Phant... tastic

SHE is only 17 and on the verge of major screen stardom but Emmy Rossum knows that the way to a journalist's heart is through his stomach. So she's on the phone to room service in London's Dorchester Hotel berating them for not sending up the tray of muffins and pastries ordered by publicists for us hungry journalists.

Of course, given the right ingredients, she could have cooked something up herself. She spent her "downtime" from the eight months she lived here shooting the movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera at cordon bleu cookery classes. Creme brulee and ravioli are her specialities.

Her confidence and outgoing personality perhaps results from beginning her theatrical career so young - at the age of seven when she began singing in the children's chorus at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

She was temporarily back in London for the premiere of the disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, in which she is required not to sing but flee floods and a new Ice Age.

"I feel like London is my second home. I love it," she says. "I'm a New Yorker and it has the same kind of vibe. It's very cultured and sophisticated, and people are very intelligent, very aware."

The special effects rather than the acting is what will get noticed in The Day After Tomorrow. It's the Phantom film that will turn her into an international star when it opens at Christmas.

She's never seen the long-running stage version and doesn't intend to until she's watched the completed movie, which is directed by Joel Schumacher. He's previously given Julia Roberts, Colin Farrell and Matthew McConaughey their big screen breaks, so has something of a reputation as a talent-spotter.

"I'd just finished The Day After Tomorrow when I went to meet him," recalls Rossum. "I thought the Phantom movie was some years in the future and I had ample time to prepare the character and the songs. It was a Wednesday when I met him and he said, 'Can you screen test on Saturday?'. I wasn't expecting that. I got on a plane and sang my heart out because I cared so much about the character Christine. She was so complex and torn and conflicted.

"He's very much a director who's not scared of using people who aren't famous. I think I got very lucky."

She also recognised this was a fantastic opportunity to combine her vocal and acting talents. After five years of classical singing and training at the Met, she turned to acting once she grew too tall to fit into the children's costumes. A role in the US daytime soap As The World Turns at 11 was followed by other film and TV parts, including the Clint Eastwood-directed drama Mystic River.

Her combination of talent and determination must have bowled over Schumacher, who's been trying to film The Phantom for 15 years. "I went in there and was so passionate about the character and what I thought I could bring if he gave me the chance," she says.

"Christine is so different to my character in The Day After Tomorrow who is the epitome of a contemporary woman - strong, intelligent, resourceful and courageous in a lot of situations. Christine is so very wounded, vulnerable and needy, and manipulated because of it. There were so many opportunities to show so many different aspects of the character."

There's little doubt that Rossum takes her work seriously, admitting to giving 150 per cent to whatever she's doing - acting, singing or getting room service to deliver food.

"I've never believed in doing something halfway. It just doesn't seem worth it to me," she says. "I don't go to college or do a film at the same time because I would feel I was cheating on one of them. I've been juggling singing, acting and school, and I'm just a 17-year-old girl."

But she won't be a normal 17-year-old girl once The Phantom hits the screen, I point out. She'll do her best to carry on as usual. "I have the same friends I've had since I was little. I don't live in Los Angeles, I live in New York and am taking lessons at Columbia. I live a normal life when I'm not on the set," she explains.

Her parents aren't in showbusiness - they're more corporate business, suit types, she says - with Rossum describing herself as "an artistic anomaly". They're supportive, but seem content to let her make her own choices.

"It's very much of a family when you are on set. When you are thrown together with actors, directors, producers in a city you don't know very well, like Montreal in dead of winter for The Day After Tomorrow, and you're in tanks of water for six months, you get really close. It's very much a family environment and we had a blast," she says.

She takes classes between shooting films, seeing education as "an on-going thing" and saying: "I've never been anyone who did things the normal way. You can learn a lot by travelling and seeing things. It's difficult because acting and a film career has become a passion. It's difficult to turn down a good director.

"I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing people and gone to place I couldn't have afforded to go otherwise."

Film sets are places to look and learn.. Shooting Mystic River provided a masterclass with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. "To watch them prepare, their lack of inhibition, lack of fear, exposing their emotions in front of an entire crew. Working with Sean Penn is like working with Brando.

"One of the biggest things I learnt on Mystic River was that no good work can be done amid chaos. That's something Clint told me right off. That's why he keeps his sets so quiet. He doesn't say much but when he does it changes the entire scene."

Rossum leaves us to our sandwiches after an exhausting half-hour, in which she has had the same impact on interviewers as one of the tornadoes that devestates Los Angeles in The Day After Tomorrow. "You'd better give me a good write-up," she says.

* The Day After Tomorrow (12A) is now showing in cinemas. Mystic River is released on DVD and video on June 7. The Phantom Of The Opera is due to open in December.

Published: 03/06/2004