big hug!” The day we meet he has given an interview
saying he used to be angsty, but she had made him a lot happier. Friel lights
with pleasure when I tell her this. “That’s nice! Everyone keeps saying: ‘When
are you going to get married?’ It’s like, ‘Give us a chance! Let’s have the baby
first!’
“I think because he’s been married before and had all the romance and air go out
of it . . .” she breaks off. “But I’ve never seen a man so happy at having a
child. And we didn’t plan or try. Because my ovarian cyst burst four years ago
and I had something called endometriosis, the doctors had said it would be very
difficult for me to have children. And it literally happened after one time of
being naughty!’
She has said openly that they spent so much time apart last year that they hit
the rocks. “David hates me going into details about relationships,” she says
easily, when I ask about this, “but obviously if you have only a week together
in six months there are bound to be problems. But he’s had a great year, doing
Kingdom of Heaven and the Terrence Malick movie, and working with all the best
directors. Then I went to Canada and we spent some time together, and managed to
create!”
She plans to go back to work in September. But she thinks it will be fine —
Thewlis will come with her on set and she’ll have an au pair. She’s wary,
however, of a Posh and Becks-style nanny stitch-up. “I think it’s horrendous,”
she exclaims, widening her blue eyes and staring through a tousle of brown
curls. “I really do. What precedent does that set?”
I ask if she has been following the birth of Darren Day’s baby. He left Suzanne
Shaw, his then girlfriend, three months after she gave birth.
Friel hesitates tactfully. “I — I . . . don’t know the ins and outs, I haven’t
talked to him about it, I only see what I read in the press.” But she admits
that the worst time in her life, apart from her granddad’s death, was their
break-up. “Reading it on the covers of papers — that wasn’t very nice, being
completely on my own in London, going: ‘Brookside’s finished, what the hell am I
going to do?’ I say it is probably the best thing that could have happened. “It
is,” she agrees. “If people make mistakes, they tend to keep making them. I’ve
learnt to trust my first instincts, because if you have an odd feeling, or there
are certain traits that you don’t quite trust or like, even if people can hide
them for two or three years, they come back. It’s the truest saying, that a
leopard doesn’t change his spots.”
I ask about Robbie. “I find him . . . intriguing,” she says through a mouthful
of biscuit. “He’s managed, from what I hear, to stay off the drink and drugs, so
I wish him every success. We were together six months, split up when he went
into rehab, then we went out again for a while. But there were too many issues
and stuff. I’ve never bumped into him. It’s really extraordinary. I ’ve never
bumped into Kate. None of them. I really think life’s like a tree: you take one
branch and go a completely different way and never see them again.”
Her talk of drugs and rehab has made me wonder how druggy she was. She admits:
“I did experiment and go out and try drugs. But not to the extent that I was a
‘party girl’. I just lived a bit more in the public eye, and was a bit more
guilty by association. I was single, going out to clubs and being seen drunk a
few times.”
In Thewlis she went for someone totally different. Serious, thoughtful,
literary, he would not be seen dead at the Met Bar. “I thought they weren’t good
for me,” she observes of her more dodgy exes. “The media hated me going out with
Darren. It was like: ‘Anna’s cool. Why is she going out with some prat who’s in
musicals?’ But he and I had a really good relationship. We didn’t do drugs and
we didn’t drink — it was just a lovely, proper first love. Then I think he just
went off the rails and got a bit confused.”
By getting pregnant she has morphed from party girl to sensible mother. It is a
remarkable transformation. “But I come from a very, very solid background,” she
points out, “with two parents who are desperately in love, still, and come and
visit me on every set.” Her father, Des, was a teacher until four years ago. He
now designs websites. Her mother, a deputy head, teaches special- needs children
at a Rochdale comp.
The one bit of the jigsaw that hasn’t come into place is her career. She made
the mistake of turning down a part in The Mummy and then landed a role in Gangs
of New York, only to have the part snatched by Cameron Diaz.
Her highest-profile role since Brookside has been in the play Closer on
Broadway. But she wasn’t even asked to read for the movie. “Aaah, that was such
a great part!” she laments, clearly still gutted. “But it’s a Catch-22. If
you’re not in a film that does really well, you’ve not got the name to support
the audience.”
That Broadway period was rather starry, with Madonna and Al Pacino dropping into
her dressing room, and Jack Nicholson saying he wouldn’t rest until he’d met
her. “It was nice, and Madonna was very lovely and very professional and kind,”
is all she will observe, in the slightly flat voice of someone who can’t say too
much.
In her passion to get on, she made four movies last year — Goal!, a football
drama; Niagara Motel, a Canadian arthouse number in which she played a
heroin-addicted mother; The Jury, a courtroom thriller; and Irish Jam, a black
comedy in which she plays an Irish singer with a child. They are all low-key,
though Goal! is from Disney — it is the sequel that she has to make in
September. After the birth, that is.
A look of genuine fear darkens her face at the prospect: she outlines in graphic
detail what it can do to the lower half of the body. “Please don’t put that in
the interview!” she exclaims afterwards. “It’ll make me seem so vulgar!” I leave
her in gales of laughter talking to the Tommy’s people and the designers. Sorry
to be enchanted, but Friel is like an Ecstasy pill. Just a piece of her puts you
in an excellent mood.
01 June 2005
In the UK SKY Movies
will be showing
The War Bride
on no less than 14 occasions this month, while Timeline
appears twice. Artsworld has Our Mutual
Friend on Sunday 5th at 3pm.
