A student exchange behind the Iron Curtain in the 1990s opened Catherine Tate's eyes to the realities of life for Eastern Bloc citizens, she tells Steve Pratt.

FILMING the story of a Yorkshire family who defected to East Germany in the 1960s brought back memories of her own experiences behind the Iron Curtain for actress and TV comedienne Catherine Tate.

In the new movie Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution, she plays the mother of a family who quit their Northern home for a life in the DDR - the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, as it was popularly known.

Scenes set in the communist state were recreated in Hungary by film-makers. Tate, famous for her "I'm not bovvered" catchphrase, thought it was important to film in the East to recreate conditions in the 1960s.

"I was in Russia, in Red Square, when the military coup happened and Gorbachev came in, because I was a student doing an exchange in 1991," she recalls.

"That was the closest I got to the kind of conditions we're talking about at that time. That was in the 90s and it wasn't as bad, but I must admit I was very surprised how cosmopolitan and Westernised Hungary was.

"In my ignorance, I thought, 'oh my god, I should take some food with me' - and I did. But I didn't need to, and it was such a beautiful country and the people were so welcoming and very interested in what we were doing."

Tate found it a "strange sensation" being in Moscow in 1991 because she was living with a family whose father and brother went out to protest on the barricades. They didn't hear from them for 48 hours.

"So, personally, in my domestic situation it was very frightening to see a family traumatised over where their menfolk were. The other strange thing was that however frightening, I knew that as a British citizen I was going to be protected from danger," she says. "As Westerners, we were marshalled into places where the military weren't and treated very well, so I was never in danger personally, but having built up this relationship with this family who'd taken care of me and to have such empathy with them, that was a strange thing."

Although Tate is best known for her television comedy show, she has a string of theatre appearances to her credit and is currently filming the next series of BBC1's Doctor Who, in which she joins David Tennant's Time Lord as his new travelling companion.

Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution is based on the story of Brian Norris, who packed his family and all their worldly possessions into a Russian Moscovitch car, and left Bolton for a new life in communist East Germany.

For producer Leslee Udwin, who also produced the award-winning film East Is East, housewife and mother Dorothy Ratcliffe is the Everywoman who finds her voice and becomes an unlikely revolutionary heroine, mirroring the social drive of the growth in strength of the women's movement of the 1960s.

The film has taken five years or so to reach the screen, but Udwin was adamant that she wanted Tate as Mrs Ratcliffe after seeing her on the London stage in the Neil Labute play, Some Girls.

"It wasn't a play I cared for, but within that play Catherine was so good. She made me weep, she was brilliant, and she engaged me even if the play didn't. I knew she was the perfect Mrs Ratcliffe," she says.

"Of course, there were all the pressures to cast an actress who'd won Oscars, which could only be Julie Walters or Brenda Blethyn, or an American name. I just withstood that for all my worth. How could you cast an invisible English housewife, which is the essence of Dorothy, with someone who is so recognisable?"

The same might now apply to Tate, who's become one of the busiest and most recognisable performers on TV since the Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution was first mooted.

Tate herself was grabbed by the brilliant script. "The only thing you can do as an actor is look at the script. If it's a fantastic story beautifully written, that's the only criterion," she says.

She didn't meet the real Mrs Ratcliffe but met her husband Frank, although the most important person for her was Maggie Norris, who was a consultant and co-producer on the film. She's the real life Mary, the youngest Ratcliffe daughter and now a director herself, whose credits include Bad Girls The Musical, premiered at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds last year.

Tate clearly enjoyed making the movie. She recalls people were very welcoming in Halifax, where some filming took place. "I remember my mum came up and she still has a newspaper billboard which said TV Comic In Our Street," she says. "I hope that's the only time I'm on a billboard, given that they're not usually good news."

Her presence filming on the streets caused a certain amount of interest. Director Bille Eltringham recalls times when children noticed Tate was there. "I was really worried because I thought they would all start squealing and actually, because she would always go and say hello, they were incredibly respectful," she says.

The London-born actress has to adopt a Yorkshire accent as Mrs Ratcliffe. Because the rest of her screen family, which includes Iain Glen, are from different parts of the country, they didn't want the family to have a strong accent.

"There are Yorkshire dialects which are very, very specific and very, very broad, but if you put it on screen sometimes it sounds like a caricature. So you just try and get the essence of where they are from, rather than getting it specifically from Bingley."

Shooting Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution was delayed by changes in government tax incentives which left the makers with a budget shortfall. But Tate didn't take the opportunity ask the-then Prime Minister Tony Blair for extra cash while filming a TV sketch with him. "I was more concerned about him learning his lines for my Comic Relief sketch than tapping him for more budget," she says.

* Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution (12A) is now showing in cinemas.