Alice Englert interview: filming In Fear left me "distraught" Although In Fear was her first feature-length film, Englert has been on movie sets her whole life. She was born in 1994, the year her mother, the New Zealand director Jane Campion, won the best screenplay Oscar for The Piano (her father, Colin Englert, was second-unit director on the film). "I was in her belly when she collected the award, so I can say I've been to the Oscars," Englert jokes. Her parents divorced when she was seven ("they are still friends, but I shouldn't talk about it") and although Englert grew up in Sydney she travelled around with Campion wherever filming took her. She also spent hours with her mother in the editing suite. "That shaped me hugely," she says. I became obsessed with the nuance and subtlety of what went into a story. But both my parents are such fantastic storytellers - they've influenced me more than I can know. Englert made her screen debut aged 12 in The Water Diary, Campion's short film about a family in rural Australia who struggle when a catastrophic drought plagues the country. "It wasn't really acting," Englert says. Mum wrote the character based on me and it was just who I was. Her first taste of live performance came when she played guitar and sang as a soloist at a local club in Sydney aged 15 every Sunday. She still plays now - there is a clip on YouTube of her playing a song she wrote, Necessary Pains ("that was just my friend trying out her camera") and she says she wants to start performing live again (she also has a song credit on a recent film). Englert with mother Jane Campion. Photo: Getty Images Englert drifted in and out of six schools, leaving permanently at 17. School didn't suit me at all; I was just too bloody sad - I was uber-sensitive, it was hormones really. Her parents, she says, "were amazing" about her decision to leave. It was while she was on the set of Bright Star, her mother's film about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, in 2009 when she was 15, that she decided she wanted to act. (Campion has said she based Fanny's character on Englert: "Whenever I was unsure I thought, how would Alice react? She has the same kind of personality, always flying off, fantastic emotional ups and downs yet very tender and kind under it all.") Mum wanted to see how a scene sounded, so we read it through one evening. Then the next day she got me to stand in [for a lead actor while their scene was being lit] on set. I thought, I could do this. Choosing not to go to drama school, she got an agent and started auditioning. Two years later she was cast in her first film. Jeremy Lovering says Englert was an early suggestion by the casting director Theo Park in a long selection process that took six weeks. "She's very cool," Lovering says. I didn't want someone who would run around screaming; I wanted a multi-layered approach, which is what she gives. She's been around performance her whole life, which means that she has developed a very mature approach to character creation. Jane makes films about women with layers and depth, and Alice has grown up watching that. Unusually for a feature film In Fear was filmed chronologically ("that was a real treat," Englert says). It was filmed in the forests around Bodmin Moor in Cornwall and the cast and crew lived in a hotel nearby. We were staying in a hotel where the only guests were very old people who liked to play golf, and a crew who were making a horror film. I would come down for breakfast with blood on my face, made up for the day, and had a lot of fun seeing the other guests" reactions," she says, grinning. Englert seems much older than her 19 years ("she is wise beyond her years," Lovering agrees), and this is reflected in her approach to each role. "Acting for me is a chance to try different personalities out," she says. I do believe that people are capable of anything and acting is the sort of job where you have an excuse to see what else you are. It forces your personality into a dialogue. With Elle Fanning in Ginger & Rosa. In 2012 Englert was chosen by the director Sally Potter to play Rosa alongside Elle Fanning in Ginger & Rosa, an arthouse film about two girls with wildly different personalities growing up in the 1960s, for which Englert was nominated for best supporting actress at the British Independent Film Awards. Potter is full of praise for Englert. I saw Alice after I'd seen a couple of hundred auditions and I just thought she had a really wonderful screen quality. I found her always on the hunt for truth in her performance and very aware of when things weren't quite right and wanting to correct it. Englert is someone who knows her own mind. When, later that year, she was offered the lead role in Beautiful Creatures, a Hollywod coming-of-age fantasy film with a massive budget, she initially turned it down - three times. I read the brief and it said it was a teenage fantasy romance, and I thought, haven't they just made that? But then I met the director and he told me it was going to be camp and funny and so I thought, why not? But her mother, she adds, was horrified. She doesn't get the whole blockbuster thing. Mum has her strong opinions, which I love, because if she says I'm doing well I know she really means it. Englert played the role of Lena Duchannes, a 15-year-old girl from a family of "casters" (witches), opposite Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons. She says she "had a lot of freedom making this movie to work on [my] character, change things and evolve." She received glowing reviews for her performance (according to the Telegraph "Englert, who has presence and self-possession to burn, is the standout"), but the film "didn't make enough money in America," so there are no sequels planned. "There was no Twilight phenomenon, thank God," she says. But it was brilliant fun. I worked with all those people who are my heroes. I hung out in New Orleans, which I loved, and then I stepped out of the last black car that I wasn't paying for and went back to reality. With Eileen Atkins and Jeremy Irons in Beautiful Creatures. Unlike other girls her age Englert isn't on Twitter or Facebook ("I don't need that in my life") and insists she is "not bothered by clothes. My friend, who thinks he's very trendy, says I'm very daggy," she says, grinning. But when she has to dress up she borrows dresses from Miu Miu. They're really good to me, but I hate the red carpet. I have a knee problem and so I can't walk in heels. I have to hold on to my publicist's arm as I walk, then she leaves me in a spot to be photographed and I have to stay there until she comes to get me. It's very stressful. She admits she is concerned that her knee is going to cause problems on her next project, New Worlds, a sequel to the English Civil War television drama The Devil's Whore (2008), which starred Michael Fassbender and Andrea Riseborough. Englert plays a 19-year-old living on the American frontier. "I have to do a lot of running and jumping," she explains. "I said to the director, "Can't she ride instead? I can ride a horse no problem," but apparently not." It is only her second foray into television; last month she started filming Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, based on the fantasy novel by Susanna Clarke set in 19th-century England about two men who are magicians, for BBC America. Englert plays Lady Pole, a woman who people consider to be mad. TV roles have been more interesting lately -there just aren't that many interesting roles in films for someone my age; it's a lot of blockbuster stuff, which has lasted quite a while. But I think that people will get bored of fantasies soon and will start wanting to see themselves again. She hopes to make another film next year. "I'm excited about being 19 now," she says. "Before, everyone would say to me, "You're so young" and I felt like a novelty. But now I have the chance to show that I'm more than that. I just want to get better and better at what I do. In Fear is out on November 15