Jennifer Ellison stays ahead of the game in her new horror movie. Philip Key reports

CAN YOU be suffering from a streaming cold and still look glamorous? Well, Liverpool actress Jennifer Ellison managed it with ease when we met in the morning at the new Hard Day’s Night Hotel.

This was the morning after the night before, a night which had seen a special VIP showing of her new film, The Cottage, followed by a bit of partying.

Her gran had been among the guests, and by all reports had stayed celebrating with her granddaughter until the small hours.

“The small hours?” Ms Ellison queries when I mention it. “She left quite early – she went at around 1.30am.”

Well, that’s the small hours for a lot of people. “Not for me it isn’t,” smiles the 24-year-old.

Smartly dressed with her blonde hair all in place, she looked pretty good all things considered, and one of the things to consider was that cold.

Every few minutes she had to halt our conversation while she blew the trumpet into a handkerchief. “Sorry about this, I’ve just got it,” she apologised.

Jennifer had been working pretty hard, two weeks already on the road promoting The Cottage around the country and with more promotion work to come.

Although she was accompanied by fellow actors like Andy Serkis, from Lord of the Rings, and Reece Shearsmith, of The League of Gentle- men, for the paparazzi it was Ellison’s presence that mattered most.

The night before there had been a clutch outside the hotel and more outside the Odeon, in London Road, where the film was being given its preview. So organised are they that the Odeon snappers knew she was arriving any minute in a yellow taxi – they had been given the tip by mobile telephone by their colleagues outside the hotel.

She was photographed coming out of the hotel, getting into a taxi, getting out of a taxi, walking into the cinema and standing around the foyer.

She takes the attention in her stride. “It’s part of the job and I have been used to it ever since Brookside,” she explains.

It was being cast in the Liverpool soap as sparky teenager Emily Shadwick, at the age of 13, that first brought Jennifer to national attention, but even at that age she had been working her way towards a showbusiness career.

She had trained in dance since the age of three and won various awards. But the role of Emily was the real prize.

“It was where I learned my craft, Oh God, yes,” she says. “Without Phil Redmond and others, I would not be where I am today.”

It was also during this period that she first attracted the attention of the photographers, not just the paparazzi but the glamour photographers. She became one of the most in-demand models for the lads’ mags and was regularly in the top ten of glamorous women voted by readers.

In 2005, she was named “world’s sexiest blonde” by the readers of Nuts magazine.

It is still possible to find Jennifer posing in skimpy outfits in newspaper and magazine articles.

But the days of glamorous modelling are behind her, she tells me. “I’ve not done it for years.” But what about the glamour shots I had spotted in newspapers only days before? “Oh, there are a lot of pictures of me out there and they keep using them,” she says. “ I don’t mind all that much.”

Since leaving Brookside, Jennifer has had a busy professional life and a private one that has attracted tabloid attention – she has had some troubled relationships but is currently single.

On the big screen, she had a role in the film version of The Phantom of the Opera and has done stage work in the musical Chicago (unfortunately, she injured herself on tour preventing a much anticipated appearance in Liverpool) and the comedy Boeing-Boeing.

And on television she emerged as the winner of the reality cooking show Hell’s Kitchen and last year starred in The Verdict, a courtroom reality show alongside – among others – Jeffrey Archer.

The role in The Cottage was one she had wanted for a long time. “I auditioned, was given the part, but then there was trouble raising the money,” she explains.

The Liverpool-reared writer/ director Paul Andrew Williams had always wanted her for the part of a kidnap victim who turns out to be more feisty than her two inept kidnappers expect. “Many blonde-haired young women were suggested to me for the role of Tracey, but Jennifer was the only one I wanted to audition,” he says. “She read for the part and blew me away.”

As Jennifer explains: “Paul got bored waiting for the finance so he went away and made London to Brighton which was a huge hit and then people gave him money.” It was enough to make The Cottage.

It was all shot on location, scenes of the cottage itself in the Isle of Man, the rest of the village in Yorkshire “in the middle of nowhere”.

Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith play the two kidnappers alongside Steven O’Donnell (from Shameless and Bottom). They are trying to get cash from Tracey’s father, a club owner and gangster.

Ellison’s Tracey turns out to be more trouble than they expect, tied up but still able to kick, head-butt and scream a stream of four-letter words.

It was a tough shoot for all concerned, but for Ellison in particular. “It was all night shooting so we started at five in the afternoon and went on until nine the next morning. And it was freezing cold.

“I was the only one not wearing a jacket and could wear nothing warm underneath.

“We rehearsed in the day and it was icy cold then, too!”

But she had great fun making the film. Fellow actors like Serkis – who once appeared on stage at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre – were “great, brilliant guys. It was a wonderful experience.”

Although she says she can do accents well, it is her Liverpool accent which is put to full use in the film. “It’s just me, not an exaggeration,” she says. “And we stuck to the script. All the swear words were in there. It was terrible, every other word was a swear word!”

The comedy-thriller, however, turns into a comedy-horror when a disfigured farmer goes on the rampage with some big knives.

Ellison’s character ends up as one of the victims and loses her head – literally. “It was all prosthetics,” she says. “There was a full body cast and I had to have a head cast. It was horrible.”

Her severed head makes a notable appearance in the film. “I don’t know where it is now,” she laughs. “I was going to ask. Can I please have my head?”

The film has been well received. “When I read the script, I knew it would be good,” says Jennifer. For many, Jennifer’s character is just as frightening as the rampaging farmer. She just smiles when I suggest it. “I did not need a lot of help for my performance, it was all there in Paul’s script.”

Once the film has opened on March 14, Jennifer is taking a break. But she has already had numerous offers including two stage musical, plays and a film.

philkey