For someone whose first professional acting job was in a Royal Shakespeare Company`s production of ”Hamlet,” Polly Walker was unusually nervous when she showed up to play one of the four plum roles in ”Enchanted April.”
On the first day of rehearsals, she said, she sat at a table preparing to read her lines in front of the director and other cast members and wasn`t sure anything would come out of her mouth.
”I was pretending to read along as the other actresses read their parts, but I really wasn`t hearing anything,” the British actress said during a recent stop in Los Angeles for the critically acclaimed film.
”I kept peeking ahead to see how far it was until my first line, and I was terrified that my voice would disappear. I wanted so much for them to think I was good and that I wasn`t this young whippersnapper who just got the part because of her looks.
”Don`t ask me what happened when it came my time to speak my lines. The whole experience is a blank.”
Obviously, she did well enough to hold her own with some of England`s finest actreses, including Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson and Josie Lawrence.
They play four unlikely traveling companions in 1920s England who share the expense of renting an Italian castle for a month to get away from their lives, humdrum and otherwise.
Walker, 25, plays Lady Caroline Dester of the British aristocracy, who leads a non-stop party life that appears exciting from the outside. Because of her beauty and position, Lady Caroline is the constant center of attention in her world, and she seeks an escape from the over-attentive men in her life.
Although she is not of aristocratic blood, Walker said she understood enough of what Lady Caroline had to endure to take the character beyond the usual upper-crust cliches.
”I have known aristocrats and watched how they behave, and I know that I`m attractive so I understand what it`s like not to be taken seriously because of your looks. You have to work harder to get people to like you, and I put some of that into Lady Caroline.”
Although the film takes place in the 1920s, it has relevance to women of the 1990s, and Walker said that that universal theme was just one thing that attracted her to the script.
”First of all, it`s not often that you can even find a script with four strong woman characters,” she said. ”It is a film about female strengths and female friendships, and you don`t see much of that today.”
Walker didn`t start her artistic life as an actress. She studied for the ballet most of her early life, but a serious ankle injury at 17 ended that dream.
”I wasn`t crushed at all when I got injured, but my ballet friends all were crushed,” she said. ”Dancing was the only life they knew, and they couldn`t imagine what I was going to do without it. They were thinking, `Poor Polly, she`s flunked her life.`
”But I really consider it a lucky escape. Ballet is a tough life and a short life.”
Walker said she used the unexpected time off to get an education and to begin studying acting, which she always wanted to pursue but never had the time.
After playing the second grave digger in ”Hamlet,” she performed in a succession of stage roles, most of which were historical pieces.
Walker looked credible enough in the present to win the role of one of the terrorists who stalked Harrison Ford this summer in ”Patriot Games.”
”I think they really wanted to cast a French woman in the part so they hired me because I spoke French,” Walker said. ”When they ded movies, but I don`t think I`ll be looking for any more action movies. There`s not enough acting to do with all that action going on. And that really is what this is all about-acting.”
