A scorching star is born

MORFYDD CLARK has three roles in two films at the Toronto international Film Festival, running until sunday.

The actress (pictured), who grew up in Cardiff, plays two parts in armando iannucci’s Charles Dickens adaptation The Personal History Of David Copperfield, which opens the BFi London Film Festival on October 2.

Pay attention when you see the film, because she appears early on in a key moment in the life of Copperfield (played as an adult by Dev Patel).

Drama Centretrained Clark pops up again as the beautiful but cotton- headed Dora spenlow, who lets her lapdog Jip do the talking for her: it’s a superb portrait of comic airiness.

it took me a few moments to work out it wasn’t her first appearance in the picture, which also features Tilda swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi, Ben Whishaw, Rosalind eleazar, Daisy May Cooper, nikki amuka-Bird. But Clark’s star turn comes in saint Maud, the feature film debut of Rose Glass, who also wrote the screenplay about a nurse with, let’s say, a few challenges, who becomes obsessed with a choreographer (played by Jennifer ehle) she’s hired to care for. Clark gives a tour de force performance in this searing, scorching (in all senses of the word) psychological thriller from the BFi and Film4. it plays at the BFi London Film Festival on October 5. i sat next to a Hollywood producer who told me that, after saint Maud, Clark can do ‘ anything she wants’. That’s how stars are born.