A Change for the Good

LONDON — Actors promoting new films routinely use certain words to describe their roles: The experience was “scary,” the work “stretched” them, portraying a character was “challenging.” Such talk is all part of the hype expected of them.

But when the fast-emerging British actor Steven Mackintosh speaks in similar terms about his new movie, one feels bound to believe him. After all, not everyone gets to play a transsexual who was born a man but underwent surgery to become a woman.

This is just what Mackintosh does in the recently opened poignant comedy “Different for Girls,” in which he co-stars alongside another Englishman, Rupert Graves. Mackintosh plays Kim Foyle, a prim, slightly joyless woman who had a sex change operation two years before the story starts; she and Graves’ character, Paul Prentice, a London motorcycle courier who cannot confront the fact he is no longer an adolescent, were best friends at boarding school 15 years before. When they “meet cute,” having drifted apart since school, their relationship is rekindled--and Kim, of course, is no longer a man.

“There won’t be another role like this in my career again,” Mackintosh said with a nervous laugh. “I saw the film once, and it’s the only time I will ever see it. I watched it like this . . . ,” and he put both hands up in front of his face.

Not that he thinks “Different for Girls” is a bad film. Far from it. “But it was difficult for me to watch, given my physical transformation and what I had to do with my voice,” he said. “It was very painful indeed.”

One aspect of the story (written by Tony Marchant) that Mackintosh liked was that Kim is a subdued, even conservative character. “I don’t look beautiful in a lot of shots, which is fine,” he noted. “It makes Kim more of a real person.

“I didn’t want it to be some dreadful camp performance straight from Madame JoJo’s [a well-known London drag club]. A lot of transsexuals don’t have surgery in order to be glamorous. Some of them have a taste in clothes bordering on the boring. For them, [the operation] is just about becoming an ordinary woman.”

In order to play Kim, Mackintosh spent long hours talking to transsexuals--among them Adele Anderson (see accompanying story), a member of a British three-woman cabaret revue group, Fascinating Aida. Anderson, who had surgery to become a woman some 20 years ago, was a hired consultant on the film.

“I also met this extraordinary woman who deals with transsexuals after their operation,” Mackintosh recalled. “She gives them advice about deportment, posture--and voice relocation, as she calls it. Once they have been through surgery, she helps provide them with the flourishes, the finishing touches about being a woman. I spent a lot of time in the evenings after rehearsals, walking around her living room wearing a skirt.”

He also met a psychiatrist with several transsexual clients: “There’s a long, vigorous process of discussion before they have the operation, because it’s such a huge step to take. And it’s not necessarily a happy ending once you’ve had surgery--you then have to live as a woman in a world that doesn’t always accept that you are.” (In “Different for Girls,” Kim works for a company that composes verses for greeting cards, where the truth about her operation is known.)

“I also knew something had to be done about my voice,” Mackintosh continued. “It’s true some women have deep voices, but there’s something about the tone and softness of a woman’s voice that I had to re-create.”

And he took advice from his wife, actress Lisa Jacobs, “on how to dance like a girl. My dancing movements were too staccato--women move quite differently. And I learned to walk without hunching my shoulders so much.”

While he was playing Kim, his daughter Martha, then 4, “found it confusing. I had long fake nails and hair extensions. Part of her was quite thrilled by it all, because it was quite exotic. But still--this was her Daddy!”

Mackintosh has one nude scene in “Different for Girls,” and wore prosthetic breasts as well as a prosthetic piece to hide his evident maleness. “Part of my body was, umm, tightly strapped,” he said delicately. “It wasn’t exactly comfortable, working like that.”

Meeting Mackintosh, 30, it is hard to discern traces of femininity about him. He’s slight and blond, but his body language and cheekbones are such that he could easily pass for a moody young British pop idol. Yet he is approachable and affable in conversation.

While he had reservations about playing a transsexual, they were outweighed by the diversity the role offered. In fact, Mackintosh’s star is rising in Britain precisely because of his versatility.

Last year, he played Sebastian in Trevor Nunn’s film of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” and is a young farmer’s son in 1940s England in David Leland’s upcoming “Land Girls.” He was a serial killer known as “The Street” in the most recent “Prime Suspect” series shown on PBS. And he stars in a BBC-TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel “Our Mutual Friend,” currently shooting in England.

Mackintosh also gives a powerful, brooding performance as a disaffected, unemployed Welsh adolescent with an unhealthy fixation on American novelist Jack Kerouac in “House of America,” a film due to open in Britain next month. Word of mouth about the movie and Mackintosh’s lead performance is already strong.

“Steven’s one of the real emerging talents in Britain at the moment,” says Sheryl Crown, producer of “House of America.” “He’s versatile, charismatic, intelligent--and a great team player on set. Women love him, and men think he’s cool.”

Of “House of America,” he said, “it’s dark and bleak, but I’m very fond of it. My roles recently have managed to be quite diverse, which is the best you can hope for.

“I like the disguise of a different voice and accents. I had a West Country accent for ‘Land Girls,’ and I spent two weeks reaming to plow fields with shire horses.”

He first acted on stage at age 13, and turned professional three years later. In 1987, he began a two-year stint with Britain’s National Theatre, appearing in three Shakespeare plays that also toured Japan and Russia.

It was during this time that he met Lisa Jacobs.

“I don’t believe in chasing things too hard or being on a treadmill,” he says of his burgeoning career. “My work’s always been better and more enjoyable when I’ve had another life in between. There’s a danger you can lose enthusiasm. A certain lethargy can creep into your work.”

Not that lethargy was an option for Mackintosh in accepting the role of Kim in “Different for Girls:” “I was too scared for that. A lot of people told me they could see why I would feel apprehensive about playing her, but I should go ahead and do it anyway.

“In my mind, I knew I’d benefit from having done it. And I certainly have. I’m a lot more confident about other roles now.”