There's only a little dancing

In Dancer In The Dark I play Kathy, a hard-pressed factory worker in rural America who befriends a half-blind Czech immigrant co-worker, Selma, played by Bj?rk. She is a single mother saving money for her son Gene's eye operation and is framed for murdering a cop. Her salvation is her passion for musicals.

The film is a musical and a melodrama, like the old Hollywood movies, and we both get to sing and dance as if we were in Singing In The Rain. I took the initiative for this job and some time ago wrote to the director Lars von Trier after seeing his film Breaking The Waves, saying how much I liked it. He wrote back a very nice letter, saying he had a script, and would I consider a part in it. It was not the major part but an important one and did not require me to wear make-up, which is not so wonderful when you are no longer young.

I loved musicals as a kid, especially the Hollywood ones. I made The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) in 1964 with sung dialogue and every sequence danced - and I wanted to do more. But few musicals are made in Europe. Recently I did a song with one of the rappers from MTV in French, but that's hardly a musical!

I knew Icelandic singer Bj?rk's music - I watch MTV - and I still love to dance. So I said yes happily. I knew it would be a contentious film, just looking at the subject matter and how it is treated as a melodrama with dancing and singing in it. Unfortunately, very little of the dancing - we rehearsed for two weeks - is left in the film which is very sad. It would have been three hours long if it had all gone in. So much for the constraints of time.