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By Benjie Goodhart
We chat to the Irish star of Channel 4's gritty new police drama The Ghost Squad...
ELAINE Cassidy is no ordinary actress. At the age of 25, she's played a pregnant abuse victim, a mute ghost, Hitler's sexually-abused niece, a violent girl who kills her best friend, and a lesbian who grew up in an asylum. On paper, the Irish actress sounds about as much fun as trying to cut your toenails with a chainsaw.
It's a pleasant surprise, then, to meet her in person. Elfin and unconventionally beautiful, she also turns out to be warm, intelligent and articulate, and blessedly free of the neuroses and psychosis that normally plague her characters. While still a teenager, Cassidy was cast opposite Bob Hoskins in the critically acclaimed film Felicia's Journey, about a naïve Irish girl and a serial sexual abuser. "It was a brilliant role to get," she says, "I was very lucky to be a part of that."
Was she not put off by the dark subject matter? "See, I never saw that. I thought it was a love story. You can imagine the shock I got when I saw the film. My job was to become Felicia, so all I saw was her story, her search for her lover. She never saw Hilditch's bad side. She never saw all 360 degrees of him the way the audience did, so I never saw it either. I just concentrated on my own scenes, not on what was going on in the rest of the film. And then when I saw the end product, I thought 'The bastard! Oh my God, the evilness!'"
Next up in Cassidy's unrelenting march to stardom was The Others, Alejandro Amenabar's spine-chilling thriller starring none other than Nicole Kidman. But for Cassidy, the thrill was not so much working with one of the world's biggest stars as with a hugely talented director. "I'd seen Open Your Eyes, Alejandro's previous film, and I thought 'Oh my God, I'll sweep the set just to work with this guy'.
The tone of the film was bleak, and Cassidy's own role was, as ever, a tragic one. Yet with her fragile beauty and lilting Irish brogue, she could easily find herself a role in a nice, slushy romantic comedy. Is she not tempted to go down a more cheerful path?
Just lately, actually, I've thought it might be quite interesting to do a romantic comedy. Who knows? One day, hopefully I will."
In the meantime, next up is The Ghost Squad, a raw, fast-paced and powerful eight-part series about an elite group of officers who run covert investigations into potentially corrupt police officers. Once again, it marks a new direction for Cassidy. She did TV last year, with the BBC's production of Fingersmith as a mini-series, but this is an eight-part drama centred around her. Her character, Amy, appears in almost every scene.
What she does is an almost impossible job. It must take its toll. There's only certain people who are made for that kind of work. And Jesus Christ, I take my hat off to them, because there'd be no way that I could do it. I'd crumble within the first day, I think."
With filming completed on the series, Cassidy is taking a well-earned break, including a visit to her native Dublin for the Irish Film and TV Awards, where she's been nominated as Best Actress for her role in Fingersmith. Come January, though, it's back to work: she's going back to theatre, doing The Crucible in Stratford. It's a play about love, loss, cruelty and tragedy set against a background of paranoid terror during the Salem Witch Trials. Just another cheery project in the extraordinary career of Elaine Cassidy. Watch this space.
© Channel 4
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