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In Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, he’s the voice of the gloomy-Gothic author Snicket He also shows up in I Heart Huckabees directed by David O. Russell of Three Kings fame, and appears alongside Julia Roberts in Closer, the adaptation of Patrick Marber’s erotic drama.The reason for his Stakhanovite work-load is, he says, it gives him more time with his children. “One reason I chose to do so many films back to back,” he told the papers, “is because a lot of them were shot in London. It was a really pleasant year to be a working dad – to have breakfast with the kids, take them to school, go off to work and return home later to put them to bed It felt for the first time like a regular job”. The note of personal equilibrium is clearly a novelty after the cataclysm in his private life during the last 18 months.He was born in London on 9 December, 1972 His parents, Peter and Maggie, were teachers.

His acting career began precociously young at 12, when he joined the National Youth Theatre and first appeared on TV in a musical version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester. He was privately educated at Alleyn’s school in Dulwich, which he remembers without much affection, and from which he dropped out at 17 to join the television soap Families In 1992 he toured Italy in a stage production of Pygmalion. In her early teens she also made regular sojourns to London with her friend Sally Oldfield (sister of Mike). Together they would go to plays, go on CND marches and hang around outside jazz clubs to gawp at the cool kids going in and out. “Even as a teenager I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, because I was so clever,” exclaims Faithfull “I was fascinated by all kinds of culture.

I thought, ‘Shall I be a writer, shall I be an actress, shall I be a singer, shall I be a dancer?’ It’s such a wonderful thing, being young and having every possibility open. Until you’ve made a choice, you don’t need to give up the other possibilities What happened to me was that I never got to make the choice. I was chosen.”Now, at last, Faithfull is having her cake and eating it. At a time in her life when most people’s careers are winding down, hers is flourishing More importantly she can, when she chooses, be left alone. When she’s not touring, she divides her time between Ravard’s apartment in Paris, and Dublin, where she has lived for the last 15 years. Crucial to her happiness is that fact that she’s not angry anymore – she has, to use her word, “mellowed”. When it comes to regrets, Faithfull has got plenty though, as she sees it, “an unexamined life is not worth living.