Made in Dagenham's Andrea Riseborough on Her Oscar-Season Trifecta

When it rains, it pours for some young actors. Take Jessica Chastain or Gemma Arterton, who've spoken here recently about the flukes of scheduling that have made 2010 the busiest years of their lives. Or take Andrea Riseborough, the 29-year-old British actress who brought not one, not two, but three prestige films to this year's Toronto Film Festival -- including this week's Made in Dagenham and breakthrough-level work opposite Sam Riley in Brighton Rock.

And the only reason we got a chance to speak at all in September was because of the brief break she had while shooting Madonna's W.E, the time-traversing royalty romance also featuring Abbie Cornish as her '80s-era analogue. It's the latest milestone in a young career that has already seen Riseborough play Margaret Thatcher and back up the estimable Sally Hawkins twice in Dagenham and Happy-Go-Lucky. Movieline joined her to discuss her crazy year, digging into one of Graham Greene's most complex heroines, and what makes a pinch worth fighting for.

So you have three films at the festival, and you're in the middle of making a movie with Madonna. How are you holding up at the moment?

Well, this is actually a bit of a respite. I know I've got three films, and there are a lot of press commitments. But, you know, it's quite a lovely thing to be talking about things that you feel very passionately about. I haven't really been able to attend to festivals where my films have screened before; I'm always making a movie. But on [W.E], it just worked out perfectly. We had a schedule hiatus where they're shooting the '80s scenes, so it worked out brilliantly.

Never Let Me Go, Made in Dagenham and Brighton Rock all had tremendous buzz coming into the fest, but Brighton Rock is really your movie. Was the book something you'd read or were close to?

Actually, I hadn't read Brighton Rock. I read a lot of Greene's books; I'm a huge Greene fan, and I'd read pretty much everything else. But not Brighton Rock. He's an extraordinary novelist. The most wonderful thing about Greene is that he has this elegance of expression, like Fitzgerald had. You'll turn the page and there will be this one succinct sentence that manages to articulate something you've never been able to articulate before. But then it's a crime thriller. So it's like Agatha Christie and Fitzgerald all at once. It's a guilty pleasure, but it's so beautifully written. Love Greene. I love him.

But when the script came to me, and I decided to do it, I read it. And I'm editing the hell out of this as I'm reading it. I called [writer-director] Rowan [Joffe], and explained how I'm reading the inner workings of Pinkie's brain, and I'm not sure that's entirely without detriment to what we're trying to achieve here -- in terms of me playing Rose. And he said, "Oh my God, don't read the book!" I said, "Yeah, I thought not." It's brilliant for Sam to read, because it's the inner working. But for me it was more editorial. I said, "So I don't need to know that?" He said, "No, Andrea, you need not to know that." Having read Greene's other novels, though, did help with this new beast Rowan was creating. It made for a more intricate tapestry. Thematically, it's so useful.

You're a deceptively physical actor; your characters always tend to demonstrate a certain resolve without saying a word. Rose, for example, finds confidence in love. It's subtle but striking. How did nail that?

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can. If that means that, and that's the best way to do it, that's what you do. I think Rose's relationship to the world physically -- physically in its entirety -- is so dependent on her relationship with herself. And in Rose's world, she's not central. There's no need to be noticed; there's no want to be noticed. She doesn't bemoan that state, either; that's not a tragedy. That's just not part of her social currency. So to go from that to being possibly loved by the most dynamic, charismatic man... this angel comes to her. But if that is good, and what comes is bad, then nothing makes sense. Greene wrestles with this in his novels, constantly: The blurred line between good and evil. It goes back to his wrestling with Catholicism, and that fact that he was bipolar.

He was?

He was! But anyway, so Pinkie sense a vehicle for her self-development, and physically, that's always going to affect a person. I mean, it's so obvious. You can see someone walking down the street who's sexually liberated a mile off. Or you can see somebody who has a terrible relationship with her mother. It's such a manifestation of your innards.

This really comes to the fore when Pinkie pinches Rose; she's almost totally still but absolutely glowing from this contact, this recognition. Didn't Rowan almost cut that scene?

Well, what happened was that when Rowan sent me the script, he sent an old draft -- a five-days previous draft, or something. It had the pinch in it still. But he had eventually taken it out. And then he asked me, "Is there anything in particular you relate to with Rose?" And I said, "It's the pinch. The pinch says everything." I couldn't fully articulate at the time all the things the pinch meant to me, but it was something to do with the mantle being passed from her father to Pinkie. Her allowing him to pinch her in that way tells us that in order to be loved, you'll have to make sacrifices. So she's prepared to do that.

What were your impressions of Never Let Me Go, from page to screen? Had you read it?

I had read that. I'm a ferocious reader. I think it makes you reassess... [Pauses] What it is to be alive. Without making that too epic and general a diagnosis of what it does. But is the point of that love? Is the point of that preservation? Is the point of that the greater good? Is the point of that the self -- going back to Rose? It wouldn't have been received in the same way had it not come out in the age of the self, when we're all told we're important, or that we're all special. A hundred years ago it wouldn't have had the same resonance -- back when everyone was signing up for the first World War to go off and get killed for honor and valor and for country. I think Alex [Garland]'s adaptation was wonderful. It was nice having him on set as well.

That surprises me a bit. Romanek is a nice enough guy, but I kind of envision him as kind of an autocrat on set. Writers not welcome, etcetera. Not the case?

No! He's very collaborative. But Alex was very nice, as well -- he wasn't trying to direct the movie or anything, either. He was there as the [screenwriter], and he was like a kid in a sweet shop: wide-eyed at seeing the characters come to life. It was like when Joe [Wright] made Atonement, and Ian McEwan went to the beach for that big epic scene they shot. Ian was so overwhelmed in the moment because it was basically the same thing.

And finally, your third film of the year, Made in Dagenham -- which I have yet to get to at the fest -- is opening soon. What's your take on that role and that film?

Well, I hope you like it! It's about Ford's female workers in Dagenham who paved the way for equal pay in Great Britain from 1967 to 1970. But it's a real ensemble full of such vivid souls. My character Brenda is incredibly bolshy and very liberated and kind of brazen, dry, cynical, wonderful -- a pint drinker. She's great. I have a very warm place in my heart for Brenda.

[Top photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images]