»THE WEISZ TRADE
If you want to know about co-stars behaving badly, just ask actress Rachel Weisz.

The 27-year-old star is still recovering from the trauma of sharing the camera with a particularly obstreperous and difficult bunch of animals.

"Camels - ugh," she says with a shudder. "They're horrible, really horrible. They smell, they really hate people. They're foul, they have terrible breath and they scream really loudly when you make them go," she adds.

'The movie has been a massive success in America and has put Weisz's name firmly on the map' Weisz got the hump with the beasts during the filming of her new blockbuster horror spoof The Mummy, which opens this week.

The film, a remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff classic, stars Weisz as a blue stocking Egyptologist who unearths a whole lot of trouble during an expedition to the desert with her bumbling brother, played by Scottish actor John Hannah, and a dashing Legionnaire played by Gods and Monsters star Brendan Fraser.

The movie has been a massive success in America and has put Weisz's name firmly on the map over there. But here, she has received more attention for being the girlfriend of Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey.

The couple met on the set of the BBC TV film My Summer With Des while Morrissey was still with his long-term girlfriend Liz Carling.

The couple now live together in North London, and while she is reluctant to talk about her relationship with the 31-year-old actor she does admit that he is one of the main reasons she won't up sticks and move to Hollywood.

"I live in North London. I have a boyfriend here. I want to stay put here," she says politely.

"The fact that it was a huge turkey didn't really affect me... Keanu took the brunt of the fall" While her partner has become the nation's favourite 'lad' with his bawdy and lewd TV image, Weisz couldn't be more different.

Born in London of a Hungarian father (the surname is pronounced Vice) and psychoanalyst mother, she went to public school and later studied English at Cambridge. She made her big screen debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty and followed that with roles in the BBC period drama The Scarlet and The Black, in the film Land Girls alongside Anna Friel, and in the disastrous film Chain Reaction opposite Keanu Reeves.

"I thought it was an awful film," she says of Chain Reaction. "But the fact that it was a huge turkey didn't really affect me negatively - Keanu took the brunt of the fall. It just didn't work.

"I even felt that as a member of the audience. I was in America and there was a screening and the premiere the next day.

"After I'd seen it I just went straight back to my hotel, packed my bags and went home. I didn't feel much like celebrating."

The experience didn't put her off Hollywood, though. After reading Stephen Sommers' script for The Mummy she couldn't wait to get her teeth into the role.

"I thought it was a great part for a woman," she says eagerly. "I thought it was a character part, a comedy part. Normally women in those sorts of action movies are dippy and bimbo who just shout 'help'.

This was a good comedic role, not stereotypical, a bit unusual."

"Also, a rat had to run across me too but it was a rat actor... It had been in many movies and it had an agent" She did, however, become a damsel in distress during one or two perilous moments on the Moroccan shoot.

"There were scorpions," she grimaces. "You couldn't just sit on the rock because there were so many. The night shoots were particularly dangerous.

"Less dangerous but deeply uncomfortable was the heat - around 130 degrees.

"Also, a rat had to run across me too but it was a rat actor. It wasn't a wild rat caught from the sewers of London.

"It had been in many movies and it had an agent there and I was introduced to it in the morning," she laughs.
Meanwhile, her co-star Brendan Fraser faced a few perils of his own. "He nearly died during the hanging scene," she reveals. "He got into serious trouble and had to be resuscitated.

"It didn't disrupt the schedule though! That's the thing about film sets, they say, 'are you all right darling, are you all right? OK, let's go again'. Time is money and all that."

In this case it paid off as The Mummy took a mammoth 50 million dollars in its first week in the States. As a result the offers from Hollywood have been pouring in for Weisz.

But she has chosen to remain in Britain and concentrate on her first love, the theatre.
She is currently appearing in London's West End in the Tennessee Williams' play Suddenly Last Summer, despite pressure from her American agents to do more films. "Stage is more important to me right now because that's what I'm doing. I really wanted to do a play and it so happens that this is one of my favourites.

Theatre is going back to basics, going back to the core of your heart and technique. There's a lot to be precious about the theatre because it is a very magical feeling to be on the stage."

Besides all that, there's a much more down to earth reason why she is reluctant to take up most of the Hollywood offers she has had - fear of exposing herself, literally. "I got asked to do American Playboy," she laughs. "The centrefold. I asked my agent what it involved and he said, 'total nudity'.

"I think that's the funniest thing I've heard. That must be how they perceive me over there, an Egyptologist Playmate. I decided not to do it."

There's a certain Badly Behaved TV character who will no doubt wish she had.