WHEN a teacher at Victoria Smurfit's school in England told her that people like Miss Smurfit did not become actors she could not have done her pupil a bigger favour. Determination to succeed propelled Smurfit into the rigorous training-ground of the Bristol Old Vic and onwards to her film debut, while still a 21-year-old drama student, in Peter Yates's film The Run of the Country, which opens next week.
Set along the borders of the interlocked counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Fermanagh, this rites-of-passage story adapted by Shane Connaughton from his novel of the same title, stars a young American actor Matt Keeslar, as the school-leaver, Danny chose mother's death puts so much strain on his relationship with his policeman father (Albert Finney) that he runs off to stay with his pal Prunty (Anthony Brophy) and meets and falls in love with Annagh (Victoria Smurfit).
"I identified with the role of Annagh," Smurfit says. "She is a more isolated, less explained character than the others. She lives in her head. I used to be like that ashen I was younger."
It was something of a leap for the young actress to follow a touring stage production of Jung/e Book with this feature-length film. "Yes, I was nervous, worried that I would let people down, or wouldn't be convincing. But Albert Finney, in particular, was really helpful, and I have learned so much from the whole experience."
She emphasises the sheer slog of a film shoot, the hours spent sitting around in a bog in the chilly September dawn, for one nude love scene. "I had been a bit apprehensive about that bit, but Peter Yates did it extremely tastefully as a sort of Babes-in-the-Wood scene. Also, the embarrassment turned into laughter when you had people constantly coming up to you, patting your bum with make-up to try to disguise your blue, frozen flesh."
More awkward for her was the result of anxiety on the shoot that, at a sensitive period last summer in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, the daughter of Dermot and Caroline Smurfit might be a target for kidnappers. So on the days when she wasn't working she spent a lot of time indoors confined to base, which obviously went against the grain.
Her independence is clearly important to her, and now, in spite of an initial lack of encouragement, she has won approval from her family for her chosen career. "You knows I'm sick of being known as someone else's daughter. I'm proud to be a Smurfit and I have reaped the benefits, of course, but I did nothing to build up the business. What's important to me about acting is that I've done it myself. I have worked at it."
Having left her native Dalkey as a teenager - "kicking and screaming" - when her parents, moved to London, Victoria was delighted that her first acting job brought her back to Ireland. Afterwards, she returned to Bristol to finish her course.
"Well, I thought, why be unemployed now? There'll be plenty of time for that later," she smiles. That seems unlikely; she has already taken another film role, a cameo in John Duigan's Leading Man, in which she plays "a nutter groupie with a gun. It's a bit of fun."
Her Old Vic training has prepared her for both theatre and film, she thinks, and she intends to keep both options open, she admires directors who are not dictatorial and who bring out the best in actors, in particular Kenneth Branagh and Michael Winterbottom.
"I had not expected the intensity of filmwork, though - you just have to sign yourself over to if completely. But I'll do anything: Except a Tampax ad - my rollerskating's terrible."
