British star Hall lands role as Allen's `Vicky'

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CANNES — With her biggest film break yet, a lead role in a Woody Allen flick, Rebecca Hall landed on one of the most-glamorous spots on Earth: the star-packed red carpet at a Cannes Film Festival premiere.

Still able to stroll around without being recognized by eager celebrity-watchers, the British actress also scouted the town's main drag, the Croisette, and made a sighting that summed up the absurdity beneath the ostentation of Cannes.

"I saw this woman in a serious ball gown, all glammed up and next to an ice cream van, just really getting into an enormous ice cream cone," Hall told The Associated Press in an interview. "And there was this really ominous drip just coming down ..."

In Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Hall, 26, stars as Vicky, a straight-laced American woman about to be married to a safe, dull businessman.

She and best pal Cristina (Allen regular Scarlett Johansson), an impulsive romantic adventurer, spend a summer in Spain, where both are pursued by an amorous artist (Javier Bardem) who has a volatile ex-wife (Penelope Cruz).

Typical for Allen, the writer-director had the briefest of casting meetings with Hall, asking only one question: Could she do an American accent?

"I said yes, fully expecting him to go, `OK, do something,' and I was like, reeling inside. `What am I going to say, what am I going to say? Quickly, think of some phrase you can say really convincingly,'" Hall recalled. "And then of course, he didn't. He just went, `Bye.' It was like, `OK, I believe you.'"

Two weeks later, she got the call that Allen wanted her in the film.

Hall grew up in a family of writers, musicians and others in show business. Her father is theater director Peter Hall, her mother opera singer Maria Ewing.

She did a few TV projects as a girl but took time off to live what she calls a normal childhood before seriously pursuing acting after college.

Hall has done a wide range of theater in England and the United States, co-starred with Johansson in "The Prestige" and had a key role opposite James McAvoy in the British charmer "Starter for 10." She recently finished shooting Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon," starring Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as TV interviewer David Frost.

Bigger roles in bigger films are not a priority for Hall.

"Where I'm at in my career right now is as much as I've ever wanted," Hall said. "This is perfect for me, if I could carry on getting these kinds of roles I've been playing, which are characters, which are people that you can make something out of. If I can keep doing that, I don't want anything else from it. Really, I don't."

Hall had one more amusing tale about her Cannes debut, this one relating to Allen.

"He was so funny last night," the 5-foot-10 Hall said of the diminutive Allen, recalling the evening premiere of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." "I was wearing these enormous heels because my dress was so long (that) I couldn't not wear enormous heels. And he took one look at me and said, `I couldn't take you to the prom.'"

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