Letter from Poland.

 

Acting Up

17.06.2008

This weekend, I was back in the UK to attend a wedding in Somerset. My mum and her partner had also been invited and we were very excited about seeing all our close friends as well as the beautiful rolling hills of the English countryside.

Presented by Anna Piwowarska.

Just before we were supposed to go out to the pub for pre-wedding drinks, I went to my mum’s room to borrow something. She was watching television – a re-run of the popular British detective series ‘A Touch of Frost’, starring the famous British actor, David Jason. “Isn’t this the episode that you’re in?” asked my mother, not really expecting me to say yes. “Yes, I think it is”, I mumbled under my nose and made a quick exit so that I wouldn’t have to endure the embarrassment of watching my poor performance again.
In 2003 I played the role of a trafficked Polish girl in one of the episode of the ITV criminal series. It really wasn’t much of a part – I had two scenes and was on screen for roughly one and a half minutes. One, in which I was being taken into an airport and had to hand over my fake passport to my trafficker and the other was when I was in police custody and was made to hand over my fake passport to Inspector Frost himself. I was dressed in horrible eighties clothes and not allowed to wear make-up (although I do think that girls coming over to the UK for the first time, would have made more of an effort, but that’s beside the point). Anyway, I was terrible in it, and the other ‘trafficked girls’ were not very good either. In fact most of them could barely say ‘cześć’ as they were second generation Polish and had been brought up in the UK. None of us were even trained actresses. Thankfully, the girl that was playing a Polish stripper and had the most lines was a proper actress – the only slight problem was that she was Romanian. So how come they didn’t get real Polish actresses to play these parts? I’m guessing that it wasn’t worth the effort for the amount of screen time that we filled. And it was before Poland had entered the EU so the production team had a few hundred thousand young Polish women less to choose from.
Another similar incident was when I was asked to fly back tom London to audition for a part of a Polish girl on the film ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’. Yes, that’s right – that’s the third installment of the ‘Bourne’ series starring Matt Damon and directed by Paul Greengrass. I was to play the young Polish girlfriend of a businessman and I was to try and strangle Jason Bourne in the back of a Berlin taxi, whilst shouting obscenities in Polish. My audition would therefore probably be based on me shouting lots of rude things in Polish and strangling a poor production assistant (I figured that sadly the lovely Matt Damon would not be present). I couldn’t attend the first audition as they hadn’t given me enough notice but I was going to be invited to attend a second one. As there were only three girls in the running there was a good chance that I might even be able to get the part. Imagine, me strangling Matt Damon in the back of a taxi – how very exciting! “Strangling him with your kiss,” joked my husband, feigning jealousy. In the end, he needn’t have worried. I didn’t attend the audition as the makers of the film decided to cut the scene from the script. However, what this got me thinking about is why people do not approach the thousands of proper Polish actresses that we have here, or at least audition the ones that were living in Britain? Surely, I was not the best choice for this coveted bit part. We should have special agents to deal with this rather than having Russians playing Poles, or Hungarians playing Romas, or even worse having British actors feigning terrible Eastern European accents. Even the wonderful Cate Blanchett let the side down in the latest Indiana Jones. Cate, you’re a fabulous actress but as a Russian baddie you were a tad over the top.
It so happened that I also met a ‘real’ Polish actress last weekend. She was a rather beautiful, young woman who would love to make a living as an actress, but instead is working as a waitress. ‘Have you got an agent?’ I asked her. She said that she didn’t even know how to go about looking for one. I advised her to take some photos of herself to the big agencies in London – one looking a little drab (for the cleaner/ waitress roles), another sexier one (for the prostitute roles) and the other just as herself. Now this is not just me being clichéd – I know how the minds of directors and casting agents work. Eastern Europeans are usually cast in these categories. Anyway the point is why are we wasting beautiful, talented girls on waitressing when they could be a breath of fresh air on British television?
Although, I must admit that it’s not just the British that are guilty of laziness when casting foreigners. Here in Poland, I know a Russian actress who often auditions for roles in Polish films. Recently, she was rather miffed when she went for an audition to play a Russian prostitute and found herself in a room full of Polish actresses. The part eventually went to a fair-haired Polish girl who supposedly looked more ‘Russian’ than my dark haired, Georgian-looking friend.
The irony is that at the moment I am involved in the initial stages of a TV series in which British actors will feature. Although, I’m complaining about the treatment of Eastern European actors, I can see how easy it is to fall into clichés. Already, I am starting to think of the British characters in the categories of either shaved headed, cockneys or floppy haired ‘Hugh Grant’ types, so that they are recognizably ‘English’ to a Polish audience. I definitely think that someone should set up a company to cater for ‘foreign’ roles around the world. If it’s easy enough to find on the internet then I’m sure we can avoid future casting gaffes and many actors can show their skills in countries outside of their own. It’s time that we started to ‘keep it real’…