B.L This must have been an incredible challenge for you. Here you are not a trained a dancer, you’re British playing an American. Wow, what were you thinking when you were given the script?

R.G. I just thought, "there’s no way they are going to give it to me." I thought, "that’s fine, I’ll just go up for it and then I’ll carry on with my life and I’ll watch the movie when it comes out and I’ll really enjoy it." But unfortunately, it all went horribly wrong and they gave me the part.

B.L. Are you nuts, you did an excellent job! How did you even begin to learn how to dance like that?

R.G. Well, you start with the basics, which is left foot forward, right foot back and then you carry on from there. They took us for dance training for eight weeks before we started shooting and by the end we could just about do it.

B.L. I can’t imagine it was too tough working with your co-star Diego Luna?

R.G. It was fun, he’s a nice guy and we laughed a lot. We only very occasionally ended up throwing shoes at each other when he stood on my feet! But apart from that it was fun.

B.L. How did you know when you both clicked?

R.G. I think that if you just get on with somebody you have to work together. I mean it’s just part of it. We shot for ten weeks and we were there for four and a half months, and that was good.

B.L. Were you a fan of the original Dirty Dancing film, or did you have to go and rent it when you found out you were going to be in this movie?

R.G. I saw it when it came out, it was part of my growing up. I loved it.

B.L. So how cool was it to be in a scene with Patrick Swayze?

R.G. It was very cool, he was a very nice man.

B.L. Tell me about dancing with him. He looks as good as he did when he made the film close to 20 years ago.

R.G. I know, it’s amazing. They should bottle that. He’s an incredible dancer, beautiful dancer, very graceful and strong. You need to sort of know a little bit about dance to understand how difficult it is to be that gifted and he really is. He’s fantastic.

B.L. Did you learn a lot from him?

R.G. Well, we only shot for about two or three days but certainly on those days I learned what it felt like to dance with a wonderful dancer.

B.L. I don’t know, I think I would have frozen in my steps had I been given the chance to dance with him.

R.G. Oh, I did. I was like, "Hello, my name is Romola, nice to meet you."

B.L. I had a read an article where you said that you were quite clumsy, so were you nervous about taking on the dancing part of the film?

R.G. I remember turning up to this and thinking "I should probably let them know that I am appallingly clumsy and uncoordinated." So I remember coming into the room going, "Hi, my name is Romola and you are supposed to be teaching me dancing and it’s going to be a pretty difficult job." Yeah, I’m not the most graceful of people.

B.L. I think that you are soon going to be a household name here in North America — is that something that makes you nervous? Excited? A little scary?

R.G. Oh yeah, I mean if that does happen it’s utterly terrifying but I do hope that people like the film.

B.L. Next up, we are going to see you in a movie called Vanity Fair where you got to shoot in London with Reese Witherspoon. You play her best friend.

R.G. It was wonderful; I got to go home after shooting Dirty Dancing and it was nice to be back in London. Mira Nair the director is an amazing woman, very bright. Reese is one of the most accomplished actresses I have ever seen on screen so that was a real education. I’d sort of poke my head around the door and watch her sometimes and just think, "you’ve got it. You’re very clever as an actress and very beautiful too." It was nice to work with her and I had a great time making that film.