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"Some people say that
acting is two thirds showing off and only one third art-
if that's true, then Laura Fraser makes for an unlikely
film star The 25 year old Scottish actress is so shy and
softly spoken that, at times, her voice barely rises
above a whisper. 'I hate auditions,' she says, furiously
buttering a slice of toast. 'I hate being tested and
judged like that. I find it hard to relax and give
directors my best performance.'
It is lucky, then, that her precocious talent and her
extraordinarily beautiful face - she has eyes as big and
mysterious as rock pools -seem, so far, to have carried
the day. Though you might not recognise her name, Fraser
has appeared in 15 films, and has worked with some of the
biggest names in the business, including Isabella
Rossellini, Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins (in Julie
Taymor's film, ~ she plays Lavinia, the daughter of
Hopkins's Titus, who is raped, then has her hands chopped
off and her tongue cut out). She was so star-struck when
working with Hopkins that she couldn't think of him as
anyone other than his most famous incarnation: 'He kept
giving me these big bear hugs, but all I could see was
Hannibal Lecter.'
And although the part was small, Laura Fraser can also
lay claim to what was, a few short years ago, the most
shining of distinctions - she was the girl who bedded
Leonardo DiCaprio', fresh from his Titanic success, in
The Man In the Iron Mask. Modest about her achievements
so far, she admits she still hasn't watched the film all
the way through-'I've seen my bit, that's enough!'
Moreover, unlike so many young actors -who spend their
early years playing wayward teenagers in soap operas -
Fraser managed to graduate straight to the big screen
after drama school, bypassing television almost entirely.
She landed her latest role, as the feisty feminist
blacksmith in Brian Helgeland's spirited version of
Chaucer's A Knight's Tale (tipped to be one of autumn's
big hits), after reading for the part of Jocelyn, the
film's love interest
She has good reason to be grateful for that casting
decision: while Shannyn Sossamon (who plays the decorous
lady Jocelyn) smiles prettily and swans around in
medieval designer outfits, Fraser (despite looking grubby
and sweaty as she slaves over a hot anvil) gets to hang
out with the boys and make jokes.
A Knight's Tale was filmed in Prague over a four month
period. Happily for Fraser, the film also stars her
boyfriend of 18 months Paul Bettany, who she met when
they were both auditioning for roles neither got. The
pair want out for dinner- and by all accounts haven't
been apart since. In A Knights Tale, Bettany plays
Chaucer, and, it must be said, gets all of the film's
best lines; he also manages to act almost everyone else
off the screen. Perhaps this is why his next project also
stars Russell Crowe. Fraser, however, will not be seduced
into talking about him. 'It's private,' she says,
blushing and looking flustered as she lights yet another
cigarette.
The actress was born and brought up in Glasgow, a city
for which she is still homesick (she now lives in
London). Her father, Alister, used to run a small
building company but is now an -aspiring scriptwriter;
her mother, Rose, used to be a nurse but is now a college
lecturer. She has an older brother who works with
computers, a younger sister who is studying philosophy at
university, and a little brother who is 18 and hasn't yet
decided what he wants to do with his life. They are, she
says, a pretty close bunch.
'My dad had spent years moaning about his job, so he gave
it up,' says Fraser. 'It was he who first got me into
acting when I was at school. He wrote a play for the
youth club which I always call Wayne, Lulubelle and the
Irn-Bru Café although he says that wasn't its title. I
played Lulubelle. I love Glasgow, I love the fact that
People say "hell-oo" in the street'
After completing her highers (the Scottish equivalent of
A-levels), Fraser did a drama foundation course at
Glasgow's Langside College, and than went to the
prestigious Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
But after only a year she dropped out; the college
authorities, she says, made it clear that they took a
pretty dim view of the amount of professional work she
had been taking on.
'I got a minor part in Gillies MacKinnon's film Small
Faces. My teachers seemed quite fed up about that. They
said I wasn't committed to the course, so I think they
were glad when I left. It wasn't a huge gamble, leaving
and moving to London, because I hadn't particularly been
enjoying myself. My parents never tried to discourage me.
