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Six actresses go back to school as the new terrors of St Trinian's

Luffy | Sunday, August 12, 2007 | 0 comments
When they first skipped mischievously across the screen in 1954, the cigarette-smoking, suspender-wearing, trouble-making pupils of St Trinian's annihilated the long-held belief that girls were made of sugar and spice and all things nice.

Now, 53 years on, the young ladies are returning to the big screen in a £7 million adaptation of cartoonist Ronald Searle's hilarious tales of mischief and japery.
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The movie, which has just finished filming at the revamped Ealing Studios, stars Rupert Everett as both Trinian's headmistress Camilla Fritton and her incompetent brother Carnaby.

The teaching staff also includes Bond girl Caterina Murino as languages teacher Miss Maupassant while Colin Firth plays the school inspector.

But the real stars of the film are, of course, the girls.

They devise a plan in which they put to use, in equal measures, their teenage charms and vices to save the school from bankruptcy.

Played by a host of established stars and new British talent, the girls of St Trinian's are the epitome of naughty but nice.

But, while the girls loved playing the St Trinian's tearaways, The Mail On Sunday now reveals what these actresses were really like at school...

JUNO TEMPLE, 18: the daughter of a punk.

Plays: Celia the punk.

Alma Mater: Bedales School, Petersfield, Hants.


Juno's favourite feature of her senior school was its proximity to London. "It's in the countryside but only about an hour on the train from London – so I spent a lot of time in the city which is really cool," she said.

"In fact I dragged two of my friends out to London with me and made them queue for the Notes On A Scandal audition."

Juno had never had a major acting role before, but her audition so impressed the casting directors she was instantly cast as Cate Blan-chett's daughter in the film that would go on to receive four Oscar nominations.

While St Trinian's is merely a fictional institution, Juno attended one of the closest real-life schools to it, albeit a co-ed version.

Bedales, an expensive fee-paying boarding school in Hampshire, has always prided itself on the liberal ethos that has lead to myriad stories of naked swimming, coracle racing and rockstar excesses. Indeed, turning up for lessons is only voluntary.

Yet despite its seemingly madcap rules, it boasts a host of larger-than-life former pupils including Lily Allen, Kirstie Allsopp and Sophie Dahl.

Juno, the daughter of punk film-maker Julien Temple, looks bound to follow in their famous footsteps. With her wild hair, Juno was never a conventional pupil.

Her alternative attitude meant that she had to leave her first school. She said: "I just came to Bedales for my last two years of schooling. Before that, I was at a school I didn't really like. It was, oh my God, it was really boring."

KATHRYN DRYSDALE, 25: the Catholic camp cupboard dweller.

Plays: Taylor, the nouveau riche Essex girl.

Alma Mater: St Peter's School, Orrell, Lancashire.


Despite her strict Catholic upbringing, Kathryn admits that it has been a while since she has "practised" her religion.

However, one of her most memorable school escapades took place during a voluntary religious camp in the countryside.

She said: "I went to a retreat with my school and there were pupils there from other schools and there was a boy from another school I really fancied.

"We snogged a couple of times which was great because all the other girls fancied him but then I decided to sneak into his dorm for a bit of a fumble.

"Of course we weren't allowed into other schools' dorms, especially not the boys' ones.

"Suddenly we were disturbed by three religious instructors so I jumped into a cupboard.

"Luckily they thought I'd just been in the wardrobe and not in anyone's bed."

Kathryn, who is about to shoot her seventh series of BBC3 favourite Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, loved her nouveau-riche Essex girl role in St Trinian's because it was so unlike her own school – which was so strict pupils risked expulsion if they did not stay within certain areas of the school.

She said: "We had the worst uniforms. They were brown, with skirts below the knees.

"If our hair was shiny, we had to go to the toilets and wash it.

"Once I got into trouble just for being caught on a bus drinking a can of Diet Coke and giggling. I was hauled in front of the deputy head and shouted at for bringing the school into disrepute."

LILY COLE, 19: the intelligent supermodel.

Plays: Polly, the brainy one.

Alma Mater: St Marylebone Secondary School and Latymer Upper School, London.


"I missed about 50 per cent of my classes," admits the current face of Dior.

"But Lily was so clever she still got three As at A-level and cruised to a place at Cambridge University where she will study Social and Political Sciences.

"I was always the first to hand in my work, because I knew if I was late the teachers would come down on me like a ton of bricks. Modelling is great, but studies came first."

After moving with her mother from Torquay in Devon to London she started at a tough inner city state school but then left for the £12,000-a-year Latymer Upper School.

She did not need to spend any of the huge pay checks from her extra-curricular modelling to pay for her schooling – the clever girl won a full scholarship.

