Now Natalie, 28, is slumming it on a basement stage at the Hampstead Theatre as Pat, a working-class New Yorker in a violent relationship in a new play, .45, by American writer Gary Lennon, and our conversation is occasionally interrupted by the noise of hammering and sawing from on-stage as the company struggles through a technical rehearsal. ‘It’s real grit-and-sawdust stuff,’ Natalie enthuses, coiling up on the sofa in her working outfit of leggings, cosy boots and layers of wool. ‘I’ve played a lot of elegance and refinement, so to do something really down and dirty is a great attraction. Pat is very “legs apart”.’

Natalie, it must be said, is not. She has wide, slanting pale blue eyes, waves of ash-blonde hair and looks like a member of the House of Elrond. These ethereal features have led her to be cast in a succession of refined costume roles, most notably as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, the wildly successful TV series, and latterly as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in W.E. The strangely titled film, which was co-written by Madonna with her friend Alek Keshishian, the director of In Bed With Madonna, is a sympathetic retelling of Wallis Simpson’s story in parallel with a modern love story.

Natalie admits that taking on the role of the Queen Mother was a daunting prospect. ‘Everyone remembers her as the national treasure, with white fluffy hair and the lavender coat,’ she says. ‘There’s not a lot of footage of her in the 1930s, though I really tried to find it.’ She ended up asking for tips from actor Michael Sheen, lauded for his cinematic portrayals of Tony Blair, David Frost and Brian Clough, who advised her to try to convey the spirit of the woman rather than her physical likeness. ‘Hopefully William and Harry won’t be too pissed off with me,’ she says, although you rather suspect they won’t be thrilled, especially as their great-grandmother is the villain of the piece, famously hostile to Wallis, whom she blamed for George VI’s early death, and refusing to speak to her after the abdication until the Duke of Windsor’s funeral in 1972. (It is telling that although permission was requested to shoot at Buckingham Palace, all filming took place on National Trust properties.)

Anyway, what we’re really interested in is not the Royal Family but her Madgesty. What is she like as a director? Unsurprisingly, absolutely clear about what she wants, it seems. In fact, her controlling behaviour has already caused actress Margo Stilley to storm off the set.

‘Madonna is nothing but very direct and specific,’ says Natalie carefully. ‘This is one woman’s gorgeous vision and you go on set knowing that’s what you’re doing.’ So no arguing about your motivation then? Natalie bursts into roars of ironic laughter. She certainly found it strange to hang out with one of the most famous women in the world. ‘As a child, I was prancing around in my mother’s high heels and a ra-ra skirt singing ‘Material Girl’ into my hairbrush. She was one of my idols, so you do have to switch that part of your brain off. But as an actor, of necessity, you get over that very quickly. You’re not starstruck on set, you’re trying to get into your role. The professional switch on your brain goes on. We had a working relationship: she’s the director, I’m the actor, these are our jobs. And then I’d go home singing ‘Holiday’,’ she concludes with a giggle.

But was the catering all macrobiotic? Would Madonna allow the crew to look her in the eye? ‘Madonna is completely down-to-earth,’ says Natalie. ‘She’s an absolute professional. I meet fascinating people I respect and idolise all the time. It’s such a beautiful gift of this job. And in my experience, the bigger the name, the more gracious and the more generous they are.’

Natalie grew up in Reading with her builder stepfather, housewife mother, sister Samantha, now 21, and brother Mark, 19, but is reluctant to discuss them. ‘I came from a family that has nothing to do with the industry,’ she explains. ‘It was a very standard upbringing.’ An only child until she was seven, her favourite game was dressing up and performing; she was also a keen dancer. But to her teachers at Reading Blue Coat School, she was an academic high-flyer. ‘I’d probably always been a bit too repressed and well-behaved in my schooldays. I was head girl, a straight-A student, all those things,’ she says. And captain of the netball team? ‘Vice-captain.’ She also travelled across the globe with her school’s public-speaking team. ‘So even though I hadn’t dared to admit out loud to family and friends that I wanted to be an actress, I always knew that I did,’ she says.

Natalie was offered a place to study history at Cambridge, but misread one of the questions in her history A level and didn’t get the requisite A grade. ‘I was devastated,’ she recalls. She found herself living hand-to-mouth in London as she auditioned for drama schools. ‘I had no money, I wasn’t at university and I had an identity crisis. It was one of the darkest, most depressing years of my life.’ Finally, she won a place at Webber Douglas (in the same class as Keira Knightley’s boyfriend Rupert Friend) and says she immediately realised that she was in the right place. ‘I needed to let my hair down, be a bit dirty, laugh at myself more. I’m miles different from the person I was ten years ago.’

