'Acting is no picnic for me'

Andrea Riseborough has built a stellar reputation for playing women on the fringes of society, such as the protagonist of new suburban drama 'Dragonfly'. She talks to Adam White

- Adam White

The magic of Andrea Riseborough is never quite knowing where you've seen her. I tell a friend her name, and he hasn't a clue – then he googles her and realises he’s seen her in 16 films and two limited series for television. He recognised her face instantly. Riseborough tells me that it’s important to be slightly unknowable. It takes her a while. The actor speaks in long pauses, gathering her words and thoughts as if they're precious, fragile little things.

"If you're going to represent people in real life... you should retain... to the best of your ability... what might be considered a real life... in the sense that you can move through the world... in quiet observation." Speaking to me over video call, Riseborough is curled up on the sofa of her London flat, a temporary abode while she's appearing in a play. Surrounding her is vast nothing - white walls, a cushion. All the better to disappear into.

Riseborough has her hits: as an ambitious Broadway diva in Birdman; as Emma Stone's love interest in the Billie Jean King film Battle of the Sexes; as Nicolas Cage's spectral betrothed in Mandy. But she also creates the kind of puzzlement wherein you think you might have brushed up against her on the Tube that day, or seen her waiting at a bus stop. The word “chameleonic” appears in so many of her profile interviews that I’m slightly embarrassed even to mention it here.

When half of Hollywood's A-list seemed to launch a grassroots Oscar campaign on her behalf in 2023 - for the notoriously little-seen indie