Andrea Riseborough was "really good friends" with pop star Cheryl when they were growing up.
Andrea Riseborough was best friends with pop star Cheryl
The Oscar-nominated actress hails from the same area of north east England as Girls Aloud pop star Cheryl, and she's now revealed they were good pals and attended dance classes together before they eventually drifted apart due to their different interests.
In an interview with the Observer Magazine, Andrea, 42, explained: "We were really good friends when we were little. We went to dancing together, a brilliant teacher called Margaret Waite.
"Cheryl was an absolutely incredible classical dancer. And then I became really interested in theatre and she was more interested in music and we sort of, I suppose, grew apart."
The screen star - who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar last year for her role in 'To Leslie' - added of her background: " I feel like in the north east, we’re all so closely connected.
"I was just watching [comedian] Sarah Millican on TV the other day and thinking: 'Oh yeah, there’s the director of the first short film I made'. There aren’t that many of us. We’ve all collided."
Andrea's Oscar surprise nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars last year for her work on little-seen 'To Leslie' came after high profile support from the likes of Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton and Cate Blanchett - and it prompted Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to "conduct a review of the campaign procedures" around the year’s nominees.
Bosses later declared Andrea would remain on the shortlist, but she ended up losing out on the gong to Michelle Yeoh for 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'.
Andrea has now insisted she was just happy that her film was given an unexpected boost by the headline-grabbing furore.
She added to the Observer: "I’m so grateful our film had a huge reach, a reach that none of us expected it to ever be capable of."
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