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with a passion - Laura Fraser interview
Laura Fraser vowed she
was leaving Glasgow for good. Several cities, one baby
and an array of roles later, she tells Aidan Smith why
she's fallen in love again with acting and the dear green
place
By Aidan Smith
AFTER spells in cities
which like to think of themselves as "vibrant",
Laura Fraser laughs as she describes an innocent-sounding
day's filming back in the place where it all began for
her, and how she almost ended up in a fight. "We
were making this short film, first in the house with 20
of our friends working for free, and then down by the
Clyde," she says. "It was based on a Dorothy
Parker story and there wasn't jogging in her day - at
least not in Nikes - so we politely asked these guys if
they would mind stopping for a few seconds. But they
turned nasty and pushed my husband up against a wall and
screamed: "We're on PBs! We're on PBs!' Who says
Glasgow's got a health issue when runners are so devoted
to personal bests that they'll beat you up over them?
That's what I call vibrant!"
Fraser's hubby Karl Geary is an actor-writer and that was
his first, almost disastrous, attempt to get behind the
cameras. He's now virtually a slash-Glaswegian as well,
having initially been reluctant to move to the city.
"I won him round and then Glasgow won him
round," says 32-year-old Fraser. "He likes that
the people here have pride in where they're from."
Fraser is a native. London was vibrant but then she fell
out of love with it. New York was vibrant but then she
fancied the country life in Ireland. But then she got
pregnant and worried the pram would get stuck in the
cow-pats. "So now I wheel my buggy about this fair
city and these gentlemen of leisure point and shout:
'It's green! It's green!'"
You can only please half of Glasgow with trendy baby
accessories that shade but Fraser is pleasing herself by
basing herself on home turf to juggle the roles of wife,
mother and actress.
She laughs when I remind her of the last time we met.
"I was on these bloody nicotine pills, wasn't I?
Still am." Four years ago Fraser was in the process
of quitting smoking after previously giving up the booze
and drugs. How her life has changed. "Now I worry
about the state of the pavements - they're simply
terrible for buggies!"
We've met in the city's Malmaison Hotel - over a mineral
water - to discuss her two new BBC dramas. One is
heroically small-scale, attempting to recreate the
Crimean War with not many more extras than Fraser could
muster among her pals - that's Florence Nightingale and
she's in the title role. It's a piece which leans heavily
on its star, her acting and her brown-eyed beauty. The
other drama is the greatest story ever told - The
Passion. "I play the wife of Ciaphas, the High
Priest of Judea, who gives the order to kill Jesus."
She gets a bit more help in this one, for although not
quite a Cecil B DeMille job, there was some money for
horses.
Fraser says she's never been happier and it shows in the
smile which lights up the hotel bar in the afternoon
gloom. "Ireland was beautiful - if you don't count
the non-existent roof, the dirt floor, the outside loo,
the sheep in the kitchen and spiders everywhere. We were
doing up this old farmhouse in West Cork but we ran out
of money. I imagined myself painting but the oils stayed
in their box.
"We were very remote and could get cut off by
storms. It was a half-hour drive for a pint of milk. When
I had an audition in London I had to get up at five and
wouldn't be back until two the next morning. And when
Karl was away I'd get so lonely that I was practically
kidnapping the postman: 'No, no, how's it going with
you?' So when I got pregnant I thought: 'Great, the
nightmare's over!'"
Glasgow has made her happy, though while it was the city
which gave her her big break - as a Clydeside mobster's
moll in Small Faces - she thought at one stage that she
would never return. "When I was 18, I couldn't wait
to move away. I was like: 'If I ever have to come back
here I'll kill myself.' Glasgow seemed like failure and
death to me back then, but not any more."
And motherhood - Lila Rose will be two in May - has
certainly made her happy. "I expected it to be
overwhelming and all-encompassing but having a kid brings
you into the world in a whole different way. You care
about other people more than you did before when - well,
you know."
More than she did as a self-obsessed actress? Fraser was
probably one of them. Her wild days and wilder nights
have been well-documented. She'd turn up late for jobs,
earning herself a bad name.
After the dizzying thrills of shooting six films in six
years, of snogging Leonardo DiCaprio and Helen Baxendale
in the name of art, of sharing a flat with Anna Friel as
part of the film world's version of Britpop, she
eventually ended up in a soggy mess of paranoia and
loathing.
"Do you know," she says, "I almost gave up
acting. When I was at Lila's playgroup and one of the
mums told me her husband thought he'd seen me in A
Knight's Tale I'd almost stopped thinking of myself as
that person. I was seriously considering not acting ever
again because I was really enjoying the relief of not
having to try and push myself and deal with my ambition.
"But guess what? For about six months it was great
to be not acting, but after I gave up breast-feeding I
realised that I loved it. I'm naturally a shy person so I
love the camaraderie of the set. I love the fact the
work's always different. And I love the vicariousness of
acting."
Florence Nightingale reminds us of how good an actress
Fraser is. If she really is shy, then this is a terrific
portrayal of the pioneer of modern nursing and a woman
who was passionate, fiery, dogmatic and politically
minded at a time when the fairer sex was only supposed to
be interested in "the linen, the china and the 56
pots of jam". But you guess that Fraser does have
some of these characteristics herself.
In addition to the small-screen dramas, she has just
finished a film called Cuckoo. "It's a thriller and
I play a medical research student who's paranoid,
insular, controlling, keeps hearing strange noises and
has a boss played by Richard E Grant, who's obsessed with
her - a fun role."
These days Fraser can play at being paranoid and enjoy
it. She's glad to have rediscovered her zest for acting
but now her career has to be arranged round her life,
rather than the other way round.
"Lila comes first and rather than work to keep
working, I'm only doing the jobs that really interest
me," says Fraser. "And if I get that dream role
which takes me away from Glasgo
w for months then the producers will have to rent me a
three-bedroom house so Lila and the nanny can come along
too. So really nothing's changed. I've just become even
more of a demanding actress!"
So would she like her daughter to follow in her
footsteps? "Well, her current party-piece is
parading round naked in my high heels so she's well on
the way. I don't know- at the moment I just want her to
grow up happy and safe. She's already quite headstrong so
I'm thinking I won't forbid her to do anything because
that'll only make her determined to do these things. I
don't regret any of the things I did - what's the point?
She's going to make mistakes and have flaws and get into
scrapes. All I can really do is teach her right from
wrong and love her loads."
The Passion starts on BBC1 tonight at 8pm. Florence
Nightingale will be screened on the BBC at a later date
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