More than just a pretty face

Romola Garai folds her long, lean frame onto a couch in a hotel suite at the Sundance Film Festival, no doubt wishing she had a cigarette.

Instead, she rhapsodizes about the sheer size of America, her fellow British actors and her new movie, “Rory O’Shea Was Here,” in which she plays Siobhan, a working-class girl who agrees to assist two young quadriplegic men (Steven Robertson and James McAvoy) who have moved from an institution to their own apartment. They hire her for her obvious qualifications: She’s beautiful, and she’s got an attitude. She could very easily have been a dumb blond, but she’s not. And that’s Garai’s doing.

“When I read the script, Siobhan was a plot device,” Garai says of her character. “She was just representative of their lust and desire to meet a woman. She is the problem that ends up creating the split [between them]. So I had a meeting with [director Damien O’Donnell] and said, ‘I really want to work with you, but there’s nothing here for me to do.’ And he said, ‘We’ll do a lot of improvisation and try and give you something to do.’ And I think he did.”

O’Donnell, who pitched the film to financiers as “One Flew Over My Left Foot,” said Garai stood out from the many actresses who were interested in the part. “She was willing to take a chance. Some actors wouldn’t.”

Perhaps they wouldn’t because they have something to lose. Garai doesn’t, at least for now, though Variety placed her on its 2003 list of 10 actors to watch. To this point she has acted in a modest mix of “bonnet roles” in such period pieces as “Daniel Deronda,” “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Vanity Fair” and in indie films such as “I Capture the Castle.” She’s also made a foray into Hollywood: “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.”

“It was all about ‘do a film in America, and then you can do whatever you like,’ ” Garai says of “Dirty Dancing.” “And that backfired. Now I’m thinking forget it, I just want to do good things.”

Originally, Garai, whose ancestry is Hungarian, wasn’t going to do anything, acting-wise.

Raised in Wiltshire and schooled in London, she studied English but didn’t think she could make much of a living as a writer except as “a dog’s body” -- that would be British slang for a drudge -- “for ‘Fly-Fishing Monthly’ or something.”

While attending college, Garai was “discovered” by a casting director looking for a novice who could say five lines on a television show. Garai got the part. But it wasn’t just any part. She was playing a young Judi Dench in “The Last of the Blonde Bombshells.” What started out as a lark soon became a career, and it’s one she takes seriously. Last year she appeared onstage with Imelda Staunton in “Calico,” playing author James Joyce’s mentally disturbed daughter, Lucia.

And notwithstanding her experience with “Havana Nights,” Garai -- who griped a bit about the lack of cigarettes at Sundance -- said she would still like to work again in America.

“I’m 22 years old,” said Garai. “I don’t know a lot about what I’m doing. And you want someone who believes passionately in a story and the way they want to tell it, to feed your brain and use your gift, if you have one, and to make films that are important and not complete rubbish.”