From Brookside to Broadway to Hollywood, there's no stopping Anna Friel's energy or her dynamic ascent to international stardom

By Joanna Briscoe

She does her cover shoot, then flies to Venice, where her movie premieres to a 10-minute standing ovation. She talks to the world's press alongside Trudie Styler, with whom she spent three weeks holidaying in Tuscany. She flies back to London too tired to do her interview. She postpones. But then…. An elf in jeans turns up, with her boyfriend, who kisses her, and asks her when she'll be home. She sits down, eats chips, and chats about her new flat down the road. She orders a Coke, pulls her knees to her chin, and flexes her flip-flops. What else do you expect from someone fast becoming an international star ? What else do you expect from Anna Friel ?

She inhabits that slice of ether in which holidays with Sting, libidinous comments from Jack Nicholson, family dinners with Madonna and flings with Robbie Williams are a socio-economic standard. Yet Anna Friel has that particular essence of ordinary girl that the British love. Her accent is mildly modified Rochdale. Her parents are both teachers and she speaks like a hyperactive teenager - candid, cackling, smoking, phenomenally energetic. "I hate being bored and I've always filled my life with things all the time. I'm always doing something".

Others speak of this same force-field. "She's this incredibly dynamic presence," says Sandra Goldbacher, director of her latest film, Me Without You. "She really lights up the screen".

Indeed, on first meeting, she seems wired. She's a little defensive, edgy, given to gunfire delivery of self-affirming statements: "I think I've been good in everything I've done, and got better", "I'm blessed with good legs". "I think I was good in both those films".

Then she relaxes. Again, she's the supernova-next-door, with her delicate features, her freckles and frowns and vulnerable little bee-sting of a mouth. Add a touch of make-up, and the waif turns siren, all magic and cheekbones, and clearly belongs in the stratosphere.

At 16, Anna Friel became a household name after a local theatre workshop resulted in an audition for Liverpool soap Brookside. As Beth Jordache, the sexually abused lesbian murderess, she made history by partaking in soap's first sapphic snog. Then, aged 19, she came to London, where her media-babe phase was heralded by a series of barely clad provocative poses for the lad mags. "I don’t regret it but it does put you in a certain bracket, " she says.

Next came the well-documented relationship with crooner-cum-"love rat" Darren Day, followed by a sting as Met Bar Anna: Friel and her new best friends Moss, Evans, Gallagher, Matthews, cool yet ubiquitous, Brit=packing like mad. Does the Met Bar still feature ? "No", she says with a strict look. "I'm at a different stage in my life".

During all this, there were the movies: Land Girls, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rogue Trader, the infamous Brit-flop, Mad Cows, and the BBC's Our Mutual Friend. Simultaneously, Anna became a Broadway queen, when she starred to outrageous acclaim as a lap dancer in Patrick Marber's Closer. A-list superstars clamoured for tickets. Jack Nicholson declared he couldn't concentrate until he'd slept with her. Recently, a more mixed reception greetd her stint in Lulu at the Almeida.

"I'm 25 years old and I'm keeping on working," she says. "I'm playing very varied characters, and I just want to keep getting better. If I see myself being stale, then I'll stop. I'm lucky enough to do a job that I really, really enjoy. Of course there's the bad sides, and I'll complain my little arse off sometimes, but I love my work".

The new film may be her best yet. An exquisitely filmed love story that examines an obsessive, destructive friendship, Me Without You captures a Seventies childhood and Eighties young adulthood with wincing accuracy.

Anna plays the role of highly charismatic yet dangerously vulnerable Marina. "She works incredibly hard; she really does put herself through it," says director Sandra Goldbacher. "In the scene where she's being sick after taking heroin, she really put her fingers down her throat and made herself sick. She did it every time".

Post-Darren Day and short-lived "dates that the press don’t know about, thank God", her love life is sorted. "He is my love, and he is my life," says Anna of actor and writer David Thewlis (Naked, Seven Years In Tibet), 13 years her senior. They got together after a dinner with the crowd from British production company Natural Nylon: "He came back that night and never went home".

"He's very patient with me," she says smiling. "I'm incredibly impatient. We're pathetically soppy and hug and kiss every second there is. He's calmed me down. This is me calm!"

Anna and David live in a ballroom. They share a house in Windsor and this immense converted space in London's Clerkenwell, currently being designed by Mulberry. Hidden in an old building tiled like an aquarium is their homely expanse of parquet and pargeted ceiling, with distressed screens and leather sofas, a music corner and a dining area, leading to a minstrels' gallery of a bedroom.

Friel's own look is distinct: "I do like to be different," syas Anna. "I don’t go after the Gucci trousers that everyone's got because I think it's boring. And I'm a make-up whore! I have so much make-up it's ridiculous. There's a great make called Valerie, you can get it from LA - really fantastic, little interesting pots.

"My wardrobe's a huge mix. In Venice, I wore this great designer, Collette Dinnigan. And I adore vintage. I also love Patty Shelabarger, a mad Italian designer with pink hair. It fascinates me. I love clothes. I love being a girl. I love feeling incredibly feminine".