IN Belfast, on the day after the General Election, a French-speaking, London-based Scottish actress is talking to me in a Lancashire accent. Bear with me. There’s a good reason.
Freya Mavor is 23, blonde-haired and bright-futured. Your sons and daughters might know her from her debut role in the notorious Channel 4 soap Skins. You might know her for singing This is the Story in the film adaptation of the Proclaimers’ musical Sunshine on Leith or wearing corsets in various TV dramas (The White Queen, New Worlds) or playing a young Charlotte Rampling (OK, the younger version of Charlotte Rampling’s character) in the recent film The Sense of an Ending.
Today no singing or corset wearing or Charlotte Ramplinging is required. It’s Friday afternoon, and if Belfast doesn’t quite feel like the new Westminster just yet, the sun is at least shining. We’re in the city’s Cathedral Quarter, all cafes and arts venues. (I’m guessing, from the number of big beards on show in the cafe where we are to meet, this might be Belfast’s hipster area.)
Although conspicuously lacking in facial hair, Mavor looks perfectly at home. She’s wearing open toe sandals and an air of “it’s my day off today”. Which as it happens, it is. A bit much, I suggest, since she only started working on Wednesday. “Feeling very lucky,” she laughs, sitting down.
The Lancashire accent. That’s work-related. She’s in Northern Ireland working on a new film about Luftwaffe paratrooper and Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, most famous for breaking his neck and playing on in the 1956 Cup final. Mavor is playing Margaret, the love of his life. Hence the rolling Lancastrian vowels.
As we queue for coffee she tells me she can’t break off the accent because there’s a danger she’ll lose it. So you’re going to keep it up for the entire shoot, Freya? “It’ll probably come down if I have a couple
of pints.”
So later tonight then? No, she says. She’s going to be working. Researching the post-war period. And football. “I’m not a football fan. I know nothing about football.”
Life and work. The work is dominating at the moment. The Trautmann film will take her to Munich after Belfast. And it means she possibly won’t get over to her hometown for the world premiere of her other new project Modern Life is Rubbish at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
The film’s two screenings at the festival fall on filming days, she says. “And it’s also because of the nature of this film. It’s quite intense. There are a lot of emotional scenes.
“I sort of disappear into a bubble when I do films. A nice, healthy bubble. I think everyone does because of the nature of filming. Being with new people and immersing yourself and it all becoming your universe for however many weeks.”
Before she does so, though, let’s talk Modern Life is Rubbish. It’s a love story. Think High Fidelity but set in London with a 1990s soundtrack (for every Radiohead track there’s one from the Libertines so, you know, swings and roundabouts).
Essentially, it’s a film about a failing relationship. What’s your most memorable break-up, Freya?
“I can’t tell you that,” she says, horrified.
Really? OK, well, what’s the secret to keeping a good relationship going then? “I think respect for the other person. Allowing them to be an individual. Possession in relationships is a quick route to relationships falling down, especially in the arts. The life of an artist is very up and down. It’s random. There’s no continuity. So I suppose you need to have a great respect for the other person and you need to have a lot of openness and honesty in order to make things like that work.”
Ah, the maturity of today’s youth. Makes you proud, doesn’t it? I doubt I would have been to be so emotionally articulate when
I was 23 (but then that was in the last century). Is she in a relationship herself at the moment? “I’m not in a relationship currently,” she says, all businesslike for a moment.

As the title Modern Life is Rubbish suggests, Blur play a part in the story. The central couple, Natalie and Liam, played by Josh Whitehouse and Mavor (I’ll leave it to you to guess which is which) meet over a discussion about Blur albums. Very 1990s.
Freya, what side did you take in the Britpop wars? Were you Blur or Oasis? “I’m Blur. I’ve never been an Oasis fan. And they’re arrogant twats, as well. Although they have been very useful for listening to the accents so there you go. I’ve been watching some interviews with them.”
That’s what you like in an interviewee, isn’t it? Someone who knows her own  mind. And is not afraid to tell you. You want another example? Well, here she is talking about Cannes Film Festival. She was there last month for some pre-publicity on Trautmann.
“And that’s just like Celebrity Zoo,” she says of the experience. “It’s terrifying. And people are going in to buy their fruit and veg in massive heels and ball gowns. Every person is so dressed up and so extreme. Like anything if you buy into that you get swept up in that.
“It’s all so full of models now. Gigi whatsherface. What’s she doing there? Being some arm candy …”
Mavor has done her share of modelling herself. She was the face of Pringle of Scotland’s spring/summer campaign in 2011. But that’s not really who she is. She’s an actor, a musician, a poet. She is earnest about what she does but she talks about it with typical British self-deprecation.
Back to the music though. Who did she have on her walls as a teenager? “Who did I have on my wall?”
Surely you can remember, Freya. I mean it’s not as if it was a long time ago compared to some of us.
“Radiohead, James Brown and The Strokes,” she finally decides.
“I had quite a weird upbringing musically because my mum was an opera singer so I grew up listening to a lot of classical music, playing the piano, and I went to a music school.
“I did a lot of singing. I’ve actually got a band in Paris so I’ve kept it on in a way.”
No wonder she loved making Sunshine on Leith then. A chance to sing and act in her home city. And the sun shone every day, she points out, “which is the rarest thing”.
Where does she always go when she’s back in Edinburgh? “I always go to the Brass Monkey. It’s apt for lounging with mates.”

