US Edition 
Sally Hawkins: life as Mike Leigh's muse
As Mike Leigh's muse, Sally Hawkins is crucial to his new film Happy-Go-Lucky. Happy she may be, but luck has nothing to do with it. By Amy Raphael
A film crew are packed into a small bookshop round the back of Waterloo station. It is spring 2007 and Mike Leigh is shooting his new film Happy-Go-Lucky. We are collaborating on a book together and I spend some time on set, on various locations around central and north London. I watch Sally Hawkins at work and when time allows, we chat between scenes. I find her to be smart, considered and hugely entertaining. Even when the filming is particularly hard going, Hawkins, 31, and from south London, is fizzing with energy and excitement. Yet, knowing that she will be in almost every scene in the film, she is also terrified.
I meet Hawkins again in late February at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, just a few weeks after she won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for best actress for that role. She is a mass of nervous energy and when feeling self-conscious, lets a floppy fringe fall over her eyes. She then shakes it away to reveal the biggest, loveliest smile. I ask about Berlin: who did she meet? 'I was having dinner after the ceremony and Paul Thomas Anderson came over. He congratulated me on the Bear, which was sitting on the table. I was dribbling with excitement…' Michel Gondry also came to pay his respect. 'He loves Mike Leigh's work; he talked about Naked and Career Girls. Only for about 30 seconds, but time stood still.'
There are, it seems, plenty of actors and directors eager to pay homage to Hawkins. Timothy Spall, who acted with her on Leigh's All or Nothing in 2001, says she is 'one of the best actresses of her generation'. He talks of her as the benchmark by which to judge other young actors. She is so good at disappearing into roles that, since Leigh spotted her potential and cast her in All or Nothing, Hawkins has managed to remain relatively anonymous - despite a considerable internet presence based, in part, on appearances in television adaptations of Sarah Waters's period lesbian novels Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.
Yet she was terrific as the young barmaid in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky and terrifying as Slasher in the British gangster flick Layer Cake. If small parts in Little Britain are best forgotten (David Walliams's WI character sprayed her repeatedly with fake projectile vomit), then it is her work with Mike Leigh on film and Adrian Shergold on television that has most impressed. Shergold, who directed her on ITV's adaptation of Persuasion last year, talks of Hawkins as having a 'luminous' quality. Usually drawn towards gritty urban tales, he agreed to do the period drama only because Hawkins was playing Anne Elliot. 'She inhabits every inch of the characters she plays,' he says. 'And I love her for it.'
After the international premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky at the Berlin Film Festival, the Hollywood Reporter described Hawkins as 'a marvel with her urchin looks and irresistible smile'. It is very much her film: she plays 30-year-old primary school teacher Poppy, who slowly but surely becomes a multi-faceted character, starting off as bright, easy and zippy and ending up as compassionate, thoughtful and complex. It is a brilliantly subtle performance, one that not only demands humour (there is a hilarious scene where Poppy goes flamenco dancing) but also pathos (the apparently carefree Poppy also has to confront the harsh realities of life).
'Happy-Go-Lucky is first and foremost a collaboration between me and Sally Hawkins,' Leigh explains. 'As soon as we met in 2001, we bonded over our mutual passion for Ronald Searle. There is no question that we have a personal and creative rapport and the film is a product of that. Sally is extremely witty and sharp. But she also has these great reserves of depth of emotion, which are very much there in the film.'
Leigh and Hawkins make perfect sense as director and actor: he demands everything of his actors and she gives everything she has to give. Hawkins has been a Leigh fan for as long as she can remember; indeed, she wrote to his casting director Nina Gold while still at Rada. 'Maxine Peake and I wrote joint letters; we were doing a duologue for our final show and Nina Gold was our focus. She came along and was very lovely.' Contact with Gold led to a meeting with Leigh when he was casting for what was to become All or Nothing. 'I was terrified, but Mike completely put me at my ease. It was refreshing because he wanted to know about me and not about the work I'd done. I talked to him a lot about art. I was convinced I sounded like an idiot; I couldn't stop my mouth. I was so excited but also scared.' She smiles. 'I can still visualise where I sat in his Soho office, still remember what I was wearing.'
She was called back to do an audition with Leigh. 'It was just the two of us, for an hour. I didn't know what to expect. He talked for a while, discussed what he wanted me to do and left me alone for about 20 minutes while I became another person. He then returned to observe me in character.' So you were chatting away to yourself? 'No, my character wasn't mad!' She laughs so hard her small frame shakes. 'For the first five minutes after he'd left the room, I ran around thinking, "Do I juggle? What would Alison [Steadman, long-time Leigh collaborator] do? What would Timothy Spall do?" I kept thinking I needed to make Mike laugh, then I settled down. After he observed me for a while, we had a chat. I couldn't quite stop thinking, "This is Mike Leigh!"?'
