It's A Free World... (2007) :: Cast Notes

Cast Notes

• Kierston Wareing » Angie
• Juliet Ellis » Rose
• Leslaw Zurek » Karol
• Colin Caughlin » Geoff
• Joe Siffleet » Jamie

Kierston Wareing » Angie

Casting Angie took four months of auditions, call backs, improvisation sessions and screen tests. Finding the right actor was essential for the film. But for Kierston Wareing being found meant even more:

"I was studying to be a legal secretary just before all this, because I was about to give up acting - even though acting's my first passion. It's been a good ten-year struggle to get a break, to be honest. I've had so many situations before where I've got to the last person and never got it. I knew I was down to the last few. I thought, 'Please, if it's going to be one of those situations again - so close but so far...' Then finally my agent called me and put on a really upset voice, 'I'm sorry to tell you... you've got the part.' I didn't even scream. I was in shock, I just sat there going, 'Are you sure?'"

Wareing, 31, from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, trained at The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York for three years between 1997 and 2000. "I had a good response in the States and ended up getting a working visa. But I found it extremely difficult over here - just getting an agent was really hard, and I couldn't even get in to an extras agency. Up until this film it's been bits and pieces really, because I haven't been sent out that much - it was just for commercials, which I never got anyway, and then a part in The Bill, which I got and then this. So this is my big break."

Having been told she'd got the part, Wareing was given only scant details about her character's storyline. "The first time I got the script was on the plane to Poland. We were filming it just the next day. I tried not to panic. Then my first day on set I was kind of thrown in at the deep end. It was an assembly hall full of Polish workers. I was at the head table thinking, 'Oh my God. Could it have been a worse day to start?' But to be honest it was best that way - you just get on with it."

They're words that could easily have come from the mouth of Angie, Wareing's character. "She's very ambitious and very feisty - don't get on the wrong side of this woman. She does want the best for her son but nothing's really going to stop her. She's put up with enough shit in her previous life and now she's not going to take any more."

"I don't think the audience will like her, but the odd few will see what I've seen in her. If you met her on the street she'd come across as quite bolshy and bossy. But I think deep down she's quite a nice person. She has got her moments and you see it in the film. She's like the guy (in relationships) - she uses men when she needs them. But I think she's a bit greedy - she won't stop. She becomes more and more outgoing and ambitious. That's where you start to dislike her. She just becomes more aggressive and knows what she wants more and more and not really caring about the people around her."

Does she empathise with Angie, in light of her own struggle to find work?

"Absolutely. I wouldn't actually go out and do what she does, wouldn't go that far! But I do have that in me. I am an ambitious person and I don't give up."

Following his usual methodology, Loach continued to withhold crucial plot twists from his leading actress, sometimes until the moment they were filmed.

"The secrecy is phenomenal. I was living with the wardrobe girl. She knew all the secrets and she didn't let on at all. And then Ken would say to me, 'Oh, don't eat much today,' and the reason he'd say that was to keep energy levels up. I usually eat loads, so that's how I would know he was about to spring a surprise."

Wareing and Juliet Ellis (Rose) were sent to a recruitment agency in the lead up to the shoot to learn about the logistics of running an office. There was also time set aside for some team bonding. "We went to Polish karaoke, Leslaw (Zarek, Karol), Juliet and myself. It was a hall with about five Polish people in it. They were just singing in Polish." And did she do a number? "Oh my God no! I wouldn't do it in English!"

She chose not to watch any of Loach's previous work as part of her preparation. "I didn't want to be intimidated. My friends were saying, 'Oh my God, Ken Loach!' I was like, 'I don't want to know.' Not being rude but I just wanted to get out there and do my job."

And in an apt coda, Wareing's casting as Angie has served as a launchpad for her acting career. "You learn more working for Ken Loach in a matter of six weeks than I did in three years at drama school. I'm going to a lot of interviews at the moment, and I've just done another film."

Juliet Ellis » Rose

Juliet Ellis was born in Sheffield, studied at The Arden Theatre School in Manchester and lived there for ten years. She moved to London last year.

"A friend of mine told me that Ken Loach was looking - she said you need to go down to casting because you'd be perfect. It was near my birthday. I said to my agent get me a meeting for my birthday - that'd be a good present. I did some improvisation, then came back and did some with Kierston and they called me the next week to say I'd got the job!"