Six months after graduating from Webber Douglas, she landed a three-picture Disney deal on the strength of her audition for the movie Casanova, which also saw her part, as an accident-prone ingénue, expanded by the screenwriter. ‘I got sucked into the maelstrom,’ she admits. ‘It was, “Oh my God, I’m on set with Heath Ledger, and there’s Jude Law and Sienna Miller over there…” You have to pinch yourself, you’re in a daze. But then I was unemployed for nine months and temping in an office the Christmas after we finished shooting because I couldn’t afford to pay my rent. It was the best lesson I could have had in the first 12 months of my career. From that moment on, I realised you can never get above yourself, or have a superiority complex; you can never for a moment get complacent. I’m sure Natalie Portman has fears of being typecast as much as I do.’

That fear, she admits, is the reason she has dyed her hair back to its original blonde, after being a brunette for Anne Boleyn. ‘Bless her, she did so much for me but I needed to get away from her,’ she says. ‘I still get an awful lot of letters from teenage girls about Anne Boleyn, from the Czech Republic, to China, Australia and Korea, commenting on the positive influence watching Anne had on them.’ Teenage boys will have probably been more struck by the distinctly fruity scenes she shares with Jonathan Rhys Meyers (as Henry VIII) in boudoirs, four-posters and on forest floors. This did not translate into any off-screen romance, however, or even friendship apparently. ‘We’re colleagues,’ she says. ‘It’s like any job. It’s no different
from filming a murder trial.’

Instead, it was while filming The Tudors that she met her current boyfriend, Irish director Anthony Byrne – ‘an irreverent Irishman who swears a lot’ – with whom she lives in Southwest London. She says he’s loosened her up a lot, which makes me wonder what she can have been like before: to me, she seems strangely brittle and wary, especially when discussing her family background (even her father’s job is off-limits) while her approach to her profession borders on the anguished.

‘Acting is a great responsibility,’ she says. ‘For instance, with this play [.45], I’ve been thinking about the fact that there will be women in this audience who have had experience of violence. I hope they won’t take offence. When actors portray the darker side of human nature, it’s very delicate, but it’s worth doing because it can give audiences great support and catharsis.’

So the question of whether she fancies an Oscar on her mantelpiece is waved away as an irrelevance. ‘As Shakespeare said, our job is to hold the mirror up to nature, to represent real people on the street,’ she says. ‘If you get too wrapped up in the blazing starlight of celebrity, you don’t really have the right to portray people on the street any more. Most of my closest friends have nothing to do with the industry and I like that. I like that it’s: “Nat, stop talking about what you did the other day with Madonna, let me tell you what happened to me today at the office.” I think that’s very healthy.’

Directed by acclaimed Swiss director Luc Bondy, Sweet Nothings, is a new version of Schnitzler’s play Liebelei and it is in Kingston from April 22 – April 24. The play tells the story of young Vienesse Fritz and his friend, Theo, who invite two girls, Christine and Mizi, to join them for a party.

The festivities are soon interrupted by a mysterious stranger who challenges Fritz about an adulterous affair he has been having. This being Schnitzler, tragedy soon starts to unfold.

Natalie Dormer, who plays Mizi in the show, says: “The play is incredibly dark – Schnitzler trained as a doctor and was a contemporary of Freud. He had a very precise mind and he is very good at stripping away human psychology and behaviour.

“He is quite unforgiving of it. It is a human play that has a modern feel to it – no character comes out well but that is human nature, we are all fallible.”

This “modern feel” has been enhanced by the treatment of the Austrian’s original play by Olivier Award-winning playwright David Harrower, and Dormer says he has done a great job.

“David is known for his direct, concise and raw language,” she adds. “There is no waffly wording at all, as you might identify with a costume drama. He ruthlessly modernises what is effectively a chamber piece.”

The production will tour to Vienna and Madrid later in the year with the trip to the Rose part of a national tour that is currently bringing Schnitzler to the regions. Dormer is particularly looking forward to the performances in the Royal Borough as the theatre is not far from her Richmond home.

“I’m a Richmond girl so coming to the Rose is a big deal for me,” she says. “It’s really great, I can stay at home and I can be all smug as the other actors have to travel back to north London every night.”

“I was tired of people comparing Dubai to a Disneyland. Most of them take one look at the glitzy buildings and assume it’s an artificial place. My film has none of that. It has real people with real problems. Like any other city in the world, my film shows both the positives and the negatives,” says Mustafa.

For this, the 28-year-old director herded a set of actors from across the globe. If the film marks the debut of the Emirati TV presenter Saud Al Ka’abi, British actors Jason Flemyng and Natalie Dormer lend an international flavour to the project. Mustafa has also roped in Bollwood stars Sonu Sood and Javed Jafferi.

‘Intense need’

“I had this intense need to showcase the UAE on a global level. It was almost like my duty to do it. And one of Dubai’s biggest strength is its mix of people from different cultures and continents. Everybody living in the UAE will be able to identify with the film,” says Mustafa. But he is quick to add that the film is not a dolled-up version of Dubai. The film was shot entirely in Dubai spanning more than 40 locations.

