WHEN Jennifer Aniston was preparing for her first post-Friends movie lead – that of a small-town depressive shopgirl whose life has stalled in The Good Girl – she had the wardrobe department sew small rocks into the lining of her sleeves.
The gritty role was so far removed from the fizzy sitcom character that had turned her into a household name that Aniston needed the added weights to remind her not to wave her arms around, as "Rachel" would have done.
It's a transformation that our own Natalie Imbruglia can now relate to.
The last time audiences saw the former Neighbours beauty on the big screen, it was as Rowan "Mr Bean" Atkinson's animated sidekick in madcap spy spoof Johnny English.
Also, there's the matter of Imbruglia's fiery Sicilian heritage. By her own admission, she tends to speak with her hands and whenever things get a little testy, well, "it's like a kettle boiling".
Closed for Winter
To inhabit her first leading role in the new Australian film Closed For Winter, based on Georgia Blain's acclaimed novel, the 34-year-old songbird had to unlearn all of her most instinctive mannerisms.
Imbruglia plays Elise, an anguished recluse still tortured by the tragic childhood disappearance of her big sister, Frances.
Twenty years on from the day that Frances went missing from a South Australian beach where the sisters were playing, Elise has gone missing from her own life.
She has retreated into a purposely mundane existence; completely shut down emotionally as she cares for her equally damaged mother Dorothy, who had left the girls on their own that fateful day while she went out to work, just as she'd done by necessity all summer long.
At times, it's an oppressive film to watch. Not just because of the disturbing theme and the dilapidated physicality of Elise and Dorothy's lives, but because much of Elise's "journey" takes place within her long, heavy silences.
"I was concerned about it," confesses Imbruglia on the phone from Sydney.
"Especially if you're an emotive person; I'm very expressive – it's the Italian in me."
To prepare for the challenging role, Imbruglia consulted a grief counsellor and worked on developing Elise's memories so that each pared-back scene would be less of a struggle.
"By the time we started shooting, I felt completely engrossed in Elise's energy and her past and how she felt."
Empty spaces
Even so, the first two times she watched herself in the finished product, Imbruglia worried that her performance had simply been too blank.
"At first I thought, 'I'm not doing anything up there'. It took me a minute to adjust because it had felt so charged emotionally for me playing Elise. But by the third time I watched the film, I saw it."
Climbing into such a dark head space obviously left its mark on the recently divorced Imbruglia, who has had some highly-publicised struggles with her own demons.
When I ask if it had been in any way liberating, playing a character who gets to hide away from their problems through silence, she erupts passionately.
"It's not liberating at all! It's like having a lump in your throat the whole time. There's also a numbness to it. It's not a nice feeling," she stresses and reveals that there were many times during filming when she "took the mood" home with her after the cameras stopped rolling.
"When I watch the film, I get this recall, too. I start going into that space again.
"I don't know why Australian films so often go to dark places. Maybe we're not scared to tackle more difficult issues here. People don't necessarily want to go to the cinema to feel uncomfortable," she concedes, "but there is a place for these issues."
Dark places
Imbruglia, by her own admission, went to her own dark place in the final years of the last millennium.
It was almost as if the phenomenal success of her debut single Torn and its subsequent album Left of the Middle had demobilised her; she felt buried under the weight of expectation to better it with her follow-up album.
Estranged from Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns, her long-distance boyfriend at the time, she isolated herself in a remote bolthole in England and pretty much "shut the door" on life until she could deliver "this amazing record".
The one year she had given herself turned into three, and hundreds of song attempts were discarded before, in 2001, she finally released White Lilies Island, a well-received but considerably darker album which failed to have the same impact on the charts.
Later, she described it as a "weird, stressful time".
"I isolated myself, it was almost like I decided I'm not allowed to have fun and I'm not allowed to see any of my friends until I make this amazing record. There was an element of torturing myself," she has said. Eventually, she just "held on to the rope and pulled myself out, one hand in front of the other".
Afterwards, Imbruglia went on to marry Johns, but the "long-distance thing" would continue to be a serious faultline until the demise of their relationship in January last year.
And while her divorce is still fairly recent, this, if anything, seems to be a time of vigorous optimism for the London-based singer.
Single status
The British tabloids have leapt with glee on her newly single status, linking her (incorrectly, she says) with everyone from Prince Harry (who was guest of honour at her 34th birthday party in February) to Little Britain funnyman David Walliams and Swedish football hero Freddie Ljungberg.
Her fourth album is due for release in May, a more upbeat affair tellingly called Come To Life, and Coldplay's man with the Midas touch, Chris Martin, has also been in hot pursuit – professionally, at least. (He is married to actor Gwyneth Paltrow.) Martin has collaborated on a number of tracks and called her, Imbruglia reveals, sounding a little awestruck.
"This album is just about living. About sucking the marrow out of life," Imbruglia enthuses.
She has cut her ties with Los Angeles, recently selling a $4.5 million mansion, and confirms she has just bought her dream "bachelorette" pad in London's popular Notting Hill.
"I love Notting Hill. Absolutely love it. Wherever I've lived in London, I've always hung out there," says the singer who grew up on the central coast of New South Wales with her three siblings, but relocated to the UK in 1995.
Like Elise in her new film, Imbruglia has vivid childhood memories of growing up in a small Australian beach town. These memories make her smile.
"Part of the reason I wanted to do this film so much was that it reminded me of my own childhood. Walking on hot tar with bare feet, the milkbars with the coloured streamers hanging from the door, the sand in your togs at the end of the day. In those days, it wasn't as taboo as it is now, being left alone to play by your parents.
"My mum was quite neurotic, though. She'd say, 'When you go through that park near the creek, don't talk to any strangers, just run'. I used to rollerskate in the front drive and she'd be freaking out that I'd get hit by a car. Even so, my sisters and I would be at the beach all weekend by ourselves, snacking on Chiko rolls. Oh, I miss it."
Imbruglia talks wistfully about her birth country, but insists she couldn't come back permanently.
"I'll always come back for my family, but I think I've crossed a threshold now.
"Although," she hesitates, "I do have this vision of Byron Bay. I can see the house and the little waterfall in the back yard and I think, 'I'll do that'. But it'll be a long way away."
Closed For Winter premieres at Dendy Cinemas Portside, Hamilton, Brisbane, at 6.30pm on April 16, followed by a Q&A with the film's writer-director James Bogle. Bookings 3137 6000. Closed For Winter's general cinema release is April 23; Natalie Imbruglia's new album Come To Life is out late next month.
By Amanda Dardanis, April 12, 2009
Source: Courier Mail Australia