Rose, she says, is very much the quiet partner of the pair. "Rose is one of those people who's moved down to London hoping to go art college - to really make a go of it. She ends up just working in a call centre in a dead end job, she's living with Angie in a flat and maybe she's hoping for better times but she can't quite kick herself out of her mundane existence. Angie's the catalyst. It's very much Angie's energy and Rose really kind of goes along with it - she's got nothing to lose I suppose. She's good with the figures, very technical and logical and lateral thinking. She's also very cautious - she wants everything done right. In the back of her head Rose might be unsure but because Angie persuades her she goes, 'Okay then.'"

Leslaw Zurek » Karol

Leslaw Zurek, 27, owes his dramatic career to his ex-girlfriend. He had been studying Economics in Krakow while she was at drama school. The year after she finished, she left Leslaw for an actor. "I thought I'd show her that it's not so hard to be an actor, so I decided to study in drama school. Anyway, economics was not very interesting..."

Zurek had been studying drama in Krakow for four years before being cast in It's a Free World. "I think Ken Loach wanted to find somebody who had had this kind of experience like my character in the film. He didn't tell me too much. He just said this character is me. Be myself."

Karol is a Polish immigrant looking for a job who finds himself caught between the recruiting agencies and the jobseekers, but, says Zurek, "It's more like an adventure for him. He's not desperate. He understands both sides."

The same goes for Zurek. "I've experienced what it's like for people to be treated badly. I worked for six months in the US. It was a work and travel programme. You pay an agency, they look for a job for you, send you to the US, you work for two months and for the last month you can travel spending what you earned. It was like the Polish people who live in London - we were in a motel in one room with five people there. We were treated okay. But when I worked in California my set job was in Palm Springs. Palm Springs in summer is not a good time. It's very hot and no Americans want to work there, so we got the jobs. My supervisor was a 16-year-old Mexican guy. I was 20 then and he was screaming all the time at my friends and me. He treated us like... After three days I left and went to San Diego. There were a lot of people without work who'd paid for this work and travel programme. The Polish agencies hadn't found work for them. When they got 20 contracts for a company in San Diego they offered it to 200 people. So 180 didn't have this work, although they'd paid for it back in Poland. Plane tickets weren't booked for two months so they had to wait, but they didn't have enough money to live. They went to hospital to give blood for money. That was their main source of income."

Colin Caughlin » Geoff

With no acting experience, Colin Caughlin was understandably nervous when he was asked to play Geoff, Angie's father.

"When they offered me the job I was lost for words for a minute. Ken Loach said if you can confront mass meetings, go to conference and talk to a thousand delegates you won't find it so difficult. Although at work they started calling me Colin Winston. I've had nothing but abuse for the past six months!"

Caughlin, 61, comes from Canning Town in East London. "I've been involved in industrial politics for many years - I was a fourth generation stevedore in the docks and a member of the Transport and General Workers Union. But because of health problems I'm semi-retired - although you don't like to think it's all over."

Loach discovered Caughlin through contacts in Liverpool. "Working in the docks you make very, very close friends in Liverpool - comrades. A few years back the Liverpool Dockers had a major dispute and Ken Loach done a documentary for them. All of a sudden in Autumn last year I got a phonecall from one of our lads up there and he's telling me that Ken Loach is making this film in London and needs to get hold of one or two people in order to get - I think the words used were 'background experience'. He's a rascal Ken - we was led to believe that the film was about the docks in the 60s-80s. When I confronted him with it he said, 'If I'd have told you lot I don't think many of you would have showed up.' He ain't far wrong! Then the story was explained."

Angie's father, in stark contrast to his daughter, is a product of a different political and economic era. "He was a caretaker in a school. Good family man, involved with a little bit of local politics. A good trade union member but that was it," says Caughlin.

As for the actress who plays his onscreen daughter: "When we first met we had a couple of beers and a chat and it worked well. She seemed to be happy with me, comfortable, and I felt good with her. It could have been my daughter I was talking to."

Joe Siffleet » Jamie

Twelve-year-old Joe Siffleet was discovered working in a furniture shop. "I was being... not shy - being cocky, telling jokes and stuff like that. And then a woman spotted me and said would you like to go in to filming? So I said, well yeah."

It was an agent. "I went for a few things and never got them. Then I come to do the Ken Loach one. And I got it."

Siffleet, from Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, plays Angie's son Jamie. He describes his character as, "A boy who's single-parent, who misses his mum. He's got a bit of a hard life and his mum does funny jobs.

"He loves his mum. He gets in trouble because he doesn't live with his mum and he's not got a dad. When his dad says he'll come and see him, he doesn't come. He lives with his Nan and Grand-dad most of the time."

Just like other, older actors, Joe found Ken Loach's working methods unusual: "There was one scene where I got a surprise phonecall. And I just had to start talking. That was quite hard that was. I had been told by the costume department, they said be careful because Ken does surprises. So I had an idea."