‘Mischief’s’ Scacchi Likes Good Roles as Bad Girls

When Greta Scacchi entered the living room of her West Hollywood hotel suite to greet her guest, her appearance--cropped hair, tailored tan pantsuit--made you look twice to make sure she was there.

In “White Mischief,” her latest in a long line of films, the 28-year-old actress stars as Diana Broughton, the incandescent femme fatale of a decadent colony of wealthy Britons killing time and each other in Kenya during World War II.

It is a role demanding classic beauty, a fiery cool and a sense of haute couture that’s a rarity on today’s screen. And Scacchi (pronounced Skah-kee) is building a reputation for herself as an actress who can both act and project a powerful and sexual film presence.

Only when she lounged back into the cushions of the suite’s sofa did her alluring side come alive: an image George Hurrell would have wanted to photograph.

But actually, Scacchi, on a whirlwind tour to promote the film, was just trying to rest, not to pose.

“I haven’t slept more than four hours a night,” she sighed. “I’m already a week in the States, and I’m still on London time.”

Within minutes, though, she became more animated talking about Diana, who was so opposite from herself, Scacchi claimed, that she found her irresistible.

“She’s very different from anyone else I’ve played. It was a chance to play someone with malice, which I hadn’t had the chance to do until this film.” Her roles have included a young British woman in India in James Ivory’s “Heat and Dust,” Laurence Olivier’s painting companion in “The Ebony Tower,” and a randy lover of Eric Roberts in Dusan Makavejev’s “The Coca Cola Kid.”

“The typical young female role I read in scripts,” Scacchi lamented, “is always sympathetic, always intelligent and capable, and never breaks down. But they usually end up being an imitation of goodness.”

Goodness, she impishly added, is hard to find in director Michael Radford and Jonathan Gems’ script, based on James Fox’s nonfiction account of the so-called “Happy Valley” colony. The story revolves around the unsolved murder of the Valley ringleader, the Earl of Erroll (Charles Dance), during his affair with Diana. Her much older husband, Sir Henry Delves (Jock) Broughton (Joss Ackland), was soon arrested and acquitted, but it marked the end of Happy Valley.

“Her marriage was obviously a calculated move to marry a man of wealth and come to Kenya to get away from the war,” Scacchi noted. “But it took her months after the marriage had set in to discover that she hated him. She bore up through the trial, thinking her income and security through him might be in jeopardy if she didn’t stand by him. She was trapped in her playacting.”

In conversation, the Milan-born actress (her father, an Italian art dealer, and mother, a dancer who now lives in Australia, are now divorced) likes to drop her naturally deep and highly cultivated accent and playfully take on the voice of the person she’s talking about.

“This is Diana: ‘I marry older men because they have more money.’ People disliked her for her gold-digging ambition, but I admired her for how frank she was. I really warmed up to her when I talked with the white settlers who knew her. They talked about her with great admiration. She devoured people, but before she died (last September), she was treated like Kenyan royalty.”

According to Scacchi and Radford, “White Mischief” received a mixed London reception this year. Some, Scacchi speculated, were upset with the film displaying the cream of British society in utter debauchery. “A part of England’s upper echelon,” she said, “has always felt above constraints or responsibility for others. In many ways, the story is quite topical. We’re in an era when the wealthy are in isolation from everyone.”

Radford, who also directed “Another Time, Another Place” and the most recent version of “1984,” readily admitted in a separate interview that he was fascinated with the possibilities of filming Scacchi “to make a star out of her. She has a period feel about her. I think that if she’s going to have any difficulty in future, it will be playing contemporary women. The modern film actress tends to be ugly and beautiful at the same time.

“Greta’s not, of course. I think she’ll become a very, very good actress. She’s a good one now, but she hasn’t worked with enough really fine film directors for her to be aware of her potential.”

Even though her resume includes working with a list of directors including Ivory, Makavejev, the Taviani brothers (“Good Morning, Babylon”), Diane Kurys (“A Man in Love”) and Margareta Von Trotta (the upcoming “Fear and Love”)?

“She has come an awfully long way in a short period of time,” Radford acknowledged. “She was open to being directed; a lot of actors aren’t. She’s able to learn.”

Scacchi was harder on herself: “I can become very intolerant of others around me when there’s some disagreement and I believe that I’m right. Michael wanted me to play up Diana’s vulnerability; I wanted to play the hatefulness in her. So we met halfway.”

While she realizes that she is the object of envy and regard by a whole generation of young actresses (“a lot of friends just loathed me after I landed the ‘Ebony Tower’ role”), the glow of the movies has faded for her, and her immediate sights are focused on the stage.

“It took me forever to get my Equity card, since a lot of theater people thought I was a model who wanted her card just to do roles,” sniffed the graduate of the demanding Bristol Old Vic. “But it’s not by chance that you get selected for drama school.”

Beginning May 24, she plays Elena, opposite Michael Gambon (“The Singing Detective”), in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” in London.

“Chekhov is my favorite writer,” she said. “He sees right through people, but with affection. No one is to blame. Everyone just . . . is. It’s such mature writing.”

Regarding the play’s six-month engagement, she said that “it’s very important that I do well in ‘Uncle Vanya,’ because I’m going to be under a lot of scrutiny, which is not fair, because I haven’t had a true apprenticeship in the theater.”

After Chekhov, is Hollywood--still the one major film capital the international actress hasn’t worked in--soon to follow?

“I’d love to work here,” she smiled, but added, coolly and succinctly, “I haven’t seen a script from the States that has yet competed with the quality of scripts I get from other countries.”