Her speech: rapid, English-accented and delightfully dappled with British-isms. Her demeanor: proper and polite. Thirty-year-old Emily Watson patiently answers questions about life on- and off-screen, about living in London and about her Academy Award nomination for her very first movie, “Breaking the Waves.”
The quirky love story was also the first film script the British stage actress ever had been asked to read. So it was all the more thrilling for her to snag a Best Actress nomination last season as Bess, a naive Scotswoman with a paralyzed husband, in director Lars von Trier’s powerful drama.
“I haven’t gotten out of an airplane since!” says Watson, from her flat in London. “I’m doing lots of movies now–it’s make-hay-while-the-sun-shines time!”
Her second feature, “The Boxer,” in which she stars with “My Left Foot” Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, opened Friday in Chicago. Watson plays the ex-girlfriend of Lewis’ IRA fighter/boxer, who, upon release after 13 years in jail, pursues his former sweetheart in Belfast. Meanwhile, Watson’s Maggie is trapped in a loveless marriage to another IRA prisoner.
“She’s very emotionally damaged, but she’s tough,” Watson says of her character. “Belfast is a place where you can’t be free and say what you think. You have to watch your back all the time. So Maggie has a steeliness, but it’s very controlled.”
“The Boxer” reunites Day-Lewis with “My Left Foot” writer-director Jim Sheridan, who also directed the actor in “In the Name of the Father.” Lewis, Watson recalls, “arrives on the set in character and sets the standard — everyone has to reach it.”
As for Sheridan, who directed, produced and wrote “The Boxer,” Watson says, “You really have to keep on your toes because everything is changing all the time. He’ll say, `I think we should rewrite this scene. Why don’t you say this here and that there? No, no, let’s do this.’ So you’re always just trying to keep up, which can be quite scary if you let it. But if you do keep up, it’s very fulfilling and creative.”
Watson was appearing in a play in London when a casting agent sent her the “Breaking the Waves” script. She’d never given much thought to moving to films and was making relatively little headway in her four-year stage career. Her biggest part was Mary in Lillian Hellman’s “The Children’s Hour.”
In Watson’s first job, a two-year apprenticeship with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she “never had a proper role–I was one of the scrubber nobodies in the back row of `The Taming of the Shrew,’ wearing a wenching outfit and carrying ale. I never really got to say much.” She can laugh about it now.
But she won unbounded critical raves for “Breaking the Waves,” the filming of which she followed up with “The Mill on the Floss,” the BBC television adaptation of George Eliot’s novel that aired recently on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre.”
But losing the Oscar race to “Fargo’s” Frances McDormand was, says Watson, hardly a shock. “I hadn’t expected to win. I thought Frances deserved it and would get it.”
Not surprisingly, the actress, who describes her nature as “phlegmatic, gritty and a bit mad (“I don’t know if I’m always quite logical”), is trying to cope with the permutations of overnight celebrity and success.
For a start, there’s the “strange situation,” as she calls it, concerning her husband of two years, actor Jack Waters. “It’s a bit bizarre: We’re in the same profession, but I’ve kind of gone stratospheric and he hasn’t — so far!” The two met working in “The Taming of the Shrew.” “He was one of the scrubbers in the back row too!” Watson says.
“I’m trying not to let the level of intensity and hard work overtake my sense of enjoyment,” she says. “I have to keep reminding myself that I’m so lucky and having such a bloody nice time. But then you have to `make the right career moves’ — it gets really serious. So you turn around and say, `Hang on — I’m doing this because I love it and have had the most extraordinarily good luck. Count your blessings!’ “
London-born Watson, the daughter of a teacher mum and architect dad, was a shy teen who latched onto acting while attending England’s Bristol University. After doing some “fringe stuff” in London — but employed mostly as a typist and waitress — the 5-foot-8 Watson enrolled in drama school.
“Breaking the Waves,” shot with a hand-held camera, gave her a stunning introduction to film acting. With Von Trier’s use of the flexible technology, she says, “I could go wherever I liked; so I got very used to feeling natural with a camera.”
Watson remains unself-conscious now with conventional filming methods. “If I were to ever start thinking about acting, then I wouldn’t be in the part. If you’re really there 100 percent, being true to it, you don’t think about those things any more than you would if you were the person you’re playing.”
This past fall, Watson began research on her newest character, cellist Jacqueline Du Pre, who died in 1987 of multiple sclerosis at 42. For “Jackie” the actress has concentrated more on preparations. “I played the cello very badly when I was 14 and never practiced. Now,” she says, “I’ve got an incentive.” She even rented a rehearsal room and took lessons three times a week. Though her musicmaking won’t be heard in the movie, she was intent on nailing down the right moves. “I was sawing away for hours on end today. I’ve got blisters and am absolutely exhausted. When I came home, I gave my husband a little concert. He laughed quite a lot. It sounds horrible!”
In Watson’s next release, “Metroland,” she portrays a homemaker. “She’s not a nasty piece of work — a `curtain twitcher’ we’re supposed to feel sorry for — like a lot of suburban housewives in literature and film are,” she says of the character. “She’s actually really cool. She knows what she wants and goes out and gets it.”
Watson herself enjoys housewifery as a respite from filmmaking in the fast lane. “I like to be as dull and domestic as possible — scrubbing about, doing the washing and watching the telly. We’re not great goers to premieres, gadding about in swanky frocks.”
