A girl who has graced the cover of Vogue and catwalked some of fashion’s biggest labels might not be the kind of person you would expect to see on a North beach.
But there is more to Agyness Deyn than a supermodel’s CV and a name which would cause fewer problems if it was spelled plain Agnes Dean (in fact, before she changed it to further a modelling career, she was Laura Hollins).
This much is clear from her foray into acting and a first leading film role which brought the willowy 31-year-old to the region.
She stars in Electricity which was shot during 2013 at locations including Newcastle city centre and the beach at Saltburn-by-the-Sea – and to director Bryn Higgins, she was ‘Aggy’.
He had no qualms at all about handing her the very demanding role of epilepsy sufferer Lily O’Connor in Electricity, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Robinson who lives in North Yorkshire.
“It is her first lead role but she had a supporting part in a film called Pusher (a 2012 British crime thriller) and she’s in a new Terence Davies film coming up soon (that will be Sunset Song, based on a 1930s novel set in Scotland before the First World War) – so I think we got her signed at the right time.
“And to be honest, she’s fantastic. Aggy is a seriously good actor – and I have worked with quite a few actors.
“I thought she was exceptional. To my mind, she could have made it as an actor from the beginning but, well, she has had quite a good career as a supermodel.”
There is a note of humour in Bryn’s voice as he says this.
Agyness Deyn has had a seriously good career, appearing in ads for Giorgio Armani, Vivienne Westwood, Burberry and many more while also gracing magazine covers around the world and being declared one of the top 30 models of the 2000s by Paris Vogue, which knows a thing or two about glamour.
But Deyn was brought up near Rochdale, where they don’t hold much with airs and graces, and as a young teenager worked in a fish and chip shop.
Given the critical reception to Electricity, which has been largely positive, a gruelling role in an independent British movie with a tight budget and a gritty plot held no fears at all.
Lily is a tough girl who has had an equally tough upbringing on the North coast. Subject to epileptic seizures since being hurled down the stairs by her mother, she has a matter-of-fact approach to her condition: “Thrash, get up, get on with it.”
Bryn was keen to make the film true to the story which really gets going when Lily’s mother dies and she heads to London to find the younger brother she once doted on.
“One thing we’ve done in the film is not show her (Lily) from the outside, lying on the floor and having a seizure.
“Instead we jump inside her head to see what she sees. For the audience, this is a very immersive experience and, I think, quite powerful.”
Medical charity the Wellcome Trust invested in Electricity, seeing it as a good way of countering negative perceptions of epilepsy.
“One in 20 people have experience of epilepsy,” says Bryn. “It really is very common. Agyness has a really close friend in America who has it and did a lot of research of her own after taking on the role.”
Electricity was shot in the region largely because Bryn had made another film in here a few years ago.
“It’s a brilliant place to work if you’re making films,” he says. “There are lovely locations and from the city centre to the seaside takes 20 minutes. For a film-maker, being able to move quickly between locations is brilliant.”
While audiences seem to have enjoyed the performances of Agyness Deyn and fellow actors including Christian Cooke, Paul Anderson, Alice Lowe, Leonora Crichlow and Tom Georgeson, the locations haven’t gone unnoticed.
Bryn says: “While three quarters of this story is set in London, we shot there for only three of the 34 days of filming. We shot some footage on Grey Street, although that got edited out, and we shot on Carlton Terrace (near Newcastle University) for the posh bits.
“We had a great question at the London Film Festival from someone who said, ‘How did you get permission to film on the Underground?’ Actually, we didn’t. We shot the Underground scenes on the Tyne & Wear Metro.”
Despite good responses from critics and audiences to Electricity, Bryn and his colleagues at Stone City Films are up against the American studio blockbusters in the competition for cinema showings.
“Unfortunately, in the current film market, with sometimes up to 20 films being released a week, it is getting increasingly hard to get smaller independent films out there,” he says.
But he adds that he and the team are “incredibly proud of the film” and are optimistic of securing screenings in Durham and York - and also more in Newcastle where it has been screened three times recently at the Tyneside Cinema.
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