“With this film, I hope to change the global perception of Dubai. I know, of late there has been a tendency to bash up Dubai. I hope my film changes all that. The film shows us as a set of confident people — some good and some bad. I have shown the rich, the middle-class and the poor,” says Mustafa.

British actress Natalie Dormer is quick to second his opinion. She plays Olga, a Dubai-based Russian air-hostess who dreams of settling down by marrying a cash-strapped man.

“The beauty of the film lies in its characters. Olga represents one of the many Eastern European girls who come to Dubai chasing a dream of having a better way of life,” says Dormer. Best known for her work in the TV costume drama The Tudors as Anne Boleyn, Dormer also learnt to cultivate a Russian accent for her role.

‘Instantly fascinated’

“When Ali approached me for the role, I was instantly fascinated at the prospect of acting in a venture made in Dubai. But he gave me two options: he said either I could play an Eastern European expatriate or I could play a Brit. But I chose the more challenging bit. Olga took me out of my comfort zone. It was an incredible experience to shoot the film in a place I have never been,” says Dormer. The project was also a first for Emirati TV presenter Saoud Al Ka’abi.

“I play a rich Emirati boy. Like many locals, he too has no definite goals or dreams. He lives for his friends and is busy having fun. But towards the end, it shows him returning to his roots. The movie has a good message behind it,” says Ka’abi.

Director Ali F Mustafa on Friday squashed rumours that his latest film ‘City Of Life’ showed Dubai in a negative light. Addressing a press conference prior to the world premiere of his film, Ali said his debut drama is likely to place Dubai on par with cities such as London and New York.

“Personally, I don’t think there is any negativity surrounding the film. It shows reality and puts Dubai on par with cities such as London and New York which have real problems. In my film, the stories are real and their problems are real too,” says Mustafa.

Rapper-turned-actor Yassin Al Salman, better known by his stage name ‘The Narcicyst’, had a different take. He plays a street-savvy Arab in the film and said backlash of any kind was welcome.

“I am into hip-hop, so backlash is a part of the game. The film does not present a hypocritical image about us. My character is a metaphor for many Arab who are out there,” says Narcicyst.

“You just know. I thought it was incredibly compelling and a gripping story so I jumped at the chance to be in it,” said Dormer, the 27-year-old British actress who was wearing a black puffball dress with a neck motif by the British designer Alice Temperley.

Dormer, who starred alongside Heath Ledger in Casanova and as Anne Boleyn in the Showtime series The Tudors, said none of the cast had watched the final edit of the film and would see it for the first time tomorrow.

The bulk of your career thus far has revolved around historical projects. Why is this?
It just worked out that a couple of high profile historical projects were offered to me in the early years of my career. You don’t turn down a great job because it requires a corset and you’ve worn one before. I consider each project on individual merit.

Which of those eras do you prefer: that of the Tudors or that of Casanova?
I love all history because it’s storytelling. But, I will always have a special place in my heart for the Tudor dynasty. It comes from having studied a significant length of it so thoroughly for the show. So many defining characteristics in British identity originate from those years – political, religious, artistic, military.

How is a historical project different from a modern project—in terms of both approach and execution?
Well, it doesn’t take 3 hours to get ready on a modern piece. For a lavish court scene Anne was at least 40 minutes in hair, 40 mins in make up and half an hour in wardrobe. That’s an early morning! And for anyone wondering – those headpieces are heavy. Physical movement is varied by clothes and contemporary etiquette, of course, but human emotion and its execution (no pun intended) is timeless.

Are you much of a history buff? Diaries from centuries past are just fascinating.
Diaries are wonderful, be it Anne Frank, Samuel Pepys or Casanova. It’s fascinating having direct primary evidence of a personality, especially when the way they are trying to present themselves is as informative and entertaining as the events they relay.

Speaking of which, what was it like working with Tom Stoppard on Casanova? I hear he expanded your role for you.
I was listening to ‘Sir Tom’ on BBC Radio 4 a few months back (his play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was on at our National Theatre). He is an outstanding playwright and has been a shrewd, humorous voice on many political, social issues in our modern history. I would feel incomplete as an actor if I never walked on stage in one of his roles.

You don’t at all have to answer this if you would prefer not to, but what was your reaction when you heard that Heath Ledger passed away?
I think Christopher Nolan said it best at The Globes: ‘After Heath passed on, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema’.

All right, your character Anne Boleyn just died on The Tudors. What is your conception of Anne Boleyn?
I can’t reduce such a complex, misunderstood, courageous woman in a few sentences…. Unless I just did?!

How did you like playing her?
I grieved her and the joy of playing her upon finishing The Tudors. It surprised me how fond I’d grown of her company.

Will you miss the show?
I miss a lot of the people I worked with. I miss people bowing at me…Joke! But it was time to move on. Hopefully, she will be one of just many characters that I grow a strong affection for in playing them.

