The Evening Standard (London)

LENA TIME Evening Standard (London) Oct 28, 2005 By Emine Saner Lena Headey has been on the cusp of stardom for more than a decade but it seems her time has finally come. Her latest role is in The Brothers Grimm, a glossy, big-budget Hollywood caper, directed by Terry Gilliam, about the Teutonic storytellers, played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. Lena plays Angelika, a horse-riding, arrow- shooting tracker who meets the brothers as they bungle their way around the countryside fighting monsters and demons. 'I loved Angelika,' she says. 'She was a tomboy and looked after herself.' Lena has always done the same herself: she's been working since she was 16 and has notched up 24 films and a plethora of TV roles since. But just after filming The Brothers Grimm, Lena, now 29, hit a barren patch and was out of work for nearly a year. She briefly considered waitressing, but instead fled to New York where she spent three months catching up with friends, then went to Costa Rica. 'The first five months were incredibly frustrating, depressing and frightening because I thought I was never going to work again. It's hard not to lose confidence,' she says now. But before she could really worry, she landed her newest role in 300, another big- budget Hollywood film based on a Frank Miller cartoon novel (the creator of X-Men) about the 480BC Battle of Thermopylae and starring Gerard Butler. Whether she's ready for the exposure that two such high-profile films will bring is dubious. 'I'm ambitious, I think,' she says in her slightly American twang which gradually normalises to pure London as we talk. 'But I don't necessarily equate success with being a huge Hollywood star. To remain quite anonymous is the biggest gift ever. I would hate to have my picture taken when I go to the shop for milk. I find Hollywood a really tricky place. I never wanted to live there. For me, the cheaper jobs with a small, intimate crew are far more rewarding.' Lena made her debut in Waterland (an adaptation of the Graham Swift novel starring Jeremy Irons and featuring a young Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ethan Hawke). She's since appeared in the TV dramas Band of Gold and The Long Firm, as Steve Coogan's girlfriend in The Parole Officer, and in the potholing horror film, The Cave. She claims to treat acting as 'a job I have a working-class work ethic that has given me a sensibility. It probably won't go on forever, this, so I don't take it for granted.' Her drive comes from her parents who ran a pottery-importing business in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. A tomboy with a younger brother (Tim, now an air steward), Lena remembers a happy childhood, running wild in the fields around her home. 'I remember playing outside in that beautiful late-summer sun when you know you should be in but there's one more tree to climb or another boy to race.' She was, she claims, not a show-off as a little girl: 'I'm actually pretty shy, it's almost painful sometimes.' She believes that her love of acting may be a form of release: 'It may be about always running from something. It's quite cathartic. You can play complete bastards and get away with it. You can't do that in real life. It allows me to behave terribly.' Lena wasn't a rebel at school but enjoyed drama and joined a youth theatre group. Just as she started A levels, she was spotted in a production and given the part in Waterland. 'It was beyond exciting. They were giving me money to spend, I was an actress in a movie could life be any better?' Life did indeed get better. The following year, she was cast in The Remains of the Day, alongside Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. When she was 19, she moved to London. On one of her earliest jobs, The Jungle Book, she met the actor Jason Flemyng, probably best known for his later role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. They were together for eight years until they split up three years ago. 'It was absolutely hideous,' she says of the break- up. 'You leave everything you know. But I knew it was time for us to move on. He's incredibly happy with somebody else now and that's what I want.' This magnanimous attitude is given weight by the fact that she has a new boyfriend, though she's coy about his identity. But, she says, this is 'the most healthy, beautiful thing that has happened to me. It feels very hopeful. He's fantastic. He comes from a normal, working-class background which helps, his morals and ethics are pretty much the same as mine, and it's lovely to meet someone who shares an understanding of what's important in life. This doesn't feel like I have to work at it.' Which leaves her more time to concentrate on the hard work of building that career. The Sky Movies Special Screening of The Brothers Grimm is on 31 October as part of the London Film Festival (www.lff.org.uk). The film goes on general release on 4 November (c)2005. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. source: The Evening Standard (London)