Tara Fitzgerald may be, as she says, 'green on the scene' here, but
her appearances in theatre, film, and television have made the 27-year-old
actress well known to British audiences for her blend of passion and propriety.
Her career is enviable not only to members of her own profession but to
every romantic Anglophile. She has played opposite Hugh Grant (in Sirens
and in the forthcoming The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down
a Mountain), and this month she opens on Broadway as the Ophelia to
the Hamlet of the reigning English matinee idol, Ralph Fiennes.
Fitzgerald, who is half Sicilian, is the great-niece of Geraldine Fitzgerald,
the distinguished O'Neill interpreter and 1940's film star. Since she was
four she knew she wanted to be an actress on the stage, and her faith in
herself was amply confirmed when, fresh out of drama school, she was given
the part of the hero's girlfriend in Hear My Song. Her first stage
role, soon after, was as the girlfriend of a somewhat more seasoned actor,
Peter O'Toole. 'There was a Pygmalion aspect to our relationship,' says
Fitzgerald. 'He was my guru.' One of the tips he gave her: 'You should
never walk in a straight line onstage.'
The actress is best known to the British public for three TV miniseries
in which she played Poppy and Polly and Dolly, genteel English roses who
loved being plucked. Her appearances au naturel have left her amused that
so much attention is paid to a pretty girl's nudity. 'I think it's funny
that it's still treated as a novelty each time. It wasn't done salaciously
or to shock anybody.' But she is aware that American television isn't like
that. 'When we shot the sequences for the American version, the sheet was
taped to my chin. Then, for the French version, they pulled it down again.'
Fitzgerald comes to Shakespeare's 'bloody great play' having seen only
one Hamlet---Mel Gibson's ('though I've seen clips of Larry's').
Her poignantly terrified and confused Ophelia has, she thinks, 'the potential
to be quite a normal girl, but she is brutalized by the men in her society.'
In a white, chin-high Edwardian gown, flaming red hair cascading down her
back, Fitzgerald drifts through the gloomy corridors of Elsinore like her
own ghost.
After Hamlet Fitzgerald has no professional plans ('I like the
not knowing'), but there is an important private one set for later this
year: her wedding to actor Dorian Healy, whom she met in a London Soho
bar ('How the fates collude!'). She can recall only one truly unpleasant
experience in her work thus far: In Sirens she was required to stand
on a clifftop, a painful task since 'I'm vertiginous. Elle Macpherson,
who was holding my hand, said that it went cold, and there was a strange
smell - the smell of fear.' Fitzgerald adds, 'I hate dizzy heights.' Judging
by the altitude she's achieved thus far, she may have something to worry
about.
