Best chance

TELEVISION drama rarely offers chances to new faces, tending to give leading roles to the same actors time and time again. Eve Best is an exception. Already an established stage actress, she has the leading female role in ITV1's two-part romantic thriller Lie With Me - and the makers are predicting great things for her on TV in the future.

She stars as Roselyn Tyler, a twentysomething single woman who wakes up one morning to find her flatmate has been murdered and she's been sexually assaulted while under the influence of a date rape drug. She can't remember anything that happened the previous night.

Andrew Lincoln - fresh from fighting for fathers' rights in another ITV1 drama Whose Baby? - co-stars as the detective investigating the case with whom Roselyn begins an affair.

Best herself is remaining calm about the fuss her first major TV role is arousing. She doesn't feel her reputation is on the line. "I didn't have time to think about that," she says.

"The day after I'd finished a very long theatre job, a very draining job, I went into filming Lie With Me. I was rehearsing for that while I was finishing the play. I was just overjoyed to be doing it really, It was such a wonderful opportunity. It's great being busy and doing lots of different things."

She's had TV roles before, in series including Waking The Dead and Inspector Lynley Mysteries, but nothing as big as Roselyn in Lie With Me.

She was actually quite suspicious of her character when she read the script. "I felt there was something I didn't quite know," she admits. "It's a very odd dilemma she's in. She's had this horrid physical violation of having been raped and traumatised by the murder of her best friend, but feeling attracted to someone on the case and blossoming in their company."

She didn't feel the need to research the role too thoroughly, although the actors did talk about their characters together. She looked into what it's like to be a picture restorer, which is Roselyn's job, and the effects of date rape drugs. "In terms of emotional research, it's not something you can really prepare for," says Best. "I had to try and place myself in as vulnerable and raw a state as I could, using my instincts and imagination."

The TV drama follows roles in stage dramas including Mourning Becomes Electra, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. Obviously, there are differences between theatre and TV, she says. "The energy of TV is very different. In a play, you start and keep going for three hours non-stop. What I found difficult was the bitty way of doing filming. But in terms of the acting process they are fairly similar. If you're acting in a play or film, you're trying to find if something is truthful."

It wasn't a conscious decision to move into TV, more a case of an acting job coming up that she wanted to do. She doesn't consider she's in a position to pick and choose. She'd like to do more TV work but not immediately because she needs to prepare for her next stage job - the title role in Hedda Gabler at London's Almeida Theatre with Richard Eyre directing - at the beginning of next year.

One drawback of making Lie With Me was the temperature, as it was filmed during the cold of winter. "We all had either long johns or Nora Batty tights on to keep us warm," she reveals.

"Everyone was saying how they wanted my character to look girlie and to wear skirts, so I kept screaming at those people who thought that was a good idea in the cold weather. It was me that went along with it so I've only got myself to blame.

"There were scenes where all of us were so cold that we couldn't move our faces any more."

Even a romantic kiss with co-star Andrew Lincoln wasn't without its problems. "It was supposed to be a really romantic scene, late at night, we were both staring into each others' eyes. But this flat that we used had had problems with the drains, so there was an unbelievable stench of sewage throughout the whole flat. It was absolutely disgusting. Everyone just kept spraying air freshener everywhere in hope that it'd be an improvement.

"That kind of ruined the whole romantic atmosphere really. As soon as the scene was finished we couldn't run out of the building fast enough to get some fresh air. It was horrible and we had to put up with that all that day. It was my first ever on-screen kiss as well."

Best showed up at the launch of Lie With Me fresh from taking a break, after a hectic six months, with a holiday in Barbados. "It was my first proper holiday for ages, just lying on the beach for two weeks. It was heaven," she says. "The first week I was still in work mode. Then I had a massage, which was very good, and handed a glass of rum punch. Even I was calm after that."

* Lie With Me is on ITV1 on Monday and Tuesday at 9pm.

Published: 11/11/2004