Andrea Riseborough finds new challenges after Oscar run

“I was shooting ‘The Regime’ and I only had a few days to be here, but I was so grateful,” she says.

The film, “To Leslie,” was an independent feature about a woman with alcoholism that had limited release. Nominated for Best Actress, Riseborough was championed by a number of powerhouse actresses who had seen her performance and were determined to get her on Oscar’s list.

They succeeded: Riseborough landed among Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Williams, Cate Blanchett and Ana de Armas. While Yeoh won, the 42-year-old Riseborough says she got a prize of her own – stories from those who had been affected by alcoholism. “That film made the world a little bigger and it made it a little smaller,” she says. “I was so grateful people saw the film.”

And, obviously, she was thrilled to tell the story.

Doing the research

“One of the most incredible, strange and valuable parts of this job is we get to delve into a world that we would never have had access to in that same way,” Riseborough says. “I suppose, in a sense, it feels a little like journalism.”

With a multitude of characters to her credit, the British actress says she loves to delve into the “process,” – researching, conferring, and talking with others about story and the characters. “When you leave a character, it’s a sort of strange, celebratory grief. Sometimes you want to revisit a character and sometimes you’re, ‘Thank you very much…quite good.’

“And then, perhaps, you realize later there was a little more you could have mined or you wanted to engage with.”

In her latest, “Alice and Jack,” a limited “Masterpiece” series about a couple over more than a decade. Alice (Riseborough’s character, a finance executive) spends a night with Jack (Domhnall Gleeson, a scientist) and they go their separate ways. In time, however, they come back to one another and share how their lives have changed.

Longtime friends

For Riseborough and Gleeson, the story parallels moments in their own relationship. “This is our third project together,” Riseborough says. “We’ve grown up together. We played partners in the first film, brother and sister in the second. And, then, in the U.S., I played his father’s girlfriend. We came together to make this and I think we can both think of each other at those different periods of time.” The acting shorthand can be summed up in one word: “friendship,” she says.

“Alice and Jack” came Riseborough’s way “three weeks after I met my great love,” Karim Saleh. “So it felt incredibly meaningful and something I felt compelled to explore.”

Real romance, Riseborough says, isn’t always as predictable as movies would suggest. “For most of us, it’s incredibly difficult and it often looks sloppy.”

Alice and Jack, she says, don’t live their lives together but “that doesn’t make it any less of a great love.”

First choice

When Victor Levin was writing the screenplay, he says he thought of Andrea and Dom for the parts. “I’ve made a great study of both of their bodies of work and I love their voices…I love the way they make me feel. I wanted this to be not just a drama, but also a comedy. It was really about the two of them from the very, very beginning.”

While Gleeson grew up in an acting family (dad Brendan Gleeson is also an Oscar nominee), Riseborough comes from a non-theatrical background. Still, they have much in common, including roles in Martin McDonagh plays. “It’s friendship and respect,” she says.

When roles like this come her way, “it’s kismet. It’s being open to different opportunities for explorations. It’s vast and endless; the world is ever-changing and ever evolving. So, there are many incredible stories to listen to and identify with."

"Aice and Jack" airs Sunday on "Masterpiece."