"Hello" Magazine : 10 December 2002  
   

 

At the Premiere of her new movie……Anna Friel – Tells us all about love and why she’s feeling broody

Anna Friel was in bubbly mood as she celebrated the London premiere of her latest film, The War Bride.

Accompanied by her boyfriend, actor David Thewlis, she looked stunning in a silk dress by Australian designer Colette Dinnigan. “Halle Berry wanted to wear it for the Bond Premiere but they saved it for me. That’s what they told me, anyway!”, she said.

But if the star of the film got the special treatment from the designer, she didn’t at Canada House. The actress was ejected from the post-premiere party when she sparked up a cigarette and had to enjoy her smoke outside in the cold before returning.

That aside, Anna appears to have the world at her dainty feet. She has just finished filming Hollywood movie Timeline, in which she appears with David, other film projects are stacking up – and she appears madly in love with her talented boyfriend.

In The War Bride, Anna plays cockney mother-of-one Lily, who moves to Canada to live with her husband’s family. However, life on the windswept farm with her brittle mother-in-law (Brenda Fricker) and sister-in-law (Molly Parker) is far from expected.

Anna was drawn to the role for several reasons. “Lily is a good, strong female character, not some weak accessory hanging off a man’s arm”, she told HELLO! Just before the premiere. “There are few films where there are just three women who are all very strong – and the energy that happens on set is incredible. I learned an awful lot. Brenda Fricker is totally and officially my mentor”.

Anna had to put on a stone for the role. “It was great not to have to think so much about what I was eating but I admit to insecurities when I saw myself on screen. I though, “God, look at all those chins!” I loved having the boobs, though. If I could have kept those I would have been happy!”

A maternal bosomy look would come in handy for Anna’s current role. She plays a Dublin mum in the ITV adaptation of Marion Keyes’ novel Watermelon. For much of the movie she has to wear a prosthetic stomach then play mum to a seven-week-old baby. Is all this making her broody?

“Its an amazing feeling to play someone who’s pregnant”, she admits. “You start to have all these feelings, especially when you have a baby in your arms and he turns his head looking for your boob. You have to say ‘Nooo, I’m not your mummy!’

“I’m always broody but I have to be disciplined and know I’m with a man with whom I’m going to stay. Also I’d make sure I’d be able to sacrifice everything necessary for a child. I’ll think about it but, as much as I’d love to have a baby, 26 is a bit too young”.

Does she ever think that, if things had worked out differently, she might now be married to Darren Day? Anna suppresses a smile. “I never thought I’d actually marry Darren, “ reveals the actress, who was engaged to the entertainer until he left her for Coronation Street actress Tracy Shaw. “I’m like any girl who has a boyfriend and it comes to a natural end. It’s seven years since we split and I let things end when they ended. It was a shame for him really”

She didn’t catch her ex on I’m a Celebrity …Get Me Out of Here!. “As long as he didn’t me I didn’t care what he got up to”, she tells us.

Meanwhile Anna has been dating David Thewlis,39, for the past two and a half years. The pair share their time between her Georgian house near Windsor and his warehouse flat in Hoxton, East London. Theirs seems to be an intense, loving relationship. Out has gone Anna’s party-girl image and in have come nights on the sofa, watching films and eating curry with her beau.

“The first year and a half we only spent four nights apart,” she says. “In the last year we’ve had quite a lot of time apart, but he comes and sees me. We don’t co-ordinate our diaries and turn down offers just so we can be with each other – that would be silly. We go off and do our own thing, otherwise we’d metamorphose into each other. We love each other and I’m very proud of him.

“I was 24 when we met and everyone say 'Oh you’ve settled down now’. But you go through a huge change from 24 to 26. Was I such a bad person? I’m just more settled now, that’s all.”

Marriage, it seems, isn’t out of the question. “We shall see”, says Anna. “He hasn’t asked me and I haven’t asked him. I don’t think that’s the most important thing. I’ve just finished a big $80 million picture. I’m not by any means saying goodbye Hollywood; I’m saying hello everything. I think you can have a bit of everything if you choose right”.

Although they both appear in Timeline, David’s scenes were finished before Anna started. While she has been working in Dublin, he has been bust with his own project, Cheeky. “David loses his wife and is left with a dysfunctional dad/son relationship”, says Anna. “It’s a dark comedy about how they learn to love”.

That’s something that they’ve clearly not had a problem with – and neither, it seems, has her family. “We’ve spent a lot of time with David and I just hope that both of them will be happy, whether they get married or not”, Anna’s mother tells HELLO!. “As for grandchildren, all in good time”.