Unknown actress gets career boost with starring role
Samantha Barks walks into our interview in a London hotel suite listing cities.
“New York, L. A., San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, New York!,” she trills, laughing. She has visited them all in the past fortnight. One of the New York trips, it turns out, was to sing in a band set up by Russell Crowe, her Les Miserables co- star.
The others were part of a relentless press schedule for Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of the much- loved musical, in which she plays the tragic part of Eponine.
Not bad going for a 22- yearold from the Isle of Man.
Pretty, with brown hair curling around a face with dimples so deep she obviously hasn’t stopped smiling for a month, Barks had childhood ambitions that quickly outgrew her home shores. At the age of 16, with no professional experience, she moved to London and auditioned for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2008 television talent show, I’d Do Anything.
After “almost accidentally” becoming a tabloid darling ( thanks to a hot- pants photo shoot) she finished third.
Her first professional job was the “petrifying” role of Sally Bowles in a nationwide tour of Cabaret, then in June 2010 she was cast as Eponine in the West End stage production of Les Miserables.
Eponine is one of the story’s most poignant characters. Her songs, which chart her unrequited love for her neighbour, Marius, and her self- sacrifice in his place on the barricades, have a power that carries them far beyond the theatre doors.
As an eight year- old, Barks remembers singing the heartwrenching On My Own into her hairbrush, “desperately wanting” to be Eponine, and agrees that the weight of expectation demanded by such a popular role is testing.
“You can’t live up to everyone’s ideals. You just have to do your own thing and hope that it’s true to the character.”
She took some advice from original cast member Frances Ruffelle, the definitive Eponine before Barks, and was chosen to perform alongside her for the Les Miserables 25th anniversary in 2010.
After a year in the stage role, Barks auditioned for Hooper’s film and spent months in agonizing auditions.
Winning the part “consumed my mind”, she admits. “I had never wanted anything more.”
Finally, last February, she was taking a curtain call after a performance as Nancy in the musical Oliver! when the producer, Cameron Mackintosh, walked onstage and announced, in front of the audience, that she had won the part.
It is easy to underestimate the gamble Mackintosh took in casting an actress with no screen experience for his pounds multi- million dollar film. But the decision will no doubt have a generation of young actresses begging to audition for television talent shows.
Barks recalls breaking the news to her friends: “They said ‘ OK, so Eddie Redmayne is your romantic lead. Wow.’ Then: ‘ Hang on, Hugh Jackman? Russell Crowe? What!’?” Discovering that the Thenardiers, her onscreen parents, would be played by Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen was, she says, “my most awesome claim to fame ever”.
As the one unknown among a cast of Hollywood royalty, was she nervous?
“I was the newcomer and I didn’t know anything about this world. But on the first day the whole cast assembled and what struck me was that everyone was so nervous.” Evidence of the collective pressure they felt in re- creating such wellloved roles, perhaps.
Playing Eponine demanded an enormous commitment both physically and emotionally.
“Your heart felt torn apart every single day,” says Barks, who lost a lot of weight to better personify a street urchin, training with “gym buddies” Jackman and Anne Hathaway.
Filming her solo On My Own also involved hours of standing under cold- rain machines.
Whenever she felt less certain, her leading man on screen and off was Redmayne, who plays Marius. She describes him as “an utter gentleman,” who was there to answer all her questions.
Jackman, whose own career started on stage, was also an inspiration to her both for his work and for being, she says, “the nicest man in the industry”.
If her career continues to soar, she’ll have the chance to test that claim.