Lucy Punch: she chucked away her college career for a walk-on part on a television show. Now this British actress is making the grade

Interview, Nov, 2004 by Britt Schoenhoff

In the midst of cramming for exams at University College London, actress Lucy Punch received a life-altering phone call from her agent, announcing that she had a part for her on a television series. "It wasn't a very hard decision--much to my parents' dismay," recalls the 25-year-old London native, who first began attracting attention last spring for her plucky take on the wicked stepsister in the Cinderella-inspired Ella Enchanted. "I was always a horrible, attention-seeking show-off at school," she admits, "but that's usually the case with little girls who want to be actresses."

The plot of Punch's latest film, Istvan Szabo's Being Julia, hinges on that hunger for the spotlight. In the movie, based on the 1937 W. Somerset Maugham novel, Theatre, Punch plays Avice Chricton, a young ingenue poised to storm the West End boards in pre-war London, who blithely believes she's being groomed to replace her mentor, the more mature grande dame Julia Lambert (Annette Bening). "Avice is a bit naive, a bit too ambitious, and rather gauche," explains Punch. "She kind of gets it wrong, although I understand her drive. I've come across young actresses like that who start trying to play a game they're not equipped to play."

Britt Schoenhoff is a Los Angeles-based writer.