It’s rare, in an interview, to be asked to repeat yourself so your subject can
practise her answer. Unfortunately, the question seized on is so lame — some
uninspired investigation by me into her character in a new film — that I
feel compelled to apologise for it. Kelly Reilly is having none of it. “No,
don’t say sorry,” she says, all green eyes and auburn hair. “I've got to
learn how to do it.”
Truth be told, Reilly would rather gush about her recent trip to Brazil, a
self-congratulatory jolly after months of solid work, traipsing round Rio
with a Lonely Planet guide. As for the other stuff — career, her profile —
“I don’t spend much time thinking about any of that”. She pauses. “Maybe I’m
naive.”
An amiable sort, Reilly exudes a clucky, round-vowelled charm (occasional
lapses into Estuarine notwithstanding). In an upstairs room at Soho House,
in London, she yanks down the top half of a sash window — revealing ample
thong-age above the southerly drift of her jeans — but sits politely through
a cup of earl grey before submitting her request. “Do you mind if I have a
cigarette?” she asks. Her slight frame and English-rose beauty seem at odds
with one now crafting a mid-morning roll-up with the deftness of a seasoned
navvy (something a bit naughty about that slow, studious lick). But then
Reilly is an unlikely package altogether, one theatreland has been clasping
jealously to its bosom for the past few years.
Her stage credentials are impeccable. Last seen touring in Look Back in Anger
with David Tennant, she was a stand-out as the innocent Elaine to Kathleen
Turner’s Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, and as the lovelorn Debs, in Sexual
Perversity in Chicago, holding her own against an imported Hollywood cast.
In 2004, Reilly became the youngest-ever Olivier nominee, for her simmering
performance in Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie at the Donmar Warehouse.
Inevitably, movies have beckoned. Last year, she shot four back-to-back. One,
the French film Les Poupées Russes (Russian Dolls), with Romain Duris and
Audrey Tautou, for which she won the best-newcomer award at Cannes, has
already made her a star across La Manche. She hunts for a match, finds one,
then lights up. “Number one in France for three months,” she declares. It’s
only now that communing with the fourth estate is looming as an obligation.
“I don’t have a script, so they’re my words,” she explains. “A friend of
mine gave some great advice: just think of it as acting. I suppose you do
have to put on another face, but I don’t know what that other face is.”
Russian Dolls won’t arrive here until next year. Meanwhile, the remaining
trio, being British, have conspired to come along like buses — the recent
Pride & Prejudice, in which she plays sniffy Caroline Bingley; the newly
released The Libertine; and Mrs Henderson Presents, which, for Reilly, is
probably the most significant. A musical drama directed by Stephen Frears —
in which Reilly stars alongside Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins and debutant popster
Will Young — it tells the story of London’s Windmill theatre. From its
foundation in 1931 by a dilettante socialite, Laura Henderson, it went on to
be the only London theatre to stay open through the Blitz. Beyond its cheesy
variety acts, it was famed for its on-stage nudity — the fabled Windmill
girls (Reilly’s is called Maureen) posing in discreet, static tableaux at
the climax of each show, much to the delight of the servicemen who packed
the place out.
“There’s something about this period of innocence before Soho became a sort of
seedy night-club area,” says Reilly. “A whole variety of theatre, where
you’re quite happy to see sand-dancers and bad comedians — this place of
escape for young men who are just about to go off to war.” The original
Windmill may now be a lapdancing club, but it was never raunchy. “Not
sordid,” she states. “Sexy and beautiful and fabulous.” And, wouldn’t you
know it, Reilly’s already landed herself a British Independent Film Award
nomination for best supporting actress.
Despite her professed interview inexperience (and I already suspect she’s
hamming this up a bit), Reilly has become adroit at tackling queries about
the film’s drawer-dropping. “That’s usually been the first question,” she
says. So tame is it, that for shock value, it barely comes near the sodomy
and cannibalism of Blasted, the Sarah Kane play in which Reilly appeared in
2001. But the press, are we not, are a prurient lot.
“You have to deal with these things with a huge amount of humour,” she says.
“There’s nothing worse than being deadly serious about nudity.” The worst
days were when they had male extras in to play the audience. “We were
filming for three months. There are days when you are absolutely fine with
it, and there are days when you’d rather put on tracksuit bottoms and curl
up with a hot water bottle and a cup of cocoa. You couldn’t — you had to be
naked in front of 250 people, but that’s what these girls had to do.”