What did you think of that recent movie on Anne Boleyn, The Other Boleyn Girl?
I didn’t see it. Watching a talented actress play a completely different artistic interpretation of the same historical figure would only have addled my brain.

Speaking of film, which films are your favorites? Are you much of a buff?
My boyfriend is very definitely a film buff. He continues to ‘educate’ me (translate as ‘moans if we don’t watch at least 3 movies a week’). New Year’s day was spent at the cinema for the double bill of Steven Soderbergh’s Che if that counts.
I am a Mark Kermode acolyte. He’s a well-respected British film critic and I would encourage your audience to download his podcast with Simon Mayo from BBC5 LIVE.

I have to ask, what other musicians do you listen to?
I listen to a wide range of music. The albums on repeat at the moment on my ipod are Radiohead, The Kings of Leon, U2 (I’m with an Irishman) and a bit of Kanye West.

I hear that you are very cerebral, which you have said is the writer’s or director’s role rather than the actor’s, so how do you approach a role?
Cerebral is fine, often useful, as long as you stop doing it as soon as you step on stage or the camera turns over. “Acting is Re-acting”- I had that stuck to my fridge door for years, until a friend teased me “Why? Do you forget?”

And I hear that you’re well-read, as well! What are some of your favorite books?
Again, can’t do ‘favourites’ (except for A.A Milne) as it changes. But I can tell you I’ve just finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and started Diana Athill’s autobiography. I’m very keen to read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, which has been looking at me from my bookshelf for weeks so I’ll take it to set with me for the next job.

Just because I would like to know, and because they’re my two favorite books, and because they are absolutely wonderful, and because you seem like you might enjoy them, have you read either Special Topics in Calamity Physics or The Unbearable Lightness of Being? They really are magnificent!
Special Topics is duly put on my reading list then! I really enjoyed Philip Kaufman’s film of The Unbearable Lightness of Being but have yet to read it.

You recently made the film Fencewalker, am I correct? Could you talk a bit about that movie and your role in it?
It was a passion project for Chris Carter and a great experience to work on. An unforgiving analysis of suburbia. I liked playing Yasny because she was an ‘old soul’, beyond her teenage years in philosophy and perspective. But ultimately she was just looking to be rescued without knowing it. A lot of us are.

Tell me a story. Any story. Your favorite, your least favorite, yours, any story.
Read Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and Winnie-the-Pooh. Read them again now as an adult. A lot would have gone over your head the first time around I promise you.

Tell me about your upcoming film City of Life and about your character Olga.
Olga is chasing something. A dream- materialistic… emotional- that she believes can be realized in the incredible, ambitious crucible that is Dubai. Whilst playing her I realized the extent of her humanity and the core good spirit behind her bravado. I brought that unexpected realization to the writer/director Ali Mostafa as well I think, which I’m glad about.

The actress believes that the future of entertainment lies in international collaborations like Slumdog Millionaire.

I would love to work in Indian films. In fact I recently shot an international film with Bollywood actor Sonu Sood in Dubai. I feel the future is about international collaborations like Slumdog Millionaire and City of Life,” the actress said over the phone from Los Angeles.

She is playing a Russian air hostess in City of Life, which is directed by Ali Mustafa.

The actress is also facinated by Bollywood films which she believes are more about the light side of life.

“Bollywood films are more about happy things. They portray the brighter side of life. As artistes are expected to bring the darker side on screen as well but Bollywood cinema can teach West more about hope,” she said.

The actress also wants to visit India, which is on top of her wish-list.

“It is on top of my list of the places that I would like to visit. Even Sonu had asked me to come to India,” said Dormer.

The 26-year-old star, who stars opposite Bend It Like Beckham actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the historical drama, is also excited that the Tudors are coming to India.

“I hope they enjoy it. It is a story which educates you without making it obvious. It is a fun show,” said Dormer.

The Emmy-award winning show is based on the romantic and political life of British king Henry VIII played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. It premiers on FOX History and Entertainment channel on March 27.

When asked how Dormer prepared for the role of Anne Boleyn, one of the most enigmatic woman in British history, the actress said her interest in the subject came to her rescue.

“I had read the story in my schoolbooks and I also had discussions with the scriptwriter. You have to forget yourself to be one with a character like that,” she said.

Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry, whom he married after a long pursuit. She was later executed on charges of treason and adultery.

The actress, who worked with late Heath Ledger in Casanova says the actor deserved every award that he won.

Ledger was recently posthumously awarded an Oscar for his villainous turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

“I have seen the film and I think he has done great. He deserves every award. He was fun to be with, very grounded, down to earth being and a great scholar,” said the actress, who played the comic role of accident-prone Victoria in love with Heath’s character in the 2005 film.

Natalie Dormer takes one look at our spartan little interview office and says playfully, ‘Shall we draw lots for the comfy chair?’ So already I’m won over by this baby-faced brunette, an avid poker player who could be said to have enjoyed more than her fair share of luck so far in the great gamble of an acting career.

