Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I had to leave UK to Friel free again
Anna opens her heart to Bishop
ANNA Friel has told of how she fought against stereotypes and went to America to keep her career on track.
The actress, 40, has made headlines on and off the screen throughout her career. In a rare in-depth interview on the W channel, Anna tells how she was bullied at school, then quit Brookside after her famous lesbian kiss when the workload became so hectic she started to have fits. As a teenager, she moved to London and battled against suggestions she hide her Lancastrian roots. Anna says: “I remember when I first came to London. My agent at the time said, ‘Well, obviously you’ve got to lose that accent because that won’t get you very far’. “I said, ‘Well, when I’m on set and to play different characters of course, I’m gonna pride myself on being good at my accents?’. He said ‘No, no, in general, you won’t be taken that seriously if you have that accent’.” Thankfully, Anna stuck to her normal accent. Speaking on John Bishop In Conversation With... tonight, she also tells how Broadway show Closer helped her escape the UK when she was talked about more for her romances than roles. She says: “No one had ever seen Brookside or heard of any love relationship or Robbie (Williams) or Darren (Day). I got recognised just as the performer Anna. With no history and nobody knowing anything about me. I’d never ever been on a stage before and they put me on Broadway which, for most actors, is their dream.” Anna is on screen next Tuesday in BBC drama Broken as downtrodden single mum Christina Fitzsimons. She is about to film a second series of ITV’S Marcella and has another project. She says: “I just got my first documentary commissioned by C4. I felt I wanted to give something back. “That has been through my work with the WWF. I am going to Borneo because we put five orangutans back into the wild, so we are filming a documentary about the sanctuary.” John Bishop In Conversation With… Anna Friel is on tonight at 9pm on W.