They said, 'Well, if it makes you happy, then do it"
But it was scary at first because I didn't know anyone.
She stayed with an aunt in Watford, then moved into a
shared house in London. For a time, one of her flatmates
was Anna Friel, with whom she starred in Stephen
Poliakoffs film, The Tribe. 'I don't see her now. We were
both very young when we lived together, and we had some
fun, but I haven't seen her for a while.'
Fraser now lives alone in her own flat in Kilburn,
Northwest London. 'I've got a mortgage" she says.
'It sounds so grown up. I wanted somewhere I could make
my own. I didn't want to - it lots of nice colours and
then have to move on. That's how I am. When I travel with
work I much prefer to stay in apartments to hotels. I
love Kilburn. It reminds me of Glasgow because it's full
of Irish people and they have the same mad mentality as
Glaswegians - always drinking and going to pubs. I like
living alone, too. The only time it bothers me is when
I've been away for a long time and I come back and
there's no one there. That can be hard.'
Happily, Fraser had no shortage of companions while
filming A Knight's Tale: she says she had great fun
alongside Bettany and rising Australian star Heath
Ledger, for whom the film has bean packaged as a star
vehicle. 'Heath's really normal,' says Fraser, 'He's just
a guy from Australia, friendly and open. We were all in
and out of each other's trailers all the time. We'd
congregate in whichever one had working air conditioning.
The director got us all out to Prague a couple of weeks
early for rehearsals, and we spent a lot of time hanging
out together in bars. We even had a drunken read-through
in a restaurant, which was good because I hate doing
those. You never know how much to give because they're
really more for the benefit of the crew than the cast, so
people end up mumbling.'
In the film, Ledger's character (the son of a humble
thatcher who reinvents himself as a noble called Ulrich
von Lichtenstein) stumbles across Fraser's blacksmith at
a tournament, where she crafts him a sleek, light-weight
suit of armour and helps him on his way to becoming a
true knight. 'I wasn't comfortable being around horses
all the time,' admits Fraser. 'But as a cast, we all got
on really well. And because Brian had written the
screenplay (he won an Academy Award for LA Confidential)
as well as being the director, anything that didn't work
we were able to change on the spot. We even got to do
some improvisation here and there.'
Despite her impressive acting CV, Fraser is not yet in a
position to pick and choose which work she does. 'I
manage not to have to take every single thing I am
offered. But I can't say, I'd love to do that role,"
and just get it. I'm still struggling against actresses
who are either better or more well known than me. I hope
this film will give me more opportunities. Producers need
big names, so it's hard to get cast even if the director
of a film likes you. Also, because I have a Scottish
accent, they don't really imagine I can do any other kind
of accent-even though that's what being an actress is all
about.'
She has been to Hollyood two or three times at the
instigation of her agent, but has no desire to live there
permanently. 'It's quite a sick place. I find you have to
leave after a while. It's so empty, like a desert or a
ghost town. Everyone drives everywhere. It has no heart.'
There are still times, she says, when the telephone
doesn't ring for a couple of weeks and she wonders why
she chose to go into such an insecure profession. 'It
does make you feel paranoid and at the mercy of people
who you don't even know. It makes you try to control
other areas of your life instead. I'm a tidiness freak
and I've become obsessive about little things, such as
whether I've remembered to switch a light off'
'But then I think: what else could I do? Work with kids?
Go to university? So I try to see friends who aren't
working either, and I read a lot, and I am learning to
play the guitar. I've never had to waitress between jobs.
So far, my work has financed my lifestyle. Luckily, I'm
not big on clothes. It's not that I don't want to be
fashionable but I like slouching around too much. I'm a
bit of a blob, really.'
She would love to have a family one day-and would like to
make enough money to have a career break when the time
comes. But, otherwise, she seems to take one day at a
time. Right now, for instance, she doesn't even know what
her next project will be. 'I sometimes think my sister
was the sensible one,' she laughs. 'She went into
philosophy- so at least she gets to think about the big
questions in life.'
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