Brenda Blethyn, Beyond the Sea

"Discovered" internationally for her Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Leigh's 1996 Secrets & Lies, Brenda Blethyn only seems to have worked more here in the U.S. rather than in her native Britain. Indeed, she seems to have responded especially well to the actor-directors Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Redford, Nicolas Cage and now Kevin Spacey, for whom she plays the mother of the young Bobby Darin in the new film, Beyond the Sea. But this youngest of nine children isn't obsessed with career or status, much less celebrity. Her pragmatism is refreshing: "If it stops," she tells Stephen Schaefer, "I'd just go do something else." Attracted to challenges, Blethyn recently made her Broadway debut opposite Edie Falco in the tragic Marsha Norman drama, Night, Mother. As accomplished with accents as she is with characters, she says that she only found out she could do so many "the first time when I was asked and then I tried."

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