At 26, Natalie has made a global name for herself as a vulnerable and sensual Anne Boleyn in the hot BBC2 drama series The Tudors. And as if playing opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s rock-god Henry VIII weren’t excitement enough, this distinctive young Brit had already worked on the big screen with such major names as Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Jeremy Irons and Ewan McGregor. As she puts it with a grin, ‘You have to stop yourself quoting their best-known movie lines back at them.’

Six months out of drama school, at the age of 23, Natalie had been dubbed the new Keira Knightley after winning a three-picture Disney deal on the strength of her audition for the movie Casanova. And when she came to shoot that film in 2005, her part as an accident-prone ing’nue in love with Heath Ledger’s Casanova was expanded overnight by the film’s screenwriter Sir Tom Stoppard, after director Lasse Hallstr’m realised what a talent for comedy she had. ‘There I was, in Venice, talking to Tom Stoppard on the phone about the last-minute changes and positively shaking,’ she recalls, laughing at herself.

The Boleyn girl then became her first starring role, with Natalie’s performance in this transatlantic co-production emphatically putting her on the Hollywood map. That Tudors experience is still fresh in her mind, not least because she met her film director boyfriend (of whom more later) while filming the series in Dublin over two years. She settles down to chat with a shawl from Connemara over her shoulders, one of the souvenirs of the series that has shot her to the top of so many casting directors’ lists. Yet she’s shrewd enough to take nothing for granted and doesn’t hesitate to tell me in her upfront, emotionally honest way about the downsides to her apparently gilded profession.

Before she could film the fun bits in The Tudors, Natalie was thrown into the deep end with her first scene, Anne’s execution on trumped-up charges of treason. As often happens, the drama was filmed out of chronological sequence and Natalie found herself standing on a scaffold in the courtyard of Dublin’s Kilmainham Jail where so many real executions had taken place in the past. ‘It was incredibly haunting and harrowing ‘ you feel the weight of history on your shoulders,’ she remembers. ‘Our green room [the actors' lounge] was one of the cells, so it was a real case of NAR ‘ no acting required. ‘Jonathan [Rhys Meyers] is a wonderful human being. I had several dinners and coffees with him beforehand to talk about it ‘ and even a good cry with him as we stood in Kilmainham at dawn before the scene. ‘By the time I walked on to the scaffold, I hope I did have that phenomenal air of dignity that Anne had ‘ because she went out in the most incredible manner. It was one of the best experiences of my career so far.’

After that, it seems the love scenes were a breeze by comparison. As Natalie puts it in a classic case of understatement, ‘It’s just a slightly tougher day at work. They are daunting in so far as it’s a very personal thing and you are doing it in front of eight other people, closed set or not. ‘It’s handled in a very sensitive, discreet way and Jonathan was incredibly protective and generous with me in that vulnerable state. But people would be amazed at how unerotic the process actually is, because it’s heavily choreographed.’ She developed a sympathy for the woman so often dismissed as a scheming minx, seeing several parallels with Princess Diana. ‘Anne was a pawn in a man’s world, and it’s so easy for us in this postfeminist era to take female rights for granted. ‘Anne was the first consort of a British monarch to be aware of image, as Diana was, and they both had this enormous polarising effect on people, who were either staunch supporters or who demonised and criticised them. As fallible human beings, women fall foul of that polarisation. ‘And what happens to people, particularly women, in the spotlight has not changed in 500 years.’

The well-read Natalie, who had trained in dance as a child, was university-bound to read history when she decided to switch instead to London’s Webber Douglas drama school. ‘I was frequently told at drama school that I was thinking too much,’ she admits with a grin. ‘And I still have to suppress that part of me because it can sometimes be a hindrance. ‘It’s a writer’s or director’s role to be cerebral, whereas for an actor it should be a visceral, gut thing. When the action starts, it’s best to turn the brain off and let it become an instinctual thing,’ says Natalie.

She self-mockingly calls herself ‘the black sheep of the family’ for going into show business. She grew up in Reading, Berkshire, with her builder stepfather, housewife mother, sister Samantha, now 19, and brother Mark, 17, both of whom she happily mothered when she was growing up, ‘partly because the age gap made me maternal and partly because of my innate bossiness, or so I’m told,’ she adds with a giggle. The only subject she won’t talk about is her biological father. But her background seems to have been a conventional one until she became the bohemian of the family, as she puts it, by going into acting. ‘There was an obvious concern at home because actors are all wandering troubadours, aren’t we?’ she says. ‘Obviously, part of an actor’s personality thrives on that instability, otherwise you wouldn’t do the job, but at times you do get darker moments when you think about your suitcase in yet another room. ‘But any artistic process can be addictive and you end up getting a kick out of it.’

