STUNNING Brit actress Anna Friel has Hollywood under her spell.
From SARA NATHAN
TV Editor - The Sun (Reprinted from The Sun)

She is starring in hit US TV comedy Pushing Daisies and is captivating audiences as she did when she was introduced as Beth Jordache on Channel 4 soap Brookside in 1993.

But it took a fair amount of bravery to cross the pond again after failing there on her first trip since leaving Brookie.

Anna had a brilliant turn as a stripper in Broadway play Closer in 1998, later Natalie Portman played her role in the big-screen version. But Anna then slunk home after the harsh realities of Hollywood sank in.

She explains: “I was 21 and going to Broadway. That was the time my career could have just gone whoosh!

“But I got disillusioned because any part I went for was always, always between me and another person. Then the director would want me but the producer wouldn’t because I wasn’t a big enough name to carry the film, to put the bums on the seats.

“It kept going round and round and I was, like, ‘I want to get off this roundabout.’

“I had such an awful experience that I just ran back home again, saying, ‘I’m not going there again, it terrifies me.’

“Now I’ve gone back to America and they’ve all said, ‘We were loving you, where did you go?’

“But I really believe it’s happened in just the way it was meant to.

“I’ve now got many years of experience under my belt and it puts me in a great place.”

In Daisies Anna plays Chuck, who is brought back from the dead by childhood sweetheart Ned (Lee Pace) after she is murdered on a cruise.

But there’s a snag – she can only stay alive if he never touches her.

In her still very northern lilt, Rochdale-born Anna freely admits some of the old nerves came back when she filmed the first episode of the show.

She says: “I was terrified. I was a little bit nervous about whether I’d be any good at comedy.

“I’d kind of hit on it here and there with certain TV movies but I’d always considered myself to be a good dramatic actress good at crying, or maybe an all right dramatic actress getting better all the time – I don’t want to refer to myself as good!

“It made me think, ‘God, a lot of people are going to be tuning in to this. You’d better work hard and make sure you can do it’.

“I’m not going to lie, I was terrified. Every single day I was saying to myself, ‘Won’t be able to do it, can’t do it, can’t do it’.

“But as soon as I stopped telling myself I couldn’t, I thought, ‘Maybe you actually can’. Then I just stopped wasting time and got on with it.

“It’s a huge thing having your face on billboards all over Hollywood. But you just think, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing and work as hard as you can’.”

Anna is now happy in LA with her actor partner David Thewlis – “my best friend” – and the father of her gorgeous two-year-old daughter, Gracie. She says: “It’s a very different place to me now than it was.”

Gracie has settled in well, though it was a hard decision to bring her up away from England. The actress says: “I didn’t want to do something that was very unknown to me and unfamiliar. I didn’t want to keep Gracie away from her grandparents or friends.

“Now we give her as much love as possible and keep as much of a routine as possible.”

Anna has brought a northern nanny from England for Gracie. She says: “It was me being completely naive. I was just terrified of her going, ‘Mom, Mom, where’s my waffles?’ But if the show goes on for six years or something it’ll be, ‘Right, love, it’s back to England now to get your accent back.’”

The move to America was a fresh start for an actress still best remembered here for her lesbian kiss on Brookside.

But the tiny, beautiful brunette has been quick to say she wants to move away from her old TV image and the off-screen stories of boyfriends and nights out.

She explains it as escaping from “Brookside, Darren Day, Robbie Williams, party girl”, adding: “I just think it’s time to let go.”

Anna later joined Kate Moss’s social circle after her break-up with love rat stage star Day. But she admits she could never have kept up with the supermodel, adding: “For the lifestyle Kate’s said to lead, she looks incredible.

“I could have been sucked into it, but wouldn’t have survived – she doesn’t have to learn a page of dialogue, and you never hear her talk, do you?”

Before Anna settled into domestic bliss with David she dated Robbie – and she bumped into her ex, more than a decade after their affair, while with David in LA.

Robbie now lives in La-La Land, growing his beard, chilling out in tracksuit bottoms, cooking and collecting eccentric friends.

Anna says: “It was the first time I’d seen him in years and he was really lovely, saying he had heard how well Pushing Daisies was doing.

“It was really nice meeting him, like seeing an old friend.”

Meanwhile, Anna also revealed she was offered a recording contract by pop guru Simon Cowell while a 17-year-old star on Channel 4 soap Brookside – but turned him down.

She says: “I was perfect fodder but had set my goal on acting.

“I met Simon six years later, in New York, and he said it was the smartest thing I ever did.”

Now, Anna’s career could not be shaping up better. She recently won a lead role in Will Ferrell movie Land Of The Lost, which is due out next year, and she says: “The ball’s rolling right now.

“I’m on stepping stones. It’s that journey to be better. But I’m in the nicest position I could be.”

Trackback URI | Comments RSS