Doing her duty

With roles in Coronation Street, Robin Hood and Murder In The Outback behind her, she takes her first feature film starring role as a soldier newly-returned from the war in Iraq in the drama In Our Name, which premieres at the London Film Festival next month.

Before that – tomorrow – she will be seen as part of the large and distinguished cast of ITV1’s big new period drama series, Downton Abbey. The actress, who comes from the village of Littlebeck, near Whitby, plays head housemaid Anna alongside a cast that includes Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern.

“I love playing Anna because she’s such a nice, genuine, kind person and keeps everything together downstairs. She’s quite strong but caring of people,” she says.

This follows a series of real-life roles for the 30-year-old actress, who first came to attention in Coronation Street as pregnant teenager Zoe Tattersall.

She was nominated for a Royal Television Society best actress award for the title role in Danielle Cable: Eye Witness.

She followed that with leading roles in two more real-life dramas, See No Evil – The Moors Murders, the story of child killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and the Australian-set Murder In The Outback.

The Julian Fellowes-created Downton Abbey, by contrast, may be fiction but the background is authentic. “We were given quite a lot of research and I did some as well. I watched quite a few documentaries about that period,” she says.

“We had a fantastic historical advisor and without him we could have all gone wrong. We had training with him when he told us all about hierarchy of the staff of the house and how you’d behave in front of the master and the women. He was on set every day, making sure we did it right if we were making beds or doing practical things about the house.”

She has appeared in period pieces before, including the Forties-set Island At War, Lorna Doone and Playhouse Creatures, a play set in the 17th Century. “I do love period, it’s really fun,” she says.

But like most actors she wants to mix things up. One of her most high-profile roles, as Kate in the BBC’s reworking of Robin Hood, was an attempt to do that. “I wanted to do something completely different.

It was fun, an adventure, and a huge family show. I enjoyed doing the fight scenes and did the one series, which I was happy with,” she says.

All very different to the movie In Our Name, directed by Brian Welsh, in which she plays Suzy, a soldier back from the Iraq war struggling to readjust to her former civilian life. She’s “really excited”

about the project, thinking it “a fantastic piece of writing” when she read the script.

“I’ve seen a rough cut of the film and it’s become something even more than I hoped. Brian has done such a clever job.

There have to be so many questions about the effects of the war on our troops and how people are sometimes affected in very destructive ways.

“Suzy is back from Iraq after the heartsand- minds tour. She’s married to a man who’s also in the Army and they have a little girl. The film is about how she tries to adjust to home and the things she’s seen in the war. She’s suffering from post traumatic stress and the story tracks her breakdown and relationship with her husband.”

Welsh had researched the subject a lot and Froggatt did more, visiting a charity that deals with ex-soldiers suffering from the disorder. She was able to speak to psychologists and sufferers in a clinic.

WITH Corrie providing one of her first professional roles, she gravitated naturally towards TV, so In Our Name is a chance to shine on the big screen. “I fell into doing TV and am very fortunate to have had a lovely run of work,” she says. “So I started feeling very comfortable with filming. You just want to ring the changes. In an ideal world I would like to be accepted in TV and film.”

She can’t remember when she didn’t want to be an actress. “My parents weren’t involved in the industry in any way. I begged my mum to go to ballet when I was three. Performing is just what I had a passion for. The headmaster at my secondary school was very into drama and I was in the school drama group,” she recalls.

At 13, she left home to train at Redroofs Theatre School, in Berkshire. “It was fabulous,”

she says. “I think my parents were a bit worried about letting me go, but eventually gave in to it. I spent about a year of auditioning for schools and grants.

“I don’t think I really expected anything.

At that age you just go with the flow. My plan was to finish my GCSEs – which I did – and get good grades and go back to Whitby to do A-levels, then go to drama school was I was 18.”

At 16, she started her A-level and performing arts studies, but felt it wasn’t for her. “I ended up leaving and going to work in a shop in Scarborough. I kept with the agency and eight months later I got the part in Coronation Street,” she says.

Although theatre, through appearing in school productions and plays, gave her the acting bug in the first place, Froggatt has done relatively little theatre yet. She did appear with Diana Rigg in All About My Mother at London’s Old Vic. The play was based on the film by Pedro Almodovar.

She played Sister Rosa, the role taken on screen by Penelope Cruz. “She came along on press night,” recalls Froggatt. “I didn’t know she was going to be there until she came in to say hello afterwards.”

As for what happens next, Froggatt is “waiting to see what happens”, she says. “I still look relatively young because I am quite petite as well, but I’m playing pretty much my age now. If you play younger you feel as though you’re not stretching yourself because things that you’ve experienced you want to be in your work.”

■ Downton Abbey, Tomorrow, ITV1, 9pm.