‘Summer Story’s’ Thoroughly Modern Imogen Stubbs

“People say ‘Oh, you’re a Shakespearean actress,’ but I’ve hardly done any Shakespeare,” confesses Imogen Stubbs, with a mischievous giggle. “And I certainly don’t intend to spend my life doing Shakespeare. No way!”

The classically trained British actress who’s receiving glowing notices for her performance as a lovestruck farm girl in Piers Haggard’s period romance “A Summer Story,” Stubbs goes on to admit that “yes, I have been at the Royal Shakespeare Company, but I did mostly male parts there! You know, people tend to get overly reverential about Shakespeare.

“Some of his plays are absolutely meaningless today because the references are too arcane,” she adds, “but when it works, it’s absolutely amazing, because he makes us believe we’re capable of being better than we are.”

Nervously twisting a polka-dotted scarf that she worries into a limp rag over the course of the interview, the 27-year-old actress comes across as an intelligent woman with a delightfully rowdy sense of humor. In Los Angeles on holiday with boyfriend Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, whom she met three years ago on the set of her 1987 debut film “Nanou,” Stubbs expresses surprise at the strong response her work in “Summer Story” has received.

“I never considered the consequences the film might have on my life and I still don’t expect it to cause me to be deluged with offers for work--nor did we make it with that in mind,” she says. “It’s a low-budget film and it isn’t trying to be desperately realistic or profound--it’s merely a story to set you dreaming. Truthfully, I’m surprised it’s getting such a wide release.”

An adaptation of a short story titled “The Apple Tree” written by John Galsworthy in 1916, the film is a classes-in-collision story juxtaposing a rural farming family against the London gentry of 1902. Based on the actual death of a farm girl who hanged herself in a barn when abandoned by her lover, and filmed on location in Devon and Somerset, England, “Summer Story” is visually as rich as clotted cream, and could be dismissed as another soporific slice of “Masterpiece Theatre” were it not for Stubbs’ impeccably understated portrayal of Megan.

“I didn’t do a lot of preparation to play Megan because she’s a simple person and the more you clutter up a character like her, the less it works. She has simple lines and the challenge was to deliver them without a twinkle in my eye or tongue in cheek.”

Of Scottish descent, Stubbs was born in London and raised along with an older brother on a barge in Chiswick, London. Her father was a navy man and her mother was a professor of Chinese, and Stubbs describes her childhood as “absolutely brilliant.”

After taking a degree in English literature at Oxford, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, then went on to an apprenticeship at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She’s been acting professionally for three years, mostly in period dramas.

“I love Sam Shepard and Tennessee Williams,” she says, “but for some reason I always seem to be cast in period things. I don’t necessarily prefer them, although it is a luxury to pretend you’re existing in another time. You get to drive traps with horses and so forth--silly little things that are almost like being a tourist.

“It does have its drawbacks though,” she continues. “I was just offered the part of Lucy in ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ but I couldn’t face wearing a corset for the duration of another shoot. I loathe the corsets and prissy hair styles of period pieces--and people do tend to get obsessive about accuracy in re-creating historical periods. They get oddly reverential toward the period.”

Though Stubbs claims she’s itching to play something modern, she’s spent the past five months shooting a three-part adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow” for the BBC. Despite the fact it’s set at the turn of the century, she says “it’s the most wonderful part I’ve ever played. I play a very modern, independent woman--the opposite of Megan.”

All those hours of BBC-TV airtime is apt to bring Stubbs a notoriety that she presently regards with apprehension.

“I’d feel embarrassed to receive the treatment some stars get--it would be terrible to be stared at in the street! I do think you can control that sort of thing though--first of all, by not endorsing publicists’ efforts to turn you into something you’re not. A lot of actors do things without considering the possible consequences, and all of a sudden they’ve got an image and are delivering a regurgitated, watered-down version of themselves.

“It’s a heady experience to do a film,” she continues. “There’s a load of people fussing over you and lighting you, and you’re apt to come away from it feeling rather egocentric. But ultimately the effect of a film is attributable to hundreds of people, so actors hardly merit the adulation they’re showered with.”

On leaving L.A.--which she claims to be enjoying more than she had expected--Stubbs returns to England to put some finishing touches on “The Rainbow.” However, she says her real priority at this point is the house she recently bought in the English countryside.

“I’d much rather live in the country with a load of pigs than go off with some upper-class poet as Megan yearns to (do),” Stubbs declares. “I think I may have a highly idealized notion of country living, but I’ll find out. In playing Megan I discovered that I’m too old to play children anymore--and in fact, I want to have some. I find myself feeling very broody these days and I want to learn to cook and play the piano.”

Stubbs attributes her current sense of priorities to the death of her mother last year.

“My mum’s death completely changed my perception of what’s important in life,” she concludes. “When I was 18 I got into acting because that’s where all the good-looking guys and exciting, trendy people were. I wanted to be part of that, and wanted other people to think I was better than them. But I really don’t feel that way now. My mum’s death made me realize that the paths of glory lead but to the grave.”