Georgina Rich

Georgina Rich

Age: 30

Currently: Playing Frances 'Baby' Houseman in the stage version of the cult 1987 film Dirty Dancing. No one puts Baby in a corner, and no one should put Rich in one either. She may have trained in dance as a teenager, but she has also become a serious actress. "I had no plans to do musical theatre or a huge desire to do it, but then this came along. It's a one-off."

Hometown: "I'm from a little village in Kent called Farningham, but I've lived in Kentish Town in North London for the last 12 or 13 years," says the refreshingly open Rich. "I came to London when I was 16 to train at the London Studio Centre in King's Cross, where I studied dancing and acting."

Finding Her Feet: In Dirty Dancing, Rich's character is taught the liberating power of dance (and more) by Josef Brown's handsome dance instructor, Johnny Castle. For Rich herself, however, dancing proved an accidental path towards her true ambition, which was to act. "I had done quite a lot of dance training when I was younger, going to a local dance class after school, but I always wanted to do acting. To get into an acting school, you have to be a bit older than I was when I left school at 16, so I was looking at colleges that offered both, and found the London Studio Centre. The dance course was much stronger than the acting one, and I fell in love with it. We did contemporary stuff and street jazz, and I then worked sporadically as a dancer doing commercial things. I also did loads of other different jobs, too—receptionist, waitress, restaurant manager and barmaid—before I finally decided I wanted to do the acting thing more seriously. So I auditioned for RADA and got in."

Georgina Rich & Josef Brown in Dirty Dancing

Age Immaterial: Rich was 24 when she joined RADA, but she wasn't the only older student there. "A handful came to RADA straight out of school at 18 or 19, but a large proportion were post-university, around 21-23, and then there were three of us who were 24 or 25, so there was quite an even spread." RADA offers a rigorous theatrical dramatic training. "You do a lot of classical and voice work, but there's also work on new playwrights and contemporary writers, as well as a bit of telly and radio training."

From RADA to Barder: Rich's first job was in a U.K. regional touring production of Twelfth Night with English Touring Theatre. "I played Viola, and it was directed by Stephen Unwin." She then went to the Sheffield Crucible, appearing as Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, as well as playing Cordelia in Edward Bond's Lear. The acting companies for those two plays included Samuel West and Ian McDiarmid, so she was already in good company. Her West End debut came last year, appearing as daughter to Diana Rigg and Martin Jarvis in Honour: "I loved working in Sheffield; it was a brilliant six-month period, " she says. "But it's always nice to work in your home town, so it was lovely to come back to London. To work with people like Diana and Martin was amazing. I've been very lucky with the people I've worked with."

Georgina Rich & Josef Brown in Dirty Dancing

Invitation to Dance: When Dirty Dancing came up it was, she says, "a bit left-field." Like many women of her generation, she was already a big fan of the film. "I was a massive Dirty Dancing fan when I was 15. I saw it on video many, many times. I would bunk off school with a friend of mine to watch it. It's just one of those really nice love stories that adolescent girls particularly relate to, though it also seems to cross generations, too. It's a fairy story—the Ugly Duckling/Cinderella thing of the girl who doesn't feel comfortable with herself, but who meets this cool, sexual older guy" Rich already had some of the dance skills from her earlier training. "They were looking for actresses who had a dance background," she explains, "but it's mainly an acting part, there's no singing. They wanted someone who could dance, but she has to look like she can't at the beginning and then end up looking like she can—quite well. They didn't want her to be completely polished, but someone who could look polished with a bit of work. That was easier to achieve with someone like me than trying to break down a professional dancer."

Murder on the Dancefloor: It was still a gruelling process getting the part. Rich had four recalls, the last one being particularly hard. She was paired with Brown, who had created the role of Johnny Castle in the original Australian production and had flown to London from Sydney to reaudition for it. "We had a full day at the Pineapple Dance Studios, and it was a really long one," Rich says. "I was still doing Honour in the evening at the time, so it was quite weird to have to go from a whole day of Dirty Dancing stuff with all these amazing dancers wandering around, then straight to Wyndham's to do the play."