Joanne Froggatt says the Downton Abbey film was like a lovely school reunion. Photo / Getty Images
Joanne Froggatt's bright, expectant stare is a little unsettling. As whey-faced Anna Bates in all 52 episodes of the dear-departed television drama Downton Abbey, she was never just sweetly subservient. There was an obstinacy under her lady's maid deference that gave the part its edge.
In the wider hoo-ha about how Downton made the names of hitherto unregarded actors, it's generally forgotten that Froggatt's acting career had been on a steady upward curve for 20 years when she joined the household of the aristocratic Crawleys.
Her trustworthy, honest and frankly dowdy character was pivotal to many of the key storylines — as it will be once again when the Downton Abbey film is released in September — and she invested the part with a dignity and finesse not normally associated with below-stairs life.
"There was quite a lot of me in Anna," she says. "I am a very loyal person and I think I've got a strong moral code. I'm conscientious, I work hard, but I like to have more fun than Anna. Anna will see the best in people, but she's not a pushover."
Froggatt's pale, receptive face is an invitingly blank canvas for complex emotion. As Anna Bates, she made plainness beautiful. As the serial killer Mary Ann Cotton (in the television two-parter Dark Angel), she made it sinister. "My work has never been based on being a great beauty," she says.
"I've made a pretty good career [playing] the plain Jane ... who's always got a surprise up her sleeve". You can't imagine another actress speculating so matter-of-factly about whether her perceived plainness might have protected her from sexual misconduct that others in the industry have suffered.
"I've not played characters that are deemed to be sexy. I don't know if that's helped," she says. "I've been grabbed in a bar, grabbed on a Tube, been touched where you don't want to be touched. But, thank God, not in a working environment."
Froggatt is sure of herself, proud of her track record, but ever grateful that opportunities in film, television and theatre keep coming. Friendly, unstarry and polite, she will chat with fans but if they overstep the mark — by taking a photograph of her without asking — she asks them to delete the picture, then offers to pose with them properly. "I am not an animal in a zoo. I am approachable."
My work has never been based on being a great beauty.
Pragmatism rules. "If you resent it [public attention], you have a very miserable life ahead. You have to be grateful for the things you've got. Most people are lovely."
Froggatt doesn't talk herself up, but nor does she pretend she doesn't deserve to be where she is.
At 16, she landed the role of a teenage mother in Coronation Street and has supported herself by acting ever since. "I had to take a few jobs to pay the mortgage with no thought about whether it was a great role," she says. "Now I'm fortunate in that I can be picky. And I try to be."
Froggatt briefly considered changing her surname to something less earthy. Then she realised that casting directors would at least remember it. She's similarly protective of her accent, eroded now to a soft indeterminate northernness by her peripatetic life. "It happened quite naturally. I didn't ever want to consciously change it because I still wanted to be me, the amalgamation of my own ... journey in life."
That journey included roles in the prison drama Bad Girls, Dinnerladies, A Touch of Frost, Spooks and Robin Hood. She appeared at the Old Vic in All About my Mother and at the Royal Exchange in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For her film debut as a soldier in In Our Name (2010), she went unpaid — the only way she thought she would get to play a lead. It won her best newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards.
Then there was Anna. After receiving a Golden Globe for best supporting actress and three Emmy nominations, it was predictable that more Annas would be dangled in front of her. "I did stay away from working-class northerners for a little bit," she says drily. "Not that I've got anything against them, but ... I loved Anna. I didn't want to do some carbon copy of her."
When the television cast disbanded in 2015 after four eventful years, Froggatt spoke of "an element of grieving". Then last year, the original actors were reunited from the four corners of the earth to make the film. "It was so surreal," she says. "It was like a lovely school reunion."
Sworn to secrecy about the plot, Froggatt talks about "fun, surprises, sadness and intrigue. Everything people want, but elevated".
Soon she'll begin filming the second series of Liar, the television miniseries in which she was praised for her performance as Laura Neilson, a schoolteacher who believes she has been raped. "It ended up being one of those water cooler shows," she says. "I care about what I do and it's always a thrill when it goes well. Touch wood."
- Telegraph Group Ltd