Cover Star: Anna Friel
Remake Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the London stage? That’s too much pressure, thought Anna Friel. But, with a script that’s closer to the dark tone of the novel, she hopes her Holly will silence comparisons
INTERVIEW: NATASHA POLISZCZUK
PHOTOGRAPHY: © Uli Weber
There are the successes (Daniel Craig’s gritty Bond); there are the ever-so-slightly pointless homages (the scene-by-scene remake of Psycho, for instance); and then there are the disasters (critics had plenty to say about Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, none of it complimentary).
So it’s with some trepidation that Anna Friel, 33, views her latest role. After a successful spell in the States, Rochdale-born Friel is returning to London, and the stage, as Holly Golightly in a new theatrical adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s a part which will, to many, be forever associated with the gorgeously attenuated, Givenchyattired Audrey Hepburn. It is no small undertaking. But Friel is ready for it.
The petite woman sat in front of me, perched on a sofa in London’s Haymarket Hotel (conveniently next door to the theatre where she’s appearing) is a very different creature from the girl who famously kissed a girl (on British soap opera Brookside), then stormed Broadway in Closer and gave every appearance of being poised for Hollywood stardom, only to be overlooked for the film – the producers opted for star wattage and Natalie Portman was cast in her place – heading back to England, instead.
Back home, she concentrated on homegrown productions like Me Without You and The Land Girls, and, more importantly, met her long-term partner, the actor and author David Thewlis – “he’s so bright, just a remarkable man,” she says, proudly – with whom she has a daughter, Gracie, now aged four.
GIVEN THIS HALCYON DOMESTIC SET-UP, IT WAS ALMOST A BONUS WHEN THE CALL CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD. Seemingly self-deprecating, Friel insists it was “a lot to do with luck. I was in LA when it came along.” ‘It’ was the delightfully whimsical US series Pushing Daisies – Anna played Chuck, who is brought back from the dead by her childhood sweetheart, Ned the piemaker (for the uninitiated, it was less macabre and much funnier than it sounds).
Pushing Daisies was a critical success; garlanded with Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, before falling victim to poor marketing and the writers’ strike. But it was enough. Her face appeared on billboards and buses: Miss Friel had hit the big time. She beat “lots” of wellknown actresses (which, discreetly, she won’t name) to her starring role in this summer’s blockbuster Land of the Lost.
“There were surreal moments,” laughs Friel of her Hollywood sojourn. “I’d be driving in traffic and Gracie would suddenly say, ‘There’s mummy!’ and I’d turn around and there I was on the side of a bus. I’d be like, ‘Wow, they photoshopped my eyes.’ Some things I could ignore, like being on the cover of magazine, but a billboard is right in your face because you’re 25 feet tall.” She is sanguine about the show’s cancellation: “I really miss Chuck and I really miss everyone on the series, but c’est la vie.”
So far, success hasn’t made Friel appear affected. Admittedly, she looks fabulous in her vintage dress, fresh from a shoot: tiny and trim of figure, skin polished and perfect with a delicate smattering of freckles. But her original northern accent is unchanged, and, as she’s been staying at the hotel when late night rehearsals make returning home to her Windsor townhouse impractical, she’s a familiar face and cheerfully chats away to the hotel staff: nope, she’s “not too worried” about the singing, but the guitar lessons (she’ll be singing and playing Moon River). She makes a face and the clearly smitten waiter laughs. She’s delighted to be back on home soil. All the same there was, you sense, something liberating for Friel about going to America, where she hadn’t grown-up in the public eye.
There was no harking back to that kiss, no UK press coverage of Anna’s past exploits (namely, a brief period hanging out with Kate Moss and the party-loving Primrose Hill set, and dating Robbie Williams and Darren Day). “The British press have always, so far – touch wood – been really good to me. Or maybe I’ve not read the bad things? But in America, they were even nicer, because they didn’t know my history, or where I came from. They just saw me and liked me.”
ONE OF THE UPSIDES OF LIVING IN THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS is that your neighbours are often more famous than you are, so Friel is left alone by the paparazzi. Although that looks likely to change. Anna has “a concentrated workload” this year: starring with James McAvoy in The Details, then playing a cameo part opposite Keira Knightley in London Boulevard. There’s little chance she’ll be giving up the crosscontinent life just yet – as long as it fits in with Gracie’s schooling and David’s filming.
And then there is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Friel initially baulked when she was approached about playing Holly: “I thought, ‘Oh gosh, that is too much pressure. It’s been played by someone so brilliantly, why do it again?’” Her agent urged her to read the novella before making a decision. “I read it in three hours and just loved this character. So then I read the script, which is so different from the film because it’s based on the book. It’s much darker.
“For instance,” says Friel, getting into her stride. “If you’ve seen the film, do you know that Holly Golightly is actually Lula Mae Barnes who ran away from Tulip, Texas, age 15? Or that, even though she had this broken childhood, she never feels sorry for herself or shows people that she’s desperately sad and lonely inside? The bits of the film where Holly exited the frame, you’ll find out what went on then. You’ll leave the theatre wanting to have the best martini.” Suddenly she grins: “They’re creating a martini called The Holly Golightly! Isn’t that cool?”
If there’s any correlation between dedication, passion and success, Friel will pull it off. She has spent two weeks in New York, working on Holly’s accent with a voice coach: the accent is standard American by way of a Texas drawl. “I tend to practise a lot with my accents because I don’t like them to beat me,” she tells me.
She’s also struggling with the guitar: “I can’t play at all. The director wants me to learn. I was like, ‘What? With everything else I have to do?’ They weren’t going to put Moon River in at first, but it would have been really missed if we hadn’t; it’s like going to see a gig when the band doesn’t play their most famous song.”
Friel acknowledges that there will always be some people who will judge her against Audrey Hepburn. “It’s hard putting yourself out there, but I love it so much. I wish you could do it without the judgments, but,” she shrugs, “it comes with the job.”
But Friel is confident she will cope – and silence the doubters. She puts it all down to hard work. “People who do well do so because they are disciplined,” she says seriously. “They are workers. What we see – the glamorous life of someone at a premiere – before that they’ve spent three hours getting ready; then they do all the interviews; then they go home and learn their lines for the next movie they’re filming. To be good at that is an art form. If people ask me what my ambition is, it’s to master this art – to be good at every stage of the job. I look to actresses like Julie Walters and Helen Mirren – people who have been around a long time and have paid their dues.”
And Friel raises her glass in a silent toast to these women – and goes back to rehearsals to keep paying hers.
Natasha Poliszczuk is Senior Editor at Easy Living magazine. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is currently showing at the Haymarket Theatre, London. 0845 481 1870; www.breakfastattiffanys.co.uk
