North star plays Thatcher on small screen

Jun 8 2008 by Pauline Holt, Sunday Sun

NORTH actress Andrea Riseborough may be playing the part of former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher . . . but that doesn’t mean the Iron Lady gets her vote.

“Margaret Thatcher is a bit like Marmite,” says the 26-year-old. “People love her or hate her.

“On the Marmite scale, I was a hater.”

Andrea is the star of The Long Walk To Finchley, a one-off fictional drama about Margaret Thatcher’s fight to become an MP to be shown on BBC4 on Thursday.

The North Tyneside girl has hit the big time since leaving stage school RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) three years ago.

But her roots are here in the North East. She and her sister, Laura, five years her junior, were brought up in Whitley Bay by their parents George and Isabel.

Before heading South, Andrea starred in panto at The People’s Theatre in Newcastle and in a play called Angel of My North at the Customs House in South Shields.

But in the past few years she’s been in the Mike Leigh film Happy-Go-Lucky and BBC Four’s The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton.

Andrea was just nine years old when Thatcher left office but she says she has vivid memories of her all the same.

“I remember when John Major came into power, thinking, ‘He’s not my Prime Minister’.

“Margaret Thatcher had a big influence on my world. My mum and dad were working class Thatcherites and boomed under the Thatcher revolution. There was a lot of gold lame dress and chicken in a basket at cocktail parties!

“But my extended family had a very different life under her regime. Let’s just say they weren’t fans, but I think they still found me playing her quite funny.”

She has certainly brought an added something to the role, which promises to show a sexy side to Maggie.

There are scenes showing her leading a conga, serving drinks in a men’s club and accidentally breaking MP Ted Heath’s heart.

After leaving school at 17, Andrea opted not to go to university, but to get her own flat in Newcastle.

She says: “I stopped going to school before the end of my ‘A’ levels and began recording music with a friend’s band, and working in a Chinese restaurant.

“But after three years I shredded my last duck and thought, ‘I’m going to go on the internet and see if I can get an interview for RADA.

“I was there three months later.”

Since graduating from the prestigious school, she hasn’t been out of work.

“It’s been completely, incredibly amazing,” she says. “All the work has overlapped, which has been wonderful.

“So far I’ve done something like four plays, seven TV dramas and five films!”

Next up is The Devil’s Whore, a forthcoming four-part series for Channel 4 about the English Civil War, produced in partnership with HBO and Company Pictures.

It’s written by Jarrow lad Peter Flannery, who penned Our Friends in the North.