StandardTimes

NewStandard---Steptember 1998

With 'Tess,' an actress graduates to stardom

By Matt Wolf, Associated Press writer

Justine Waddell has only just left Cambridge University, but her starring role in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" marks a graduation of a different sort -- to the ranks of leading young British actors who can make period literature on television come to life.

"It was huge," Waddell, 22, said of the challenge posed by "Tess," based on Thomas Hardy's brooding 1891 novel of rural English passions.

The four-hour TV adaptation, directed by Ian Sharp, launches A&E's fall seasonSunday and Monday. Oliver Milburn and Jason Flemyng co-star as Angel Clare and Alec D'Urberville, the two men in Tess' doomed life.

The novel was previously filmed by Roman Polanski in 1979, with Nastassja Kinski in the title role. But Waddell said she did not look to the Polanski work for her inspiration. "I knew if I went back, I'd remember it and I'd carry it. Ours was so different that just from reading the script, I knew there'd be no point. It was better just to refer to the novel."

Hardy's almost cinematically vivid prose was itself useful, she said.

"He's almost like a director himself pictorially," she said of the novelist, whose other works -- all situated in and around the writer's beloved Dorset -- include "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Jude the Obscure."

Waddell spoke of Hardy describing Tess as "this fly on a green billiard vase."

"He has an incredible eye for detail and also emotionaldetail, and how emotions translate into physical action," said Waddell, whose long dark hair and natural refinement make her a natural for costume drama.

"Because we shot out of sequence and had no continuity, the book was our attempt at continuity," she said.

Waddell's own career hasn't exactly been continuous, since she has had to learn how to juggle acting and academe. At the end of her first year at Cambridge, she traveled to the Edinburgh Festival in a production of Jean Anouilh's "The Lark," the venture that, in turn, landed her an agent.

Before long, she had a small role in a movie, sharing a scene with Alfred Molina in a remake of "Anna Karenina," with Sophie Marceau.

Her acclaimed stage debut came opposite Ralph Fiennes in a rare London revival of Chekhov's "Ivanov" that toured briefly to the Russian playwright's home city of Moscow.

"One of the cast said to me, 'It will never get any better than that,' which is probably true in a way," she recalled. "Having had that special experience, you want to work toward being that special again because you have some kind of sense of just how good people can be."

The joint demands of "Ivanov" and "Tess" -- as well as a further TV venture, "The Woman in White," meant taking more than a year off from Cambridge, where she finally graduated in August with a degree in sociology and politics.

"What was wonderful about taking the year out was you just went, 'Ka-bang, this is what I do,"' she said. "What was important about going back and graduating was just to have a little bit of time to yourself to make mistakes and be kind of private and argue with people and learn more.

"I've come out and can now say, 'I feel I'm an adult.' There's been a funny kind of sea change -- at least I hope there's been a sea change."

Her ascent through the acting profession has brought with it numerous rewards, not least the respect of her South African mother and Scottish father. Waddell was born in Johannesburg, the second of three children.

"I think they had great reservations about my career," she said, "partly because my family are not artistic ... (and) the concept of spending large amounts of time not working was just kind of not on."

Now, she said, "My family have just been so generous, and they pick up the pieces. You begin to really value your family because they're the people who really know you, and they stamp all over you if they feel something is slipping out of kilter,which is kind of easy to do."

Waddell next turns to another literary heroine -- Estella in a new version of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" for the British Broadcasting Corp.

"Me and the 19th-century novel!" she said with a laugh, aware that she is receiving a crash course in the genre that is unavailable to most people. But after "Great Expectations," she yearns to do something contemporary and new.

"That's the end, no more after that," she said of her unplanned literary trawl. "It doesn't get any better than Estella."