Anna can be seen in the US in
Me Without You
on Starz Cinema on 3 and 4 June, and in
Sunset Strip
on Cinemax on June 23.
17 May 2005
An interesting article
appeared on the Daily Mail web site today, and thanks are due to a couple of the
site's longer-standing contributors, UKRomeo and Dave C, for the mails.
Dave also contributed today's newest scans.
The news most of you will doubtless be most
interested in is that, even at 7 months' pregnant, Anna has no qualms about her
next nude scene which she will be filming later this year in the follow up to
football movie Goal!
Here's a
link to the story but, as these things do have a tendency to disappear over
time, I've also reproduced the full text just below . . .
With only two months
to go before the birth of her first child, Anna Friel could be forgiven for
putting her feet up and indulging in the odd craving for comfort food.
But celebrities live by different rules than
other mums.
The 28-year-old actress has agreed to film nude scenes for her next movie in
October, three months after the baby is due to arrive.
So rather than go on a weight loss programme following the birth, she has
started the diet already. And she is still exercising four times a week.
"I pray I don't have a Caesarean so I can get into a workout regime quicker,"
she told Grazia magazine. "We've got a good
rowing machine at home and we're lucky enough to live on the Long Walk in
Windsor, so I'll run a lot. I'll also stick to
the diet I'm on now: loads of soups containing beans, barley and pulses, which
fill you up.
"I
have been really good, eating incredibly healthy stuff and doing yoga four times
a week. This whole thing about wanting ice
cream, wanting this, wanting that when you're pregnant, it's better to just not
do it. I think it's better to get into an
exercise routine as soon as possible, even if you are tired with the baby,
otherwise the weight stays on and it becomes too much of a drag."
Miss Friel is due to start work on a follow-up to the football film Goal! in
October and has promised producer Mike Jeffries that she will have "a bikini
body by then".
The actress and her partner, actor David Thewlis, feared she might be unable to
have a child after she suffered endometriosis, where cells normally found in the
womb lining attach themselves to other parts of the pelvis, causing scar tissue
and symptoms of pain and inflammation. This led
to an ovarian cyst. "The doctors had said it would be very difficult for me to
have children," she said. "I was scared that it
could take months of trying. But it literally happened after one time of being
naughty!"
Miss Friel, who was born in Rochdale, appeared in Coronation Street and
Emmerdale before finding fame in Brookside, when her character Beth Jordache
took part in the first lesbian kiss ever seen in a British soap opera.
Blackpool-born Thewlis, who is 14 years older
than Miss Friel, stars in the blockbuster film Kingdom of Heaven and appeared as
the haunted Professor Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
The couple have been dating for five years but revealed they had a rocky patch
just before she became pregnant when she was living in New York and he was in
Morocco filming Kingdom of Heaven. "That put too
much pressure on us," she said. "I became too independent and seduced by this
lifestyle of a single girl in New York. When I saw him again I began to think,
'Who are you? It's very unnerving if you haven't
seen each other for so long, even if you're talking on the phone every day."
Now the two have made a pact that they will accompany each other while making
films. "It did mend itself and we both said
we're not going through that again,' she added. 'It was so horrible."
01 May 2005
Not a lot to record
here save for the following upcoming UK and US TV appearances:—
The War Bride
is being shown no fewer than 15 times between now and the end of May on SKY
Movies. I won't bother listing when, as you can hardly miss it!
By contrast
Timeline
gets just the 1 showing this month, at midnight on Sunday 8th on SKY Movies 4,
as do Our Mutual
Friend [Artsworld, 3pm Sunday 15th] and
Mad Cows
[Channel 4, 1am Wednesday 18th].
In the US
Me Without You
appears a total of 7 times on the Starz Cinema channel and on Encore Love
Stories throughout the month, while
The War Bride
airs (under it's US title Love and War) on Oxygen Channel on 12 May.
13
April 2005
The episode of Cadfael,
in which a 19-year-old Anna plays the female lead, can be seen on ITV3 on
Sunday 24th April at 13:20.
10
March 2005
Little new to report
and very few recent photos around lately, so I hope you enjoy the new scans of
older images that have just been added to the site.
There are however a few updates on Anna's
forthcoming UK and US TV appearances . . .
In addition to the multiple SKY showings of
the movies below, which continue into next month,
The Land Girls
will be shown on Channel 4 tomorrow while
An Everlasting
Piece can be seen on FilmFour on Sunday 10th and Thursday 23rd April.
For US fans,
A Midsummer
Night's Dream gets an airing on 16th, 17th, 20th and 21st of this month on
Independent Film Channel;
The War Bride
will be shown on Oxygen Channel on the 19th, and
Rogue Trader
appears on 31st on Cinemax #2
20
February 2005
There are still
multiple showings of
The War Bride
and Timeline
on SKY's movie channels. FilmFour will be showing
The Land Girls
on Saturday 2nd April at 9:00pm.
US cable viewers can catch
Me Without You
on the Starz Cinema channel tomorrow (21st) or on Sunday 27th, and
Rogue Trader
can be seen next Wednesday (23rd) on HBO Plus.
11
January 2005
Anna can be seen in
Rogue Trader
tonight at 9:00pm on ITV2, while there are no less than 12 showings of either
The War Bride
or Timeline
on SKY's various movie channels between now and the end of January.
For US-based devotees, the ITV drama
Watermelon
gets a showing on Oxygen Channel on Monday 24th January.
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