Rebecca Ferguson is tired of the role of  a «strong woman».
She has played against Tom Cruise, Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. Made action, costume drama and musical. Still, Rebecca Ferguson is often offered the same type of female role: the strong, noble and cool. Now she takes matters into her own hands in pursuit of the characters she never played before.
Maybe Rebecca Ferguson is so successful that we do not understand that she is Swedish. For the past decade, she has acted as an action hero against Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible”, portrayed opera singer Jenny Lind against Hugh Jackman in “The Greatest Showman” and played against Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep in “Florence Foster Jenkins”.
Last year, she was praised for her role as Lady Jessica in the big movie “Dune”, based on the cult book of the same name, written by Frank Herbert in 1965. But now that she has been honored at the Gothenburg Film Festival, the question of why we Swedes no longer brag about her is of the motivation.
- Yes, I do not know. It is up to others to answer why I do not get more attention in Sweden, it is not a question I ask myself. I work non-stop and the media bit and attention is not something I was looking for, says Rebecca Ferguson.
She is sitting in a car driving through London. It’s late at night and she has just finished a filming day for the upcoming TV series “Wool”. Her life in England is highly private. What we do know is that she lives in the Richmond district, that her house is near the river Thames, that her husband is called Rory (surname unknown) and is an “entrepreneur” and that she has two children: a teenage son with her Swedish ex-husband and a little daughter with the aforementioned Rory.
- People like me thrive quite well in the shadows, I like to stay here. But I long for Sweden and it is really honoring for me to be noticed at home. I am grateful to have been highlighted in such a nice context and wish I could have gone there, she says.
Rebecca Ferguson was born and raised in Stockholm with a British mother and a Swedish father. She has only been to Gothenburg once in her life and never visited the film festival, which she has not been able to do this year either: due to covid, she only participates digitally.
As a child, Rebecca Ferguson was shy. She went to music school and danced ballet, but could not give speeches to the class without being ashamed and starting to blush. Today, she appears very confident, in gala dresses on red carpets, mingling with the Hollywood elite, charming in the talk shows.
- But I can still think that it’s tough to step forward and talk in front of people. The more I work, the more confident I become in my role and position and I have no problem selling a film that I feel proud of. But I definitely have a shy and timid side, she says.
But then Rebecca Ferguson was also forced to overcome her worst shyness when, as a 15-year-old, she got the lead role in the Swedish soap opera “New Times”, an initiative that would replace “Different Worlds”, which in turn would replace “Three Crowns”. It was simply a time of greatness for TV soaps in Sweden and “New Times” was broadcast in half-hour episodes on TV4 every weekday between the autumn of 1999 and the spring of 2001.
For Rebecca Ferguson, the offer of the TV series came at the right time. She had just finished high school at Adolf Fredrik’s music school and was in the middle of the infamous life choice which is to choose a high school specialization. The role of Anna Gripenhielm made her famous overnight. Rebecca dropped out of high school.
- “New times” became my life. I just drove on and never questioned that choice then or now. Everything that happened after that is a domino effect of that decision, I have nothing else to compare with, she says.
After two years in the soap world, Rebecca Ferguson disappeared. She moved to Skåne, had a child and managed to get a regular job for almost ten years. She worked at a Korean restaurant, at Dressman in Simrishamn, as a cleaner in a hotel and recorded fictional audio books. For the money she earned, she took private acting courses, but her career stood still. She considered giving up that part of her life.
- I have really fought for my career, have not slipped into a banana peel. After “New Times” I did not know what I wanted - so I tested everything. But who knows what would have happened if I had not met Richard Hobert in that market. Then everything could have been different, she says.
Director Richard Hobert was looking for an actress who could play the lead role in his upcoming film “En enkel till Antibes”. For weeks he had been searching in his memory for the name of a young Swedish girl he had seen in TV soap a few years earlier, without results.
He went to his summer house in Simrishamn and suddenly Rebecca Ferguson stood in front of him among the tourists at a flea market. Hobert recognized her immediately and knew he had found the right one. One week later, Rebecca Ferguson was on a plane to Norrland to meet her costar Sven-Bertil Taube.
- All stories and careers are unique in their own way, but this was really special and changed the direction of my life. I have friends who are still struggling, who go to castings and record tapes every week, and I make sure to tell them and the younger people around me that my life and my path are not ordinary.
There is a gratitude in Rebecca Ferguson’s voice as she talks about her career. After “En enkel till Antibes” everything went fast. She got the lead role in the British TV series “The White Queen”, a role that would be Ferguson’s international breakthrough, and she left Sweden before she even had time to start her career here.
Suddenly she was sitting on a huge TV series recording in England and turned to her costar Max Irons in a moment of clarity and said “Can you believe this, we’re in a real BBC production”. He replied, “I know. Let’s just take it in ”.
- And I try to really capture such moments. I often reflect on what luck I have that has taken me where I am and experienced so many things. I told my mother the other day, she called and asked why she had not heard from me in a long time and I told her that it is because I have so much fun, I work hard and am so happy.
The role of Elizabeth Woodville in "The White Queen” led to a Golden Globe nomination for Rebecca Ferguson. One of those who saw the series was Tom Cruise, who immediately decided that Rebecca was the person he was looking for in his upcoming “Mission Impossible” movie. She had flown to the desert in Morocco for a new filming when she got the call.
- It was a crazy time. I was sitting on a camel named Barbie when they called and told me to fly and meet Tom. I had a day off, then I needed to be back in the desert. By the way, the last person to ride that camel was Nicole Kidman. It felt like a sign, she says.
Since then, Rebecca Ferguson’s CV has been filled with a variety of films. She has done sci-fi, musicals, action and horror. Has played against some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. But still, some words always come back to describe her roles: strong, cool and noble portraits of women.
- Yes and now you do too. Repeat the same word to describe me. It is enough that you do two such roles well to feed the generalized image of you. Then you’re stuck in a typecasting. It will be a moment 22, you get the role because you are good but you also want to be free from it …
How do you choose your roles today?
- In a way, I can choose, because thankfully, offers come all the time. But at the same time, there are things I seek that do not come my way. I do not get everything I want, am not always satisfied. That is why I want to produce, to have more to say in it, she says.
In the new TV series “Wool”, she gets to do just that for the first time. In addition, she plays a character she has longed for, a mechanic who “maneuvers wrenches all day”. In addition, she is looking for assignments in Sweden, reading script after script and chasing her agents to make Swedish film, but so far they have not come her way, “maybe because people think I am not interested”.
- My biggest problem right now is that I do not have time for everything I want to do. I like to dip my foot a little everywhere and feel like an open book right now. There are endless ideas and it makes me very excited, she says.
Rebecca Ferguson - interview for Göteborgs Posten, published 15 February 2022.Â
Translated from swedish for @rebeccalouisaferguson
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