At 28, Reilly is something of a veteran, having been acting professionally
since she was 17. For one who grew up in Chessington, to a policeman father
and a mother who works at Kingston hospital, it was not an obvious career
path. But after kindly teachers indulged her interest, her precocious talent
saw her enlisting with a showcase outfit, browbeating a casting agent from
the TV drama Prime Suspect into running the rule over her. “I wrote a
letter. I said: ‘I’m 16, I ’m going to be an actress, I’m applying for drama
schools and I really want the audition practice.’ She wrote back and said:
‘Don’t waste my time.’ So I bugged her again.” It worked. In series four,
Reilly became a teen murder suspect who comes under the scrutiny of
Superintendent Jane Tennison.
Funnily enough, some years later, Reilly played a young version of Helen
Mirren in the film Last Orders. She was anxious as to whether Mirren would
remember her. At the read-through, she hid behind her script. “Then Helen
walks in the room, bounds up to me, gives me a big hug and says, ‘I knew
you’d be doing well.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Other jobbing television work followed: Poirot, Children of the New Forest,
the revamp of Poldark. As well as Last Orders (on which she met her
boyfriend, JJ Feild), Reilly appeared in films like Peaches, Dead Bodies and
Maybe Baby. But it is on stage that she has excelled. Many will have come
away from 2003’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago convinced that the real star
was neither Minnie Driver nor Matthew Perry, but the slim redhead in between
(and one who certainly never earned a million dollars in an episode of
anything). “I used to watch Friends on a Friday night with a bottle of
wine,” she says of Perry. “I just had to keep saying to myself, ‘Don’t call
him Chandler, don’t call him Chandler.’”
I wonder how, as an inveterate board-treader, Reilly feels about the rash of
American screen stars spreading across the West End in search of artistic
kudos? “It takes guts, okay, and they have to dig deep, but if they’re
willing to give it a try, then let them go for it,” she muses generously.
“But I wouldn’t like every play I do to be about a showcase for a movie
star. Not interested. That does seem to be the trend, but at the end of the
day, it’s also a business.”
A similar question might be asked of Joe Wright’s muddy Pride &
Prejudice (“Caroline Bingley wasn’t muddy,” she points out), a production in
which actresses who have paid their dues — such as Reilly or Rosamund Pike —
are shunted at the expense of Keira Knightley, a certified star, though
arguably less gifted. But I’m barking up the wrong tree here. “That’s
assuming that’s the end thing you want,” Reilly cuts off.
“I wish Keira the best of luck. I think she’s a wonderful young actress, and
she’s got a hell of a career in front of her. And she’s a lovely girl. To
have that on your shoulders at 20, I respect her. But I never became an
actress to be a film star. It was never about me shining, it was more about
me being part of something bigger.”
The period romp The Libertine had a real team feel about it, she says,
recalling how its troupe — from Johnny Depp to Johnny Vegas to Johnny
Malkovich — were “all locked up” on the Isle of Man, working and, it would
seem, playing hard. Her role is small — Jane, a sort of grubbed-up Nell
Gwyn, a society whore who, among other things, gets to fellate (though not
in a literal, Brown Bunny sense) Johnny Depp’s pre-syphilitic Earl of
Rochester.
“He’s given her her apprenticeship, and now she’s top dog in Restoration
London,” she laughs. Depp, she insists, provided something of an acting
masterclass for all of them. “He’s the best, he really is. I could talk to
you about him until the cows come home. To see somebody in their element
like that ... All the young actors — me, Richard Coyle, Tom Hollander — we
just loved him. He’s like the coolest guy in the school.”
Russian Dolls, directed by Cédric Klapisch, is a follow-up to Pot Luck (2002),
in which Reilly also appeared, about a bunch of assorted European students
co-habiting in Barcelona. The sequel reunites them in a more mature romantic
story that begins in St Petersburg. Reilly was quite enchanted by the former
Russian capital. “We were there in June last year, and it didn’t get dark
till one in the morning. It’s just this incredible light.” But after so many
months away (and despite her little Brazilian jaunt), she is, she realises,
“a bit of a home bird”. This summer, she walked around local golf courses
with her brother Neil, a professional on the PGA tour — her “gap year”, as
she puts it.
She extinguishes her fag, leans out of the window and projects the whisping
stub out onto Greek Street. “Boom!” I say. “I made sure I put it out! I
did!” she squeals. “Sorry for anyone walking down below.” There is another
film in the pipeline, The Physician, with Wes Bentley. But you sense she’s
rather more excited about a return to the stage, in a new project with the
writer/director Terry Johnson, a champion of hers over the years.
“I’d choose to do a play every year, because if I don’t, I miss it,” she
sighs. “I love being in rehearsal, I love being with other actors and I love
doing a play live. I love that connection with the audience and I love the
work that goes into creating a character. Doing a play drives me and makes
me happy. I’m not saying film doesn’t. But it’s where I came from, it’s in
my blood, and if I didn’t, I’d feel frustrated. ”
The Libertine opens on Friday, Mrs Henderson Presents on November 25
