Actress Laura Fraser talks to Steve Pratt about her role as the feisty Emily in the new Anthony Trollope adaptation, He Knew He Was Right, and about living a cross-Atlantic life.

SCOTTISH-born actress Laura Fraser became a trans-Atlantic commuter while filming the BBC's new Sunday night classic serial He Knew He Was Right - flying back and forth between America and England.

She was living in New York with her Irish actor boyfriend Carl when auditions were held for the drama. She financed her own journey to London to audition.

It proved a wise investment when she won the role of independent, spirited Emily. Fraser and Oliver Dimsdale are cast as doomed couple Louis and Emily Trevelyan, whose marriage goes wrong through the husband's insecurity and jealousy.

Andrew Davies, who previously adapted another Anthony Trollope novel, The Way We Live Now, for the BBC, admits this "dark and edgy central story" is an unusual Trollope.

"It's his take on the Othello story, and the subject of sexual jealousy is a timeless and universal one. Almost all of us have had experience of it by the time we've grown up," says Davies.

Both producer Nigel Stafford-Clark and director Tom Vaughan knew they'd found their Emily straight away when they met Fraser.

"Emily is very strong-willed," says the actress. "At first, she's quite immature and nave, but she thinks she's really worldly wise. She's excited about life.

"There is a little bit of me in Emily, as I can also be quite reckless but I'm not as stubborn as she is. I understand her. She doesn't compromise, which is not very smart in life, but she won't lie."

Jealousy is the reason for her screen character's marriage breakdown, and Fraser admits she's been a jealous person herself. "I've been distrustful, convinced that somebody's having an affair with somebody else," she says.

"If you believe it in your head, everything looks like a lie. When you're looking for it, you always see it, even the change of expression in their face."

Until recently, she and Carl were planning to build a home in the US - which is why she became a commuter while filming the series. She went home to her boyfriend in New York as often as she could during the 12-week shoot, and Carl flew over to visit her twice.

"You travel for this job anyway, so you just go home to a different place," she explains. "I lived in London for seven years and filming He Knew He Was Right was the first job I had in London since I moved to New York. It was weird being on location in a town I know so well.

"When I moved from Glasgow I first looked at London like a wide-eyed tourist, and it was the same when I moved to New York. Now they're both just places where I've lived."

Eventually, she and Carl decided against settling in New York. "We realised that building a house from scratch was a massive undertaking. I was homesick and, as we were planning to move back to Europe within five years anyway, we decided to move now," she says.

They've bought an old farmhouse by the sea on the west coast of Ireland, and plan to move there next month.

One reason for the move back was that Fraser was so far from her family, to whom she's very close. Her father, who owned a building company, provided the inspiration for her acting ambitions. He used to write shows for her school, and she knew from the age of ten she wanted to act.

"We used to put on shows in the house and my two brothers, Kyle and Don, and my sister, Paula, and I would dress up. Sometimes we did them in the garden and had all the neighbours around. My dad did it just for fun, but a few years ago he sold his company and became a full-time writer.

"Both of my parents had a change of career. My mum was a nurse and now she's a college lecturer."

Fraser herself shows no sign of wanting a career change, having been a professional actress since she was 18. She studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, completing only a year of the three-year course.

While studying, she was also working, including on an episode of TV detective series Taggart, and appearing in a short film with Peter Mullan. "I was doing a job in every term, so I realised I wasn't committed and left. I got a Scottish agent who put me up for a film called Small Faces," she recalls.

Fraser's hardly been out of work since. She'll next be seen in the film 16 Years Of Alcohol, which was premiered at last year's Edinburgh Film Festival, and the HBO production Iron-Jawed Angels, a suffragette movement drama with Anjelica Huston and Hilary Swank.

Since completing He Knew He Was Right, she's been commuting to New York again, so that she and Carl can pack up and leave for the wilder shores of Ireland.

* He Knew He Was Right begins on BBC1 at 9pm on Sunday.

Published: 15/04/2004