Relatively small parts in All or Nothing (as Samantha, the sexually voracious young woman with a perma-scowl) and Vera Drake (as Susan, the upper-class girl who is date raped) helped Hawkins understand the way Leigh works, creating a film from scratch via a series of improvisations and rehearsals, but nothing could have prepared her for the intensity of Happy-Go-Lucky. 'Mike's way of working makes complete sense to me because you're creating these real people and the worlds in which they live. He has to be very secure that you not only know the character's history but also what they had for breakfast that morning, what books they're reading, what they're watching on the television. You're chomping at the bit to go and when he releases you, it's like a spring. It's like stepping into a different life that is already set up.'
She draws imaginary shapes on the table with her fingers. 'But every day presented a different challenge. It felt at times like I just had to keep running, to keep going from scene to scene with lines learnt only days - and, sometimes, minutes - before the camera started rolling. Mike never stops pushing and searching, looking in every corner at every detail. As an actor you are constantly being tested and going to places you never thought you could go to. I think Poppy's spirit and energy helped me through. It was a joy to jump into her skin; she is light and funny, with a very twinkly, naughty sense of humour.'
I wonder how similar Hawkins is to Poppy. The character dresses in a riot of colours with quirky accessories, while today, the only hint of the actor's normally slightly eccentric sartorial style are the bright-red high-heeled shoes and matching hooped earrings she wears with an otherwise black outfit. 'We have parallel lives at certain points but then we split and are very separate. Poppy comes across as being quite ditsy and clumsy, which I suppose I am too. When we were almost touching in rehearsal, it was sometimes quite difficult to know what was me and what was her.'
We decide to walk back along the river towards Richmond (Hawkins swaps the heels for black boots). She is reluctant to say where she lives or reveal anything about her personal life; yet she does talk about her childhood, growing up in Greenwich and Blackheath with parents Colin and Jacqui, who taught before becoming the hugely successful authors of children's books such as Here's a Happy Kitten and Mr Wolf's Nursery Time. I randomly ask about Hawkins's first memory, which turns out to have been incredibly early. 'I was eight months old, it was Christmas and I was fed up because my brother, who's five years older than me, got a bulkier stocking. All I got was a rubber duck.'
Young Sally was obsessed with making things but reading came late. 'Another early memory is my mum very patiently encouraging me to read and I'm roaring, almost in pain! I'd have been four or five. I didn't speak till I was nearly three. My parents started to write children's books as a way of encouraging me to read.' At James Allen's Girls School in Dulwich, which has an amazing theatre but also prides itself on high academic standards, Hawkins held on to the fact that her father had been to art school at 13. 'I worried about perceived intelligence. I was good at art and drama and making people laugh but, despite doing OK at A-level, I didn't rate myself highly academically.' Was she a show-off? 'Probably. I still waver between wanting to show off and wanting to run away.'
We talk about Woody Allen's upcoming film, Cassandra's Dream, in which Hawkins plays Colin Farrell's blond girlfriend. It is a truly awful film but Hawkins won't be drawn on the specifics; she simply says that Allen was 'very quiet, very shy' and intimidating only in the sense of having once been a great director. 'He sets up the camera and shot exactly how he wants it to be, using stand-ins. Then the actors are called almost as the camera is turning over. Bloody hell, I had to be in character straight away! You have to work so fast to make it work.' She describes Farrell as 'a lovely, intelligent, generous man' doing his best to turn his life around post-addiction.
We come to the end of the footpath. The light is fading and Hawkins has to go home and read scripts. I wonder out loud how, as averse to fame as she is, this year is going to turn out. The Silver Bear has already brought a new kind of attention, (apart from hip directors introducing themselves in Berlin, at the press conference she was asked about her simple black shirt and skirt outfit: 'Oh, it's from Topshop,' she said, a little embarrassed. An awkward pause was followed by generous applause), and Happy-Go-Lucky isn't even out yet. She lets her fringe drop over her face. 'Oh God. Sorry.' What for? She shakes her head. 'For being in every scene of Happy-Go-Lucky. I don't know. I'm terrified.' Then she smiles and it's clear everything is going to be just fine for Sally Hawkins.
- 'Happy-Go-Lucky' is released on April 18. 'Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh' edited by Amy Raphael (Faber, £12.99) goes on sale April 17. It is available to buy from Telegraph Books for £11.99 plus £1.25 p&p (0870-428 4112; books.telegraph.co.uk)