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by Graham Fuller
Into the house of Fraser she was
born--Laura, a wee lassie so fair and so canny that all
the men of Glasgow fought for her in an amusement known
as Small Faces (1995). But none of them could have her,
for she had already vanished. Some say she was a kelpie
or a nixie and that she had returned to the sea, but as
time passed she was glimpsed in such films as Cousin
Bette, Left Luggage, Divorcing Jack, and The Man in the
Iron Mask (all 1998). One day, she fell in with a
puppeteer and playmaker known as Julie Taymor, who bid
her perform in a cinematic rendering of William
Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. And thus the Gods had
their revenge on Laura Fraser for her frolicsome ways. In
the so-called Titus, her Lavinia was raped and mutilated
and hung out to dry in a swamp--a sight so stark it
chilled all those who looked upon it. What nerve it must
have taken. "I hated it," the actress recalls.
"I had to keep thinking about all the things I did
not want to think about. I made myself as numb as
possible and I remember thinking, I've got to be
nothing... nothing!" And after the ordeal? "I
wreaked havoc everywhere, but I'm happy now." From
nothing, though, comes plenty--for now, in her
twenty-fourth year, she is sought up and down the land,
from Birnam Wood to Hollywood. "
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