Movies: Interview: Andrea Riseborough: Becoming Wallis Simpson in Madonna's W.E.

Andrea Riseborough said she was a dedicated student of all things Wallis Simpson to play the American woman at the heart of a scandal-plagued royal love story in Madonna's romantic drama W.E., which opened Friday. The British actress told reporters during an interview the day after the movie screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September she set out to learn all she could to prepare for the role, “to find out internally what inspired everything externally, that inspired all of her external perfection.” Written and directed by Madonna., W.E. follows the love story between the notorious Mrs. Simpson and Edward VIII (James D'Arcy), the beloved British king who gave up his claim on the throne for the woman he loved. Yet Riseborough stressed as much as she immersed herself in Wallis, she kept her character at arm's length. “You can get to a certain point with no leaf unturned, no sound bite unlistened to, no moving image or still unlooked at. And still you will never be her, you'll never be inside of her mind,” said Riseborough, a slender beauty with porcelain skin. “Your relationship with her as an artist — mine as an actor — it wasn't the feeling of feeling close to her, because I felt like I was evoking her, so I was inside of her own feelings. But I'm under no delusion that I am her. That will be a historical truth that will always remain.” Riseborough, 30, had become a familiar face at TIFF since she arrived at the Toronto festival in 2010 with three movies to promote. She played playing confused, lovesick tea room waitress, Rose, in the dramatic thriller Brighton Rock with Helen Mirren, the almost-homely Chrissie in the dystopian drama Never Let Me Go, and a cheeky turn as Brenda, a cheeky '60s factory girl in Made in Dagenham. Riseborough's chameleon-like onscreen charms led me to include her in our annual roundup of fresh faces spotted at the 2010 fest. She's even played the young Margaret Thatcher on British TV, for which she won a BAFTA award. We met up again in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah for the world premiere of James Marsh's Belfast-set thriller, Shadow Dancer. In it, Riseborough plays a single mother and IRA member who reluctantly spies for the British to protect her family. She was back to blond locks in Park City, part of the pre-production tests for her next movie, an as-yet unnamed sci-fi project with Tom Cruise. It's the same look she had when she first auditioned for Wallis, Riseborough told Toronto reporters with a grin, “I had blond hair and false tan thing that smelled of biscuits. It was horrendous.” So looking like Wallis didn't land her the part, although onscreen Riseborough is transformed, right down to the Baltimore accent that she finds “wonderfully grating.” Riseborough feels sympathy for Wallis, who was kept out of the British public eye while she and Edward, whom she called David, were courting. When news broke about Mrs. Simpson — a divorcee — just before he renounced the throne to marry her, scandal erupted. “The public had no perception that the king had finally found someone he truly responded to and that made him genuinely happy,” she said. “I think had they had a little more warning, they might have been all right with it. “Had they seen Wallis before she was in the more polished couture version of herself, before she attained that, before she was dripping head to toe with jewels from the monarchy . . . they may have been caught up in the romance like the rest of the world.”影视帝国中国十大灵异事件 短篇鬼故事 鬼故事大全