Anna Chancellor: 'I want to get real'

Anna Chancellor was Duckface in 'Four Weddings' and is now an acid-tongued divorcée in 'Crush'. But, as she tells Fiona Morrow, she's a little tired of playing the posh best friend

It's a wet and windy summer's day in Edinburgh. So wet and windy, in fact, that Anna Chancellor was compelled to have a bath before beginning her scheduled press interviews. With dampness still drawing up her curls, but clearly cosy in a fresh set of dry clothes, the lanky Chancellor gulps down a huge coffee as I enter.

She's in Edinburgh to talk about her new film Crush. Well, new is probably stretching it: premiered at Cannes last year, John McKay's début feature has been gathering dust ever since, a casualty of FilmFour's lack of confidence following the disaster that was Lucky Break. It's a shame because Crush – despite a horribly slushy ending – is not at all bad in its depiction of three, single, women friends on the cusp of 40. Suffering from a lack of decent men, good sex and the loud ticking of biological clocks, the three are the founder (and only) members of the Sad Fuckers Club, a weekly group in which the gal with the saddest tale of female-to-male contact wins a box of Tunnocks caramel wafers.

Chancellor plays Molly, a doctor, thrice married – to "Mr Schoolboy, Mr Gay and Mr Unspeakable Lying Bastard" – and thrice divorced. She's a woman who speaks her mind, regardless of how outrageous the sentiment. "That was lovely for me," Chancellor grins. "I have good lines, don't I? You just can't believe she says what she does."

Though she revels in the memory of Molly's quick tongue, Chancellor admits she wasn't always sure about the role: "I think I was quite blunt at the interview with John," she tells me, dropping her voice to a stage whisper. "I said that I didn't think I could play this.... And that was the nature of our relationship – I was always going 'John, I don't know...' and he'd be like, 'Yes you do, just do it'."

Talking to her, it's easy to see why Chancellor might have recoiled from Molly's razor wit. Sentences start confidently enough but invariably end with a "What do you think?" or a "Do you agree?". She regularly begins with an "I think..." before losing her nerve midway and putting the other point of view. It's a distracted form of conversation but what's nice is her complete lack of guile.

"I think that was one of the challenges of playing that part," Chancellor says. "To not alienate the audience from that character by being so awful..." She frowns slightly, before coming back with the qualification, "But then, people do find themselves having friends that they can't bear, don't they? People do get caught up in relationships that aren't sort of suiting them.

"I certainly know that I have a friend who comes hard and fast," she continues. "But if sometimes I'm taken aback, I always remind myself that intimacy breeds rudeness – that it's how you know you're close to someone." So you can say anything to your real friends, however blunt? 'Chancellor wrinkles her nose: "Well, it's a fine line between what is appropriate to say and what is just fucking rude." She's posh, and has a posh person's knack of being able to swear with enthusiasm and gusto – which she does, frequently – without sounding vulgar.

The youngest of four, Chancellor grew up in the English countryside before being packed off to boarding school at seven, followed by convent school at 10. The route to an acting career was sparked early: "When I first went to boarding school my mum put me down for elocution lessons. But I think the headmistress was not quite right and the drama teacher – who had these great swollen legs all bandaged up and fingernails that had been painted a hundred times – seemed to have taken over. So we spent hours in the gym doing endless improvisations and plays." She smiles at the memory, before adding: "And then when I went to the convent, I turned out to be sort of hopeless academically. But I loved doing plays – I was Elvira in Blithe Spirit, I had a funny voice, the audience laughed, I loved it and I wanted to be an actress."

Still, it took a long time before she believed that an actress is what she was: "I never knew it was at all possible," she shrugs, apologetically. "I think I've often been a mixture of being quite arrogant about being in the school play but deep down having no real confidence."

She looks up, and says, in all earnestness: "Everybody tells you, you can't be an actress, don't they? And I think my mum thought she couldn't possibly encourage me because it was bound to end in disaster."

Even towards the end of drama school, Chancellor was no more sure of herself: "In the third year they taught us how to pay our taxes and I remember sitting in the back row thinking 'Yeah, as if I'm ever going to need to do this'. The idea that I'd get a job at all seemed so inconceivable."

And, in truth, it did take a while. In fact, Chancellor was 29 before her career took off in Four Weddings And A Funeral. "It was the beginning of a working actress's life." She pauses, before flashing an ironic smile and adding, "But obviously I am labelled – as 'Duckface'." Hmm. Not exactly flattering, I agree. "Sometimes I think if I had been born at a different time I would have been more of a leading girl," she sighs. "These days, the girls that get the guys are such babes, aren't they?" She pushes an unruly curl back from her face. "And I'm just not. I know I'm not. But I do feel untapped."

There are, however, compensations to being a "character actress". "I like acting, "Chancellor shrugs, "and it seems to me that a lot of the gorgeous ones, often it's not exactly acting they're asked to do. Often they're just asked to be gorgeous."

She feels less pigeonholed in the theatre: "Although," she grimaces, "theatre can be mind-blowingly boring. When it's bad, you just want to slit your wrists." Nevertheless, Chancellor is a glutton for exactly the kind of theatre that sends most of us running for the hills: amateur dramatics and school plays. "I love them," she smiles. "I suppose you think that's quite odd."

She loves them so much, in fact, that she's even directed her local panto in Notting Hill a few times: "I loved the pantos," she exclaims. "And I have other projects that I don't seem to have the time to do." Films, though, are how she most enjoys making a living – even if she does find herself reduced to an upper-class stereotype. The problem, she says, is a lack of confidence in what makes Britain interesting: "We pussyfoot around America and we shy away from the source of what's around us."

She throws her hands up in the air, adding: "I wish I could write because I feel the things I see around me aren't equated on film. The parts I play – they're usually quite posh – often they're interesting but they don't touch reality. I don't think anyone would write about someone from my background and reflect my life."

Anna Chancellor is on a roll now and picking up speed: "We're always apologising for our characters by having to laugh at them, and, frankly, I'm just not ashamed of who I am any more."