When British actress Saffron Burrows was cast in the dual roles of identical twins separated as infants in Mike Figgis' most recent work, The Loss of Sexual Innocence-an experimental film that parallels the fable of Adam and Eve with a modern-day story of temptation-she relished the opportunity. Still, Burrows admitted she was wary of making obvious choices with her two characters.
"The idea of playing twins is a fantastic challenge," said Burrows during a recent visit to Los Angeles. "But I wanted to try to avoid a clich , in the sense of them being two women who have lived identical lives, which you sometimes hear about. I also wanted to avoid them being the antithesis of each other."
Instead, Burrows succeeded in creating a pair of distinct characters who look and live quite differently-one Italian, the other British-while at the same time managing to interlock them through subtle, vitally emotional moments. Burrow's choices pay off, and it's a performance that leaves the audience hungry for more of her.
Burrows especially welcomed the chance to work again with Figgis, the respected director of Leaving Las Vegas and last year's One Night Stand, in which she played a small role. Burrows can next be seen in Figgis' screen adaptation of Strindberg's classic play Miss Julie, in which she performs the coveted title role of a count's daughter, who in the course of a night engages in an intense relationship with her father's servant.
"For actors in England, it's a tour de force," said the 26-year-old actress. "I can't really think of many classical roles as good as Miss Julie for a woman. It was the most extraordinary challenge I've ever had, and working with Mike and with actor Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe), I hopefully rose to the level at which they presented the challenge."
Burrows said that her close collaboration with Figgis has also boosted her confidence when it comes to working with other directors, such as Renny Harlin, who recently directed her in the upcoming Deep Blue Sea with Samuel L. Jackson and Stellan Skarsg‰rd.
Said Burrows of Figgis: "He's very willing to listen to suggestions. So you're giving him input and that's good for your confidence, in the sense that you feel you can have a dialogue with other directors. And the way that Mike writes is quite liberating, because he writes in a way that is not at all formulaic. The idea that you can actually not obey these rules that are meant to be there in cinema is fantastic."
While American audiences are slowly coming to recognize Burrows for her work in such films as Circle of Friends, In the Name of the Father, and Wing Commander, people in her native land know her best for her acclaimed performance in the 1996 BBC miniseries Karaoke, written by the late Dennis Potter and co-starring Albert Finney, Richard E. Grant, and Julie Christie.
Prior to landing Karaoke, Burrows briefly juggled dual careers as an actress and a model, the latter a profession she literally stumbled into and a world markedly different from the one she grew up in.
"I grew up in the environment of debate and the political arena, and I've been politically active since I was 10," said Burrows, whose parents are both teachers and were actively involved in socialist causes during Burrows' childhood. "The modeling was something that was handed to me on a plate, really. I was offered this Parisian experience by this agent in London, who came up to me on the street. So I went off to Paris for a bit and thought I'd see what this strange world was like. For a while, I did both [acting and modeling] side by side. I would go and do something obscure in London-like a low-budget graduate film-and then go back to Paris and earn a bit of money."
While Burrows received no formal training as an actress, she has been performing since the age of 12, when she joined a youth theatre group in London. The bulk of her training, she admitted, has been on the job, and although she recognizes the importance training can play in an actor's career, she believes she has learned the same lessons-only in front of the public's eye.
"A lot of actors I know say that drama school taught them a great deal in terms of the voice and gave them a certain confidence. [School also gave them] the notion that they could make their mistakes in private, rather than in public," said Burrows, whose other credits include the films The Matchmaker and the Australian comedy Hotel de Love, as well as the theatrical production of Two Lips, Indifferent Red at the renowned Bush Theatre in London. "I didn't make my mistakes in private. I started making films when I was 17 and I had the intention of going to drama school, but my filmmaking career seemed to snowball and I began getting offered things I felt were really interesting."
What helped Burrows eventually learn from her mistakes was getting the courage to recognize them-a life lesson not necessarily taught at any drama academy.
"In the past, I almost refused to acknowledge the end result of any given production I was in," she said. "I would shy away from screenings. I would turn off the television when I would come on. And often you don't see something for a year or more after having done it, and there's a certain amount of abdication of responsibility. But at a certain point I thought, If I don't like some of the things I've done in any given role, then I've got to acknowledge that and try to get better."
If her latest work is any evidence of her growth as an actress, Burrows seems destined for greatness.