I play a girl called Linda who's a Marilyn Monroe impersonator working at Madame JoJo's in Soho. Linda agrees to marry a young Egyptian screenwriter who needs a passport to stay, and we are part of a group of people, mainly Arabic, who live in rented rooms around the capital.
I was always attracted to the larger-than-life female sensuality Marilyn exuded. For the role I wanted to be overly feminine, taking care how to sit, how to carry your shoulders, the lip quiver. I really like being a blonde except for the root tinting. I played around with my voice, softened it, because mine is very low. For the dance number, that old-fashioned "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" stuff, I watched Marilyn in musical numbers like the one with Yves Montand in Let's Make Love.
I was knocked out at the London Film Festival two years ago by how much cinema and diversity is going on outside of America, and I said to myself then I wanted to work with talented film-makers abroad. Then I got this script for Room To Rent from Khalid [director/writer Khalid Al-Haggar] and loved it. He told me he'd always pictured me playing Marilyn Monroe.
This movie came right after I had done The Way Of The Gun and got married, so the timing was awful but the script was lovely and so funny. I didn't know my co-star Rupert Graves, who is a phenomenal talent, but had seen the wonderful Sa?d (Taghmaoui) - who plays Ali, the man I marry - in Hideous Kinky.
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