BLOWING HER OWN TRUMPET
On screen Tara Fitzgerald comes across as quiet and conservative-the English girl next door. Yet lurking beneath is a witty, bubbly woman. A bit of an eccentric, too-just look at those Dalmatian patterned shoes. 

"I think they're so mad", she chirps. "I love them! You just have to wear nothing else exotic, just the handbag that goes with them". She points to a 50s-style number on the table. "It's what I always wanted as a little girl-to have a matching handbag and shoes".

The 29-year-old has been an integral part of the British film industry's resurgence, appearing in Hear My Song, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain and A Man of No Importance. Now she stars alongside Pete Postlethwaite and Ewan McGregor in Brassed Off. She plays Gloria, the local Yorkshire girl made good whose career sends her back to her hometown of Grimethorpe, and whose talents on the flugelhorn make her a welcome addition to the local colliery brass band-and its only female member.

However, in the story set against the mass mine closures in northern England in 1992, the band and the town are under threat.

When preparing for the film, Fitzgerald came to the conclusion that she had to leave the horn playing to someone else. Still, she didn't give in without trying.

"It was so awful. You think that suddenly you might find that you've got this gift", she muses, "that you may pick up this instrument and suddenly produce these mellifluous notes, but this horrible sound would come out every time.

When I saw the boys recording, it was so incongruous; these real swarthy lads, a lot of them ex-miners-from the actual Grimethorpe band-would pick up these instruments and be so great!"

Raised in the south of england, Fitzgerald was unprepared for what she would find while filming in Yorkshire's former mining towns.

"I thought I was a seasoned traveller. I'd been to New York, I'd been to the Bronx. But I was shocked. I couldn't believe that this had happened. But you couldn't go on about that.

"The people don't want to hear that now. They know that they've been dumped on from a great height and they've got to do something about it. They're trying to encourage projects and to get things going again."

Fitzgerald was attracted to the film because she found its take on the situation refreshing.

"The film has its political message and you can choose to take it or not. It's a human story most of all, and no matter where it goes on in the world it should be understood. And that's partly to do with the music."

When she inquired about brass band music at a large London music store before filming began, she recalls that "the guy behind the counter looked at me like I was mad. He gave me that 'whatever turns you on' look. Of course it was imperative that I grew to like this music, and by the end it was very easy.

We all found ourselves humming the songs and we all had our favourties. It broke my preconceptions, and I think people do get taken on that journey in the film. By Danny Boy people are really warming to it."

Apparently brass band music has experienced a minor resurgence in Britain, thanks to the film.

And the film has fared well, too-it opened the Sundance and Melbourne Film Festivals and won the Best Film Prize in the Berlin Film Festival's Panorama section. It was also a minor hit in Britain.

Fitzgerald first came to international notice in the Australian film Sirens, directed by John Duigan.

"It got a lot of attention, because of Elle (Macpherson) and because of Hugh (Grant). It came out around the time of the Four Weddings...explosion. I hadn't experienced people asking me what I was wearing to the premiere till then," she laughs.

She is naturally getting used to it. When she recently played Ophelia to Ralph Fiennes great Dane in Hamlet, she revelled in being the toast of the West End and Broadway.

"We had a disgustingly good time. It was amazing; it was so high profile, and it was booked out every night. The whole of Tinseltown came," she recalls with a laugh.

Next up is a six-hour television project, Soho, where she will finally be able to get down and dirty, as the wife of a 50s gangster.

She recently completed The Woman in White for BBC Television, a sign that she's still keeping Hollywood at arm's length.

"I've had offers of not very good parts, but I would always prefer independent films, not massive studio numbers," she says. "I'm not that type of actress. They've got girls who do that very well and they speak with American accents."

Unlike the more starry-eyed British romantic heroines, such as Julia Ormond and Helena Bonham-Carter, Fitzgerald prefers to be part of the movie's fabric.