Andrea Riseborough plays downbeat loner Colleen in ‘Dragonfly’, the film by award winning director Paul Andrew Williams, and stars opposite Vera star Brenda Blethyn
Acting ‘chameleon’ Andrea Riseborough is being tipped for another Oscar nomination for her latest role.
The versatile star plays downbeat loner Colleen in Dragonfly, the film from award-winning writer and director Paul Andrew Williams which had a memorable opening night at the Tyneside cinema in Newcastle.
Riseborough, 43, nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in 2023 for her role in To Leslie, has played everyone from Mrs Thatcher to Wallis Simpson.
The high-dressed glamour of those roles could not be further from the life of Colleen, who walks around the shops of a northern housing estate in a sweat top, jeans and trainers, her loyal but fearsome American bulldog Sabre by her side.
Colleen moves in next door to Brenda Blethyn’s Elsie Roberts in what turns from a tale of neighbourly friendship to dark thriller.
Abandoned by her mum and brother at eight years old, Colleen confides to Elsie that she was taken into care before living on benefits.
She has no friends and spends all her time with Sabre, who follows her around everywhere. She starts to run errands for Elsie, whose only regular visitors before her newfound friend’s arrival are care nurses who shower her and make her meals.
The film, inspired in part by the Covid crisis, is a study of the loneliness that brings the two lead characters together.
Williams admitted that at times, he left his stars to interpret his script without any interruption. “I was extremely fortunate to have two such brilliant actors,” he said.
“It is really special when people do inhabit your work. It was their own interpretation, and I could see it looking at the monitor, it was all left to the actual filming; I was very lucky.”
A visit from John (Jason Watkins), Elsie’s son, is a turning point which brings an unforgettable ending.
The two stars have again been nominated for a Tribeca film award for their work together and Riseborough said: “I would never in my life imagined that I would ever be nominated with Brenda Blethyn.
“It is the best thing that has ever happened to me and I was married last month.” She fell in love with French-Lebanese actor Karim Saleh on the set of Luxor in 2020. Both she and Blethyn told how they read the script to Dragonfly and found it too good to turn down.
Blethyn, 79, had just finished her final ever appearance as Vera in the hit ITV series and was preparing for some time off work.
Riseborough told how the audience during a Q&A at the Tyneside that she was determined to take the part. “I absolutely wanted to do it because it is so beautifully done, so beautifully written, and extremely moving.
“I am just humbled that I was asked to do it.” But she joked: “I was staying in a safari park in Yorkshire when I was filming it and Brenda was worried that I was going to be eaten by a lion.
“I was very lively and I could hear if they started roaring so it was a very different experience; if you needed something to drink you went to the karaoke and bingo.”
Blethyn added: “I was completely isolated by a cemetery, with no transport, I think that I would rather have been with the lions.”
Both Blethyn, twice Oscar nominated for Secrets and Lies (1997) and Little Voice (1999), and Oscar winner Kate Winslet, who worked with Riseborough in Lee, the story of war photographer Lee Miller, paid tribute to the ‘chameleon’ in their co-star.
Winslet said: “She is gentle and sparkly, but then opens her mouth in character and wham! You are given an entirely alternate universe with one breath, or a small adjustment to her posture. Even her eyeballs change shape, for God’s sake!”
Blethyn wanted to do Dragonfly as soon as she discovered she would be opposite the Geordie-born star. “She is brilliant, she is a chameleon, someone called me that once and I was very flattered by that, but then I saw her at work.
“You can try to be clever but I don’t think actors should ever think that they are more interesting than the characters they play.
“We both worked with Mike Leigh and did not divulge anything that we did not need to know.” Riseborough told how they would film some of the emotionally charged scenes towards the end of the film, “then talk about ginger biscuits” in the breaks.
She became famous playing Margaret Thatcher in The Long Walk to Finchley, and in the Madonna film W.E. as a glamorous Wallis Simpson, and as Audrey Withers, editor of Vogue, in Lee.
Colleen is played with an intensity that keeps you glued to the screen, wondering what she might do next; Riseborough admits that her body feels sore at times due to the movement and gait of her characters; with Mrs Simpson, it was painful “from the waist down”.
Her parents George, a car salesman who passed on a love of film, and Isabel, a secretary who loved Shakespeare, were with her for the opening night at the Tyneside.
Riseborough was born and brought up in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, where she gave up her A levels to try her hand at acting and never looked back.
She said of her return to the Tyneside cinema, where she saw some of her favourite movies: “I can’t tell you how much it means to me. I saw so many films here growing up, so many incredible pieces of cinema in this room.
“It is really important to me. I’m looking at the first person who played my dad when I was nine, here in the audience. And remember daddy is here as well.
“There really are no words.”
