Australia's
Adelaide Clemens plays Valentine in new period drama Parade's End. Source:
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Holly Byrnes, The Daily Telegraph, reports
The world has Hugh Grant to thank for the promising acting career of Australian beauty Adelaide Clemens (and no, this is not another secret love child story).
At 14, then a budding gymnast, Clemens distinctly remembers the moment she decided acting was the job for her, albeit in extraordinarily painful circumstances.
An accident had left the teenager in hospital for weeks with a broken back, leaving her to keep herself entertained by watching movies.
Clemens plays it down now, describing herself as a "silly duffer", but is grateful for the down time because it's what led her to acting.
"It was the escapism," the luminous 22-year-old tells Switched On.
"To be honest, I was having a Hugh Grant marathon, thinking 'this is the best stuff in the world and I want to be a part of it'," she says, giggling.
Fast forward to a "revolting hotel room in Covington, Louisiana" last year, where she was filming schlock horror film No-One Lived, when Clemens found herself auditioning over Skype for the role of bobbed suffragette Valentine Wannop in Parade's End, the kind of UK period drama that once would have been solid Hugh Grant territory.
She blames a dodgy internet connection for being knocked back after this initial, stilted audition, but like her determined character in the BBC series, to air on Channel 9, Clemens was not about to go down without a fight.
Clemens bought a ticket on the next flight to London and begged the director Susanna White for another chance - just 15 minutes of her time - to press her case again.
Such was her enthusiasm to play the role, she rode the Tube to the second audition in full period costume. She got the job.
"I honestly don't know what possessed me," she says. "This is the first time it happened to me, but I read a role and I really thought I could do it. Perhaps part of her character informed the way that I pursued it, because she's a very determined, admirable character. I just wanted to be her."
The hard yards clearly paid off, with Clemens singled out by British critics for praise.
The eldest daughter of an Australian nurse and an English-born marketing manager, Clemens, born in Japan but schooled in Sydney from 12, says it was her lifelong sense of being an outsider that made her right for the part.
"Even when I moved to Australia, I stuck out like a sore thumb because I was in a back brace for a couple of years. I've just always been a bit of a nerd and an outsider."
Her "nerd" instincts served her well in preparing for Parade's End, papering the walls of her rented flat with maps of rural England in order to give herself a sense of the drama's sweeping landscapes and her character's isolation in a small town, slowly dying post-Industrial revolution.
Filming in Rye, Clemens would also discover it was her father's birthplace, adding to the sense she was born to be Valentine.
Her character's forbidden romance with duty-bound army captain Christopher Tietjens (played by Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch) is central to the mini-series.
Clemens says she loved how "completely fearless" her activist character was to play, in stark contrast to Tietjens' social-climbing wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall).
"Valentine's social status was of no concern to her, she had much more important goals and priorities."
The chemistry between Clemens and Cumberbatch is the high point of this drama, with the British actor clearly smitten by his young co-star.
The feeling was mutual, with Clemens equally enamored, describing the BAFTA nominee as "amazing, extraordinary. He's such a hard worker and so passionate. Just so enthusiastic, we had a ball just diving into that world and just trying to really make sure that we represented it in the best way possible".
She picks fault instead with the critics who dismissed the drama as plodding.
"I don't think it's slow at all, I think it's dense. It's not something you turn on, then go and get a cup of tea. You need to sit down and devour it. Even now I go back and read the scripts and there's more there. There's so much to explore," she enthuses.
There's more to explore for Clemens, who will next appear in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (as Isla Fisher's screen sister Catherine), and a second season of the Sundance Channel series Rectify (from the makers of Breaking Bad).
She stars opposite another local actor, Aden Young. He plays Daniel, a man released after 19 years on death row. Daniel returns to his family home to find it has fallen apart since his incarceration.
"I play Daniel's step-sister and she's a young Southern woman who basically sees the good in everybody," Clemens says.
Having started her TV career on hit drama Love My Way, she has made intelligent choices.
"You know if you've got it in you to tell a story or not, but I didn't really set out to go all over the shop the way I have, but I feel very fortunate it's turned out that way."
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