It’s Friel stardom (From The Northern Echo)

It’s Friel stardom

11:04am Thursday 16th July 2009

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Kate Whiting talks to Anna Friel about being a mum both on and off screen as she enjoys the A-list life.

IN the 17 years since Anne Friel achieved stardom in Brookside, she’s tried her hand at movies and US TV stardom. While her role in Pushing Daisies is no more, after the US comedy’s cancellation, her work offers back in the UK are definitely A-list.

Currently she’s busy with acting, singing, guitar and voice lessons to take on the West End role of Holly Golightly from September, in a stage adaptation of iconic movie Breakfast At Tiffanys.

But before that, she’s returning to the small screen in a new episode of BBC1’s The Street and filming a cameo role in starfilled movie London Boulevard, which also stars her long-term partner David Thewlis.

Friel, 33, is excited about organising daughter Gracie’s fourth birthday, complete with bouncy castle.

“Everyone’s got to dress as princesses and I’ve got her a really beautiful oldfashioned tricycle, based on the old Forties one. It will be the first children’s party I’ve ever organised, so we’ll see how it goes, ”

she says.

The Manchester-raised actress recently admitted she had to take a sleeping pill when Gracie was born because she was over-tired, juggling the demands of breastfeeding and filming Goal! in Spain.

Now, she’s more in control, and will take on a nanny when she starts her six-month stint as Holly Golightly.

“I think she’s going to be in the theatre quite a bit,” she says, laughing.

In The Street she’s playing single mother Dee who’s desperate to get her two sons into a good school and away from bullies.

“The most important thing for her is her children, bar nothing, and she will do anything, compromise herself, go to any length to make sure they have a good life and don’t live the life she has had,” she explains.

She moves the boys to a house in the right catchment area and turns to a “second job” as a prostitute to earn enough cash to pay the mortgage.

But her secret comes out when she falls for a friendly plumber, played by promising actor Daniel Mays.

“It’s a life I know she would never want to choose, but I think there’s a lot of women in that position, because now women have to work and bring up children at the same time, we’re not given the luxury of having two or three years off.”

To get into character, Friel met a real-life prostitute who is lying to friends and family about what she does.

“She’s an absolutely normal girl, who just found herself in a very bad situation. I chatted to her more about her attitude to it and what she thought about men,” Friel reveals.

“I said, ‘How big a secret is it to people?’ and she said, ‘Oh nobody knows, nobody knows’ and that was the threat, of people finding out.”

She adds: “I think it’s very important that we as a society don’t judge, we just try and help, because no one wants to see a woman having to put herself in that position, to try and feed her children.”

The Street, which follows the lives of residents of one street in Manchester, is written by acclaimed writer Jimmy McGovern.

And the cast list includes Timothy Spall, Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Ruth Jones as well as Friel’s partner David Thewlis.

In the early Nineties, Friel had joined the cast of Brookside, just as McGovern was starting work on Cracker, so she was excited to finally work with him.

“It had always been an aim of mine to work with Jimmy, I think he’s one of the best writers out there, and it was great to work with a northern crew who were fantastic. I haven’t done that since Brookside.”

She was only in the soap for two years, but Friel caused a stir as Beth Jordache thanks to a certain lesbian kiss.

Today, more than ten years after she left, she is still referred to as “the former Brookside star”.

She resonds: “To be honest I don’t even think about it, there’s nothing I can do about that and without that, I wouldn’t be where I am today, so you can never look back and wish away your past and labels.

“All you can hope is that people start to link you to other things as well and maybe it will change into ‘actress Anna Friel’,” she laughs.

With a starring role in Will Ferrell’s latest film Land Of The Lost, released later this month the chances are that she could escape the Brookside tag for good.

■ Anna Friel appears in an episode of The Street on BBC1 on Monday, July 20, at 9pm

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