She found the move between the two schools a major culture shock but admits it had its advantages and helped ultimately to win her the St Trinian's role.

Lily said: "I found it very foreign but I've always been really into drama, and it was an eye-opener coming from a place where you had to clear your stage space by shifting chairs, to one with a proper theatre."

GEMMA ARTERTON, 21: smoking monitor.

Plays: Kelly the current head girl.

Alma Mater: Gravesend Grammar School For Girls.


Gemma was astonished to discover that none of the girls in the St Trinian's film are allowed to smoke cigarettes – especially as her school days were awash with even more pungent fumes.

She said: "I did see a girl smoking a joint, and someone was expelled for sniffing lighter fuel on the school field when I was a pupil.

"Actually, quite a lot of that went on on the school field. In terms of the things pupils got up to, my school probably wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst by any means.

"Yet on set, cigarettes were a no-no, even though the original was full of girls peering through cigarette smoke.

"There was one scene where my character was lounging against a wall and it cried out for her to have a fag.

"In real life, she would, but I got shot down when I even suggested it."

However, Gemma does feel that the way in which the girls put their youthful charms to use is little more than an amplified version of her own experiences at the all-girls' grammar school she attended in Kent.

The school, appropriately for the RADA graduate currently appearing as Rosalind in Love's Labour Lost at London's Globe Theatre, has the motto "Through Adversity To The Stars".

She said: "My character is a sexy minx who uses feminine wiles to get her way. These girls are just young women who are confident about themselves, and they are not afraid to use their bodies to get what they want."

Gemma, a fitness fanatic, competed in the running and swimming teams at school.

She admits she was disappointed not to kiss Russell Brand, who plays Flash Harry, – but adds she was relieved not to be made to eat any school salad cream on set, it being one of her pet hates.

TAMSON EGERTON, 18: the school hating tomboy.

Plays: Chelsea (the posh totty).

Alma mater: Ditcham Park, a day school in Hampshire.


"I hated school. I just knew that I would always want to be an actor. That's why I left school at 16. I was already spending months away at a time filming, ' says Tamsin.

"It's not fair to say that I was a truant though – I had a tutor.

"One problem though with spending so much time working with adults is that I lost my respect for teachers – and so I did get into trouble for being too lippy to them.

"I just didn't have the same fear as I might have had and they would get pretty angry about that.

"My older sister was really naughty and the queen of pranks. So I think when I came to the school I had to be really well behaved in order to win back the Egerton name from the doghouse.

"Also, as I was away so much acting, I'd really want to knuckle down when I got back."

Despite leaving at the earliest opportunity, she has nine A-grade GCSE's under her belt and had never been sent to the headteacher's office.

"I was a real goody-two-shoes. I wasn't very naughty. I never smuggled in vodka or anything," she says.

"I used to smuggle in tea bags – we weren't allowed them for some weird reason – then we'd have tea parties in the stairwell or in one of the fields.

"But we weren't exactly going to get into big trouble for being civilised, were we?"

And despite her obvious beauty, at school Tamsin was a real tomboy who spent most of her time playing football, building dens and climbing trees.

She said: "I am very different really to my character Chelsea in St Trinian's.

"She's a bit of a seductress. She and a couple of other girls have a sex phone line which they use to make money.

"It's called Posh Totty. Basically they are sluts but they like to think that there is a real art to seduction. They're into wearing sexy underwear with fluffy bits.

"I was too lanky to be a seductress at school.

"I think that's why I got my nickname Bambi. Anyway, I never fancied any of the boys. The school was too small so everyone just seemed like brothers and sisters."

ANTONIA BERNATH, 22: the cannabis grower.

Plays: Chloe (the naughty one).

Alma Mater: The Godolphin School, Salisbury.


Although she won a place at Cambridge, Antonia could just as easily have found herself – along with her parents and her friends and their parents – in the police cells.

"We'd grow cannabis in our rooms at home, draw up a graph and convince our parents to water the cannabis while we were at school, telling them it was a biology experiment," she says.

"So these posh mothers watered our cannabis and measured it and recorded it on a graph, measuring its daily growth."

Indeed, in true St Trinian's fashion she was never averse to bringing in contraband.

She said: "At one disco we had with a boys public school, everyone was getting wasted.

"One girl totally stripped off and when the teachers tried to corner her she just accused them of ruining her evening.

"I didn't strip off myself so when it was time to pretend to be sober, I got off. The girl who stripped off and a couple of the other girls were suspended though."

Her sense of humour was notoriously surreal. She admits to dyeing the school swimming pool red on the day before the swimming gala and would hide every single possession of her fellow pupils in suitcases to see the looks on their faces as they returned to their dormitories.

None the less, Antonia still managed to gain three As and a B at A-level and compete in a national competition at longjump – although she finished second last.
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