Anna Friel has been around so long, she says, people accuse her of lying about her age. They don’t believe she’s only 36. Can’t see it myself. If anything, she looks younger, even trussed up in costume, a long skirt and formal blouse appropriate to turn of the 20th century provincial Russia. She’s rehearsing a revival of Uncle Vanya for the West End (we meet in her lunch break; she picks at a salad for a while, then gives up) in which she plays the 27-year-old Yelena. “Playing nine years younger, all that theatrical lighting helps,” she says. “You can’t see the wrinkles.”
This is one of several references over the next hour to an ageing process that most people, I think, would be hard