For Agyness Deyn, big breaks have never been in short supply. At 13, she was an ordinary Lancashire lass, fitting part-time shifts at the local fish and chips shop around schoolwork.
It was at Stubbins’ Village Chippy that she was spotted by local fashion business owner Jan Shutt, of Sunday Best in Rawtenstall, as having model potential.
Fast forward a decade, and Deyn was the hottest new supermodel on the scene, being dubbed ‘the new Kate Moss’, gracing the cover of Vogue, strutting down runways around the world and starring in advertising campaigns for Burberry, Giorgio Armani and Shiseido, and making friends with the fashion elite – including best pal and fellow Valley fashionista Henry Holland.
Luck played its part – but hard work, ambition and a hearty dose of creativity – Deyn had abandoned her original name of Laura Hollins for something a little edgier and more exciting, and also knocked a few years off of her age when her professional modelling career was launched – certainly helped.
By her mid-20s, Deyn had made it. Her youthful, elfin face and white-blonde crop had become one of the defining looks of the Noughties.
Now, she’s onto career round two - on the silver screen.
Filming scenes for English language remake of Danish thriller Pusher, out this weekend, saw her writhing on bar floors – dressed in skimpy black underwear and a red wig as stripper Flo, the girlfriend of the film’s main protagonist in a ‘great experience’ she descibed as a ‘rollercoaster’.
Her big-screen debut was the tiny role of Aphrodite in 2010’s Clash Of The Titans, so it’s no mean feat that she’s landed a lead so soon.
“Clash was such a huge production and I had such a small part, but I was so grateful to have done it because it really opened my eyes as to what this is all about,” Deyn says, explaining the transition in her soft Lancashire tones.
“I got so much enjoyment from modelling - it was so creative and I did it for 12 years. I got to a stage were I needed something a little bit more and I didn’t know what or how I would get that.
“Acting made me feel like I was pushing the boundaries of myself, like I was taking it to the next level.”
Deyn, a former All Saints’ RC High School pupil, initially auditioned to play a drug mule in Pusher before director Luis Prieto picked her as Flo, describing her as ‘wonderful’.
The original role of Flo in the 1996 Danish film, directed by controversial director Nicolas Winding Refn, was a small part, but Prieto decided to make it bigger to show off Deyn’s acting prowess.
A self-confessed tomboy, Deyn chose not to see the original before filming, because she wanted to put her own take on the character.
“I always dress like a little boy. That’s why it’s really nice to play Flo because she’s nothing like me,” she says, giggling.
“Flo is quite a delicate flower, quite vulnerable and child-like. She’s very feminine, sexy in an innocent way, sensual and delicate.
“She’s just discovering herself really and she’s tormented by her drug addiction. She’s like a beacon of light in the whole film.”
Taking her clothes off for scenes didn’t faze her: “The scenes were very liberating. That’s why Flo strips - she doesn’t want to be herself, she wants to be this other person because she doesn’t know who she is. I really enjoyed doing that bit of her.”
Flo is ‘madly in love’ with drug dealer boyfriend Frank, played by Richard Coyle - who has complimented Deyn’s performance. And in real life, Deyn is blissfully settled with actor husband Giovanni Ribisi - best known as Phoebe’s oddball brother Frank in Friends - whom she married in June after a whirlwind romance.
“I love being a wife. It’s so cool. Every day is a honeymoon,” she said.
While inspired to continue acting, Deyn hasn’t turned her back on modelling: “I never really class myself as a model. I didn’t aspire to be a model, I just got spotted,” she says. “But I don’t want to say, ‘I’m never going to model ever again’, because that seems silly.
“I just want to do projects that I find creatively fulfilling and challenging. Acting has enabled me to go in a different way and challenges me: my fears, my creativity, my openness. It’s been a real blossoming process and I’m learning so much.”
Since filming Pusher, she made her West End debut in Francois Archambault’s comedy, The Leisure Society, and has signed on for another starring role as Chris Guthrie in Terence Davies’s pre-wartime drama Sunset Song, based on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel.
“She is such a heroine and so strong. She had such a hard life and the film looks at how she got through it. Peter Mullen is playing my father so I’m just really excited,” she said.
“When I read the script I fell completely in love with the character and the story. I can’t wait to get started and just hope that I can do Chris Guthrie justice! “
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