It’s hard to be horrible, says Jennifer Ellison

Mar 14 2008 by Rob Driscoll, Western Mail

SHE may have moved from soap to cinema, but former Brookside actress Jennifer Ellison is at pains to stress that life on a film set doesn’t always mean glamorous trailers and endless Hollywood-style pampering.

Her new movie, gritty British comedy-horror The Cottage, has a night-time setting deep in the countryside, which indeed required her to stay up through the night in very austere circumstances.

“Filming at night is pretty gruelling on your body clock,” she explains. “We’d be absolutely freezing, in a little tent huddled around a fan heater, and the woods outside were crawling with rats the size of cats.”

She shudders at the memory of it. But Ellison isn’t seeking sympathy – she’s clearly grateful for the tough-as-nails role she plays in this very smart, gore-splattered film from Paul Andrew Williams, the writer-director of 2006’s cult indie-flick London to Brighton.

Ostensibly she is the typical glamour-girl-in-peril – kidnapped by two squabbling brothers (Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis and League of Gentlemen player Reece Shearsmith), who bind, gag and dope her up before taking her to the remote rural venue of the title. But when Ellison’s character Tracey comes around, there’s no sign of the screaming helpless victim – she gives as good as she gets.

“She’s a tough cookie,” agrees 24-year-old Ellison.

Once Tracey wakes up, she’s loud and aggressive, with a four-letter-word vocabulary to make the proverbial navvy blush. She knees her hapless kidnapper Peter (Shearsmith) in the groin and buts his nose into a bloody pulp.

Yet it wasn’t these kick-ass, ball-busting antics that Ellison baulked at – she welcomed her victim-turned-aggressor moments. Instead she was filled with dread by the amount of swearing she had to deliver.

“Oh my God, it was just relentless,” she says in her thick Liverpudlian accent.

“My character is by far the scariest character in the movie, much more than the bad guy. After a while they were bringing me honey and lemon on set, because I was screaming away, and I really did find it hard to be so horrible, so abusive and so vulgar.

“I got to the point of asking Paul (the director), ‘Please can I not swear anymore, it’s just so horrible!’ but he was adamant, and would make me go for it even more. It’s not the kind of language I’d use in real life.”

So embarrassed, indeed, was Ellison about her character’s toilet-mouth dialogue that when the film recently premiered in her native Liverpool – attended by her family and friends – she felt the need to prepare them.

“I hope they weren’t too shocked. But seriously, that’s all part of acting, isn’t it? If it’s a good film with a good script, and this one definitely is, you’ve got to do certain things – whether it’s a sex scene, or swearing. You’re playing a part, and that’s what you’ve got to remember.”

The Cottage is a film that’s been a long time coming. Paul Andrew Williams initially delivered the script five years ago for a project he might have guessed would prove difficult to secure financial backing for – a genre-blending, prosthetics-heavy comedy-horror movie. Sure enough, he encountered a series of set-backs.

Frustrated with the film’s stop-start progress, Williams turned his attentions to writing and directing another movie – the shoe-string budgeted London to Brighton, which went on to become his ultimate calling card, winning plaudits from public and critics alike.

On the back of the huge success of London to Brighton, the wheels were put in motion to tackle The Cottage once again. And this time around, unlike his first movie, a bigger budget (£2.5m) meant he could arouse the interest of star names to boot.

Filming took place last year, in two locations – the Isle of Man for the exterior night-time shots, and a Yorkshire farmhouse for the interiors.

It was a long way from Ellison’s previous film work – the extravagant Hollywood re-working of The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Joel (Batman and Robin) Schumacher – but a job she relished.

“Paul Andrew Williams is just great to work for, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a director who’s so chilled out,” says Ellison. “We had our work cut out, within a very tight time schedule, but we never felt too pressurised, because Paul made everyone feel so at ease.

“It was an eye-opener to me, working on a film like this, a real team effort, and that made it so rewarding.”

The Cottage could be described as a film of two halves. What starts off as a tightly-knotted drama-cum-thriller, with the two bungling brothers coping with a kidnap victim from hell, suddenly turns into a horror-fest with blood-curdling special effects – all of them achieved on camera, with no computer-generated imagery.

Yet the real horror, as far as Ellison was concerned, was simply keeping awake.

“Reece Shearsmith and I actually fell asleep one night sitting by our little heater, waiting for the next take,” she recalls with a laugh. “I literally got woken up with someone saying, ‘Come on, we’re ready for you on set!’ So it was sometimes difficult getting into character, with a minute before the cameras rolled.”

The film may be a relatively small-budget, genre affair, but as far as Ellison is concerned, it’s a major stepping stone to big-screen credibility.

Since leaving Brookside, she’s chanced her arm on a variety of unconnected projects, including a run on the West End stage in the musical Chicago, and the TV reality show, Hell’s Kitchen, which she duly won.

Today it’s still the role of Brookside‘s Emily O’Leary, which brings Ellison the most recognition in the street – even though she left the Merseyside soap five years ago.

“That’s fine by me,” she beams. “If it wasn’t for Brookie, I wouldn’t be doing all these amazing jobs now.

“I was there for six years, and to come from a soap, and still be working – it’s not bad going, is it? A lot of actors come out of soaps and never work again, because they’re pigeon-holed. It’s difficult enough to stay working as an actress as it is, so I’m proud with what I’ve done.”

The Cottage opens today