At the moment she lives on her own in South London but regularly flies back and forth to Dublin to see her Irish boyfriend, film director Anthony Byrne, 33. ‘This is what happens when you spend two years shooting in Dublin ‘ you end up with an Irishman,’ she says. ‘Our paths collided well over a year ago and we’ve been giving Aer Lingus far too much of our money recently. But I don’t regret it. There’s a real mischievousness about Irishmen, don’t you find?’ And he’s not the only impish one. ‘People do say I have a mischievous face,’ says Natalie, who could pass for ten years younger and often gets asked for her ID when she’s buying a bottle of wine. ‘I know I’m not a conventional beauty. You can read a lot of painful things on the internet, which criticise you aesthetically ‘ but as far as I’m concerned, that’s not what an actress is. ‘Famously, Anne Boleyn was not a beauty: she was more about quirkiness and an innate sensuality, and there are a lot of references to her eyes. Which sends out a great message for women, because life is not about the aesthetic all the time,’ she declares.

Yet she can’t resist recalling her two days’ work with Demi Moore on the film Flawless, marvelling at how ‘stunningly beautiful Demi still was even with the three hours’ worth of prosthetics that had aged her to look like a 70-year-old. ‘She was incredibly generous to me,’ adds Natalie, who plays an arrogant young reporter in the movie. With a CV that so far reads like a crash-course in sharing scenes with the famous, she was also much impressed by the approachability of Heath Ledger on Casanova, which also starred Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons and Charlie Cox. Natalie admits she came away ‘close to tears’ after seeing the late actor as the Joker in his posthumously released Batman film, The Dark Knight. ‘We all got to know Heath because a lot of hours had to be whiled away in Venice during the shoot, so Charlie Cox got Sienna and me and the others all playing an American dice game called perudo. ‘All of us, including Heath, became a bit fanatical about it. He was a very grounded human being, and it’s a great loss,’ she adds sadly.

In the New Year she will be seen in a new Miss Marple whodunnit on ITV1, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, playing a murder suspect married to Rik Mayall. Then she will appear as the ‘black sheep love interest’ of the actor Mehcad Brooks in X Files creator Chris Carter’s semi-autobiographical movie Fencewalker, for which the determined Natalie managed to acquire an accent without a dialogue coach. A self-confessed tomboy, squash addict and one-time member of the London Fencing Academy who was one of the few girls to train in advanced combat at Webber Douglas, she longs to do a martial-arts film. As she puts it: ‘I get a kick out of taking my body out of its comfort zone and pushing myself physically.’

Meanwhile, her maverick personality should stand her in good stead for the more interesting roles. ‘I might seem a bit of a handful to directors because I have been told that I have a very dominant personality ‘ and I don’t think you could print what Anthony says about me!’ she laughs. ‘But I’m a genuinely enthusiastic and interested person, which people sometimes misread as over-dominance or even, heaven forfend, an ego. Because I really don’t have one ‘ I’m as insecure as the next actor.’

To prove it, she doesn’t hesitate to tell me that Disney didn’t exercise their option on her three-picture deal; her association with them began and ended with Casanova. ‘It was obviously a great boost at the time to get the deal, and you try not to take it personally,’ she says. ‘Actors suppose they are home and dry at their peril. You never are ‘ you are only as good as your last job. ‘My role as Ewan McGregor’s girlfriend in the film Incendiary ended up on the cutting-room floor, but at least I had two brilliant days of acting with Ewan. It’s all a learning curve.

‘Maybe because of the self-pitying or egocentric nature of actors, tinged with a certain gallows humour, you will always hear them complain when they’re in a pub together. ‘Yes, I do feel lucky so far, but the dice still rolls against me and you fight to find the strength to carry on. For instance, I had a ‘no’ yesterday to a theatre job I was absolutely desperate for, since it would have been my first professional stage role. ‘I found it really hard psychologically to get through the day after that. You think, ‘God, is it ever going to be fair?’ And the bottom line is no. You need mental stamina to keep going and not be discouraged, but the fight is part of the job.’

I end by asking about the poker habit she acquired at Reading Blue Coat School. ‘I love poker!’ she exclaims, telling me there’s a possibility that she’ll be taking part in a televised poker tournament. ‘It always makes me smile that Anne Boleyn was a great card player who won masses of money and luxury goods when she played against Henry. ‘A lot of boys in my poker circle are mathematicians who play on probability. I don’t have that kind of brain, so I rely on instinct. But I recently found out that poker and cards in general go way back in my family gene pool.’ So is Natalie Dormer destined for yet more success? I’ll bet.

Natalie Dormer is the lusty and wilful Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, in the CBC/Showtime series The Tudors. But she is a designer bag virgin. Dormer, who was born in Reading, England, and lives in London, is in T.O. for a press tour and we meet in the handbag department at Holt Renfrew on Bloor St. She is carrying a smart yellow tote. “It’s just a cheapie,” she says dismissively. “I liked the colour.”