The Herald:

Josh Whitehouse and Freya Mavor in Modern Life is Rubbish

Questions for Freya Mavor based on song titles that end with a question mark.
How do you mend a broken heart?
“Surrounding yourself with loads
of friends.”
Are you lonesome tonight?
“No, I’ll probably be getting pissed with
the cast and crew.” (Please note, this is
not what she was saying at the top of the article. She might need a sickline for the director tomorrow.)
What’s new, pussycat?
“Ooh, what’s new? Hand spinners. They’re the new craze for kids and they’re the most pointless, ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”

Freya Mavor was born in Glasgow but grew up in Canonmills, Edinburgh, with a mother, Judith, who, as we’ve already established, was an opera singer, a scriptwriter father, James, and one brother (Alex) not two, despite what it says on the internet.
Has she heard about this imaginary brother of hers? “Apparently he’s called Hugo. If he’s somewhere in the world I’d love to meet him.”
When Mavor was seven her mother took her out of school and the family went travelling for a year and a bit. She was educated in France and Turkey among other places. The family ended up back in France for a few years before returning to Scotland when Mavor was 14. “I was very pissed off when I was made to move back to Scotland from France. I was a little goth girl. I had purple hair and black eyeliner and was enjoying being an angry teen.”
That restless childhood has marked her young adulthood too. At 19 she decided to move to Paris. “I lived in the tiniest flat. I had barely enough room for my bed it was so small.
“I always feel like life happens in chapters. Paris was a chapter. I wanted to do my passage from adolescence to young adulthood. And now I’ve moved to London. London feels like the next chapter.”
Mavor loves travelling, and she’s learning to speak Spanish to add to her language portfolio. “I am fascinated by the idea that you can be all these different people in different languages and countries.”
Hold on, are you saying you are a different person depending on what country you are living in? “Yes, completely. I’m very, very different.
“I think when you live somewhere and you adopt the language you adopt the culture and the humour. You come in with your own personality but then you are inevitably influenced by the backdrop.”
Well, what’s the difference between Scottish Freya and French Freya then? “OK, Scottish Freya is a lot more sarky because … everyone is. Everyone here is a bit sarcastic and humour is a lot to do with being self-deprecating and taking the piss out of other people.
“The French are a lot more serious. But they’re also a lot more emotional. There is a bit more of a philosophical way of life and taking the beauty in things a bit more seriously, whereas we have a tendency to brush it off or think it’s embarrassing to be moved by certain things.”
Note that use of “we” in that last answer. I think Scotland can still claim her.
Is the French film industry very different to our own? Completely, she says. There are pros and cons, in both systems. The fact the film industry in France has government backing means the French have a greater respect for the arts and artists, she suggests.
“We don’t have that enough. But that leads to people creating their own ways of doing things. Artists are a lot more proactive here. I’ve found that since moving to London.
“But the food is definitely better in France.”
The foundation myth of Freya Mavor is that she won the part of Mini McGuinness in Skins after standing in a seven-hour queue for a casting which saw 8000 people audition. No myth to it, she says. It’s all true.
What was it like when she went back to school in Edinburgh after filming to finish her Highers? “A bit strange,” she admits, “but it was fine because everybody knew me from before. And I didn’t change. It was a laugh because I was so unlike my character. I played a mega-bitch and I hope I’m very unlike her in real life.”

More song-title questions for
Freya Mavor.
Are you experienced?
“You can never say you are experienced enough but I’m trying to get as much experience as I can. I do feel like a grown-up but I also feel very, very young. I’m not someone who feels a desire to settle and create my nest. I’m not nesting yet. I’ve got a lot of mayhem and chaos to go.”
Do you remember the first time?
“I remember many first times. First proper date when I was a teenager. It was in Edinburgh on the top of Calton Hill and we sat down and a fox came and sat right beside us. That felt like a sign.”
What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

The Herald:

The first time I saw Freya Mavor in person was at the Edinburgh Filmhouse a couple of years ago when she was doing a Q&A for a French film, the sultry neo-noir The Lady in the Car with the Glasses (straight to DVD over here I’m afraid).
Introducing it, Mavor said it was a bit embarrassing having to sit beside your mum while on screen you were appearing in a sex scene. It’s something I wanted to talk about, I say. She looks at me. No, not sex scenes, I say (although there’s a rather funny one in Modern Life is Rubbish) but physicality. Actors are more than just readers of lines. It’s as much about the space they inhabit too, isn’t it, Freya?
“So much is communicated through body language,” she agrees. “So much is expressed.
“There are certain things you can’t express in words. But a hand gesture or a head turn or the way you look down will say everything. For every character and every story the physicality is different. The costume informs that too. If you wear a corset you sit differently.”
Corsets don’t sound fun. “No, they’re not but they’re amazing because you’re instantly someone else. You can’t slouch.
“It also sounds very wanky and pretentious but each to their own; I like thinking about different animals for different characters. What animal does this character remind me of? For that film Lady in the Car … I had two animals in mind.
I had a praying mantis because she’s very sort of gawky and big-eyed with the glasses. Although the idea that when she becomes this femme fatale she was more like a panther.”
What animal would her character Natalie in Modern Life is Rubbish be? “She’s quite floaty and free, but settled. She’s more like a house cat.”
Freya Mavor would like to turn her hand at directing some day. Before that she’d settle for working with women directors such as Andrea Arnold or Jane Campion, but if Wes Anderson or Paul Thomas Anderson gave her a call she wouldn’t put the phone down. She once spent four hours in the sea in Wales in November for a TV drama and got so cold she forgot her own name. “I knew I knew what my name was but I couldn’t for the life of me remember. That shows the glamour of filming.”
And she has not, no matter what social media might have you believe, ever dated anyone from One Direction.
So one final song title question. Freya, who do you think you are? “That’s an awful existential question.” She pauses, thinks. “I’d like to think I’m an artist.”
French Freya would be proud of her.

The world premiere of Modern Life is Rubbish at the Edinburgh International Film Festival takes place on Thursday at 8.40pm at Cineworld. There will also be a screening on June 25. Visit edfilmfest.org.uk