Kerry Fox

In Shallow Grave (1994), Kerry Fox keeps the exchanges from becoming a contest between two men. Her Juliet Miller is one of the three flatmates Danny Boyle confines to the same flat. Ewan McGregor makes Alex Law's smugness amusing, while Christopher Eccleston makes David Stephens the most unsettling of the trio. Fox gives both someone to play against, and the three-way balance is much of the pleasure. We laughed at their exchanges because all three actors make the flatmates' unpleasant company so entertaining.

The breakthrough had been as the adult Janet Frame in Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1990). Fox's ability to suggest a complicated inner life made that a fitting introduction. Shallow Grave then took her into international independent cinema, where difficult characters have remained a preference. As Claire in Patrice Chéreau's sexually explicit Intimacy (2001), she took on a more physically exposed part. That work needs emotional honesty as well as nerve, and both are strengths of hers.

She returned to Campion for Bright Star (2009), playing Mrs Brawne, Fanny Brawne's mother, in a supporting role. Moving between leads and smaller parts suits an actor who is alert to repeating herself. Her own account is useful: “When I recognise myself repeating a gesture, it jolts me.” There is more to her work than accepting difficult material. Describing her chiefly in terms of what she is prepared to expose risks overlooking the judgement involved in fitting a performance to the people around her.

Shallow Grave also shows how well she works with humour. Boyle's confinement of the actors gives the early exchanges their pressure, though the growing violence is less interesting. Fox keeps the exchanges lively, but we would not pretend her presence cures that weakness. We prefer the film when it lets the three flatmates be funny and disagreeable together, and she is central to that pleasure. Start there for the company, with the understanding that sharing their flat would be another matter.