Fur film keeps Mrs Law busy

If you're married to a heart-throb film star, mother to three children, run your own fashion label and appear in the occasional movie, the chances are you're not going to have much spare time on your hands.

Which makes Sadie Frost's decision a few months ago to write to 500 film and pop stars and ask them to appear in an anti-fur film she was producing for Respect for Animals seem somewhat inexplicable.

Yet the elfin-faced Camden girl has never felt comfortable resting on her - or her husband's - laurels. Insecure for much of her 34 years, despite attracting a high calibre of husband on the looks front (she was married to Gary Kemp, formerly of Spandau Ballet, before Jude Law), she is constantly striving to prove that there is more to Sadie Frost than mere trophy wifedom.

Her hard work has come to fruition with the screening of Fur and Against, a 50-second film - Law's first outing as director - featuring everyone from George Michael and Moby to Stella and Paul McCartney telling us they're against the use of fur in fashion. It will be shown on screens across the country, alongside the new Steven Soderbergh film, Ocean's Eleven.

"I went through piles of newspaper clippings to find out who might support the campaign and then sent them letters from Jude and myself. It's amazing that some people we know didn't respond at all while others, such as Chrissie Hynde, were on the phone within five minutes. Musicians seem a lot more willing to stick their necks out than actors. Actors are a lot more reticent, scared of being thought of as wusses because they like furry animals."

Frost, who is dressed in a navy scoop-neck Chloe top, fitted denim jeans and matching ankle boots with perilously high heels (although she shows me the battered old trainers stuffed in her bag so that she doesn't have to walk too far in them), is in lecture mode.

"The reason I'm involved in this campaign now is because more young people seem to be getting into real fur because all the trendy fashion houses are using it. It used to be just old people who wore it, but that has now changed and undermined a lot of the work anti-fur organisations did back in the 1990s."

She tells me this before I've even had time to switch on my Dictaphone. I was hoping to have a warming cup of tea first since I arrived at the Knightsbridge hotel on a chilly February afternoon without my coat. It has a real fur collar and I thought it best to leave it at the office. Of course Frost has lots of friends in the fashion industry (Kate Moss is a pal), many of whom will happily parade down the catwalk swathed in animal pelts. "I do tell them the facts about the fur trade, but then I leave them to make up their own minds. As long as I know I've done my bit."

This project, and their production company Natural Nylon aside, Frost and Law don't tend to talk shop at home. "We don't have time. We're either putting the children to bed or discussing how they did at school - everyday stuff." There's no rehearsing Jude's lines for his forthcoming appearance in Dr Faustus over a pan of boiling spaghetti, then? "We never read each other's scripts. Because we do so much together, we try to keep our creative forces separate. Anyway, at the moment I'm fast asleep in bed at 9pm each night." She says it wasn't too strange being directed by her husband for the fur video, however. "He's very patient, much more so than me. He's also a lot more tactful."

The two relax at a country retreat they recently bought an hour and a half from London. On a Friday night, they pack the kids (Iris, 18 months, Rafferty, five, and Finlay, 11) in the back of the car and head off for a weekend away from the celebrity-infested streets of Primrose Hill. "It's great. All we do is watch telly and think about what's for dinner. There's a good local pub, lots of long walks and no telephone ringing all the time."