But she is a quick study in non-cheapies, learning about the value of good hardware on a bag and avoiding the danger of succumbing to the “It” bag (which is dated after only one season and everybody thinks you are carrying a knock-off, anyway). She bonds with a classic Bottega Veneta dark red tote. Dormer is nominated for a Gemini for Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role for Tudors and one of the perks of the job is getting to snog Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ streamlined and sexy Henry rather than the portly, gouty, gassy stereotypical Henry. “He’s a total hottie,” she allows. “Henry VIII did cut a dashing figure before he gorged into a gouty monstrosity. He was an alpha male and a bit of a catch. It’s a lusty role and a bit of a romp.”

It’s all fun and mattress polka up until she loses her head at the end of Season two. “It’s Titanic-itis,” she says. “Everyone knows how it ends. But it’s wonderful for a young actress to sink her teeth into something fleshy.” Dormer is only 26. “It’s my first opportunity to play a mother and enlightening to experience that level of womanhood,” she says. “I’m finding my identity as a woman and playing someone with gravitas. A lot of my friends are settling down and putting mortgages down but I’m sent out for roles and scripts for 18-year-olds. The women in their mid-30s are getting all the roles I want � I still get ID’ed when I buy champagne in the supermarket and I have my hair in a ponytail with no makeup.”

Dormer has paid her dues. In addition to appearing on stage in Pride and Prejudice, School for Scandal and Under Milk Wood, she was an usher at The Lion King and a former cocktail waitress who can still free-pour a double vodka. After graduating from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in 2004, she got her first important gig in another costume drama � Casanova, starring Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller. “I played Victoria, fianc�e of Heath Ledger’s character. Shooting in Venice for four months got me hooked on coffee.”

And hooked up in corsets. “I’m tainted by the corset � Helena Bonham Carter-itis,” she jokes. “I get used to it. I had the advantage of classical training and I ran around in a corset doing Shakespeare, so it’s not an alien sensation. I’m reconciled to it.” She had a great opportunity to shop for purses in Venice but didn’t. “I was too poor to shop,” she says. “I paid for my first big break with nine months of unemployment. Such is the actor’s life.”

But Dormer did shop for camel bags in Morocco, where she recently went on holiday with her beau, a director. Downside of the bag is that it still reeks of uncured leather. “I Febreezed it to death and lit all these smelly candles,” Dormer says. She also loves shopping for coats. “Fall is my favourite season and you can’t have too many coats,” she explains. “I haven’t bought the fall coat in London yet. And I’m looking forward to finding a cape; my grandmother had a massive collection of capes.”

Dormer says she’s not girlie, describing herself as sensual. She definitely exudes a sweet sexiness. “I’m more hourglass, sexy sensual,” she says. “I like Roland Mouret and the Italian designers Dolce & Gabbana have taken good care of me. “I love la dolce vita; Sophia Loren is a style icon. I have a card on my fridge with a Sophia Loren quote: `Everything I am I owe to pasta.’” She shops at Top Shop, loving their Kate Moss line, and at Zara for staples and basics and at Urban Outfitters. “I mix and match.”

Dormer loves shoes. She has killer boots on from Camper. “I wore D&G heels for press. I had black riding boots up to my thighs for Tudors made in Italy for me. They drew around my foot. I said, `You have to give them to me’ and they did. They lace up the side and you can walk 10 miles in them.” She just finished a two-hour Agatha Christie Miss Marple project for British TV. “It’s ’50s fashion and I’ve never done ’50s before,” Dormer says. “My character’s fashion choices date back to the ’30s, which is my favourite era. I love the hats, the shoes, the gloves … Everyone was so well-groomed.”

She survived serious injury to life and limb while training in modern dance and ballet at the Allenova School of Dancing, then sharpened her swordsmanship and footwork at the London Fencing Academy. She studied theatre at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, then landed a role as Victoria in Lasse Hallstrom’s 2005 period epic Casanova.

None of that, though, prepared her for the role of the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, in Michael Hirst’s sensuous, exquisitely detailed historical drama The Tudors, now in its second season on CBC-TV.

Dormer, admitting to feeling a tad tired after stepping off the plane in Canada following an overnight flight from the U.K., says she stepped into the role cold, with no preconceptions of how other actresses had played one of history’s most famous and yet little-known women. As a teenager, she had seen – and admired – Montreal actress Genevieve Bujold’s Oscar-nominated performance in 1969′s Anne of the Thousand Days. Dormer knew, too, that actresses as varied as Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, Charlotte Rampling, Jodhi May and, more recently, Natalie Portman had tackled the role, but she was determined to make it her own.

“As an actor, it’s your responsibility to be faithful to the text that’s in front of you,” Dormer said, in the warm but cultured accent of a classically trained performer from the southeast of England. “I very much adhered to Michael Hirst’s interpretation of the character. I did indulge myself in a lot of history reading, to inform myself as to who the real woman was. As far as other actresses’ portrayals, though, I tried to stay clear. It muddles your process, I find. At least, it does for me.”

The Canadian-Irish-U.S. co-production — The Tudors’ main financial backer is the U.S. pay-cable channel Showtime — is on track to survive four seasons, nearly as many years as Henry had wives, and longer than the time Boleyn herself lived as Queen Consort in the court of Henry VIII.

Boleyn, just the second commoner to be crowned Queen Consort, met a bloody and tragic fate: condemned, tried and beheaded for high treason and adultery in 1536, little more than three years after her fairy-tale wedding. Boleyn may have failed to deliver Henry the male heir he so desperately wanted, but in death, she lived on: Her daughter would go on to rule England as Elizabeth I.

Any qualms Dormer may have had about immersing herself in the 16th century were allayed the moment she was swept up in The Tudors’ exquisite attention to period detail, as realized by Hirst and his team of art decorators and set designers.

“I’ve always been a history lover,” Dormer said. “I’ve spent a lot of recreational time walking around historical castles and estates, in Britain and Europe, and so I know what the real thing looks like”

“I can remember walking onto the set of Anne Boleyn’s chambers, at the beginning of shooting this season. The art department decorated it to Anne Boleyn’s taste and style, and it almost brought me to tears, because they had captured so much of the detail of her personality. It was exactly how I imagined I would have decorated those rooms myself, had I been Anne Boleyn. It felt as if it was Anne’s home.”

It was good, too, to act opposite the king. Performing virtually every scene — many of them involving intimacy, sensuality, romance, anger, fear and defiance — opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers was both a challenge and a reward, Dormer said.

“Jonathan has many qualities that echo the historical figure of the real Henry VIII,” Dormer said. “The story and the script immediately lends itself to Johnny’s strength, because he is an incredibly charismatic, intoxicating, high-energy human being. He’s incredibly charming and athletic. When you meet him, he’s surprisingly erudite. There are a lot of parallels between the historical Henry VIII and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There’s an oscillation and extremity of emotion throughout his repertoire that lends itself beautifully to the nature of Henry VIII, definitely. He will push things to the limit, and yet remain in emotional control. Working with him is a real gift, and when you’re in the moment with him, all you’re worried about is your own acting.”

Deep down, Dormer admitted, every actor covets a screen-grabbing death scene, and Boleyn’s demise is a dying scene for the ages.
“I think that’s probably true,” Dormer said, with a lively laugh. “You can really sink your teeth into it. I found the experience of her execution incredibly harrowing. It was very upsetting. I had to do all the lines, and as I was saying them, I got the feeling I was saying goodbye to a character. And, of course, you have to deal with the obvious sympathy and empathy to the historical figure. I was a real crucible of emotions for those few days. Which is a gift. Because when you’re holding a draft, a mirror up to life as humbly as we can, it’s one of the greatest opportunities we can be given, to deal with mortality. I felt very, very privileged and very, very grateful to have that experience.”

Dormer is reluctant, uncomfortable even, to describe Boleyn as a feminist before-her-time, but Boleyn is not just a victim, as history has occasionally portrayed her.
“You have to be careful to use a word such as ‘feminist,’ because there was no context within the times. The British historian David Starkey cites Anne Boleyn and her daughter, Elizabeth I, as being honourary men of their times. You are acutely aware of Anne Boleyn using her education, her intelligence, her instincts and her style to outweigh the disadvantage of her gender during that era. Anne Boleyn is an intriguing character. She seems to appeal to modern-day women in a very potent way. Because she was such an independently opinionated and spirited young woman, which at the time was unheard of.”

The Tudors will live on for at least one more season after this, but it will do so without Boleyn, and Dormer. Boleyn meets her bloody and historical fate in the season finale.
Dormer is not forgotten, though.
Hirst, speaking on the phone from Ireland, where The Tudors has just broken ground on its third season under newly promoted, Toronto-born lead director Jeremy Podeswa, said The Tudors would not have been the same without a fearless and defiant actress in the role of Boleyn.

“I can’t say enough about Natalie,” Hirst said. “She’s very intelligent, as a person, but she didn’t let her intelligence stand in the way of embodying this lively, complex woman. We asked her to step up to the plate, and she stepped up to the plate big-time. She was hurt by a couple of negative notices at the end of season one, I think, when she was dismissed as being a bit of fluff, as just playing your typically manipulative, scheming bitch, and that was all she was capable of portraying. She came to us and said, ‘Would you throw everything at me this season? I want to show them that that’s not true, that I can do it.’ Well, over the course of the season, either directly or indirectly or in dreams, she’s drowned, stabbed, burned and beheaded; she loses two children; she loses her life at a very young age; she loses Henry; she realizes that her father has abused and manipulated her. She has to go through many, many things, and Natalie did it. She really did it.
“Natalie, I hope, I trust, has a great career ahead of her.”