NEW YORK -- Emily Watson spends many of her waking hours being miserable.

That's the way writers, directors, producers and audiences like it, so Watson obliges.

Watson's breakthrough and defining role was her 1996 Oscar-nominated performance as the dutiful but exploited wife in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.

It was a role Helena Bonham-Carter had backed out of just weeks before filming was to begin. At the time, Watson was an unknown British theatre actress.

Breaking the Waves ensured that Watson's anonymity was short-lived. She immediately won coveted roles in The Boxer, Hilary & Jackie, The Cradle Will Rock and the prized title role in Angela's Ashes that opens Friday.

Based on Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirs of growing up destitute in Ireland during The Depression, Angela's Ashes requires Watson to play a woman who loses three of her seven children to sickness and disease and to suffer daily humiliation for being the poorest among the poor.

"Angela is an icon of passivity and resignation. To her, life meant getting through each new day. Angela wasn't an exceptional woman. She was just so very strong and determined," explains Watson.

"It wasn't really about great saintly endurance. Angela was very human, but she was defeated by the Depression. This is why people connected with the book."

Playing the quiet martyr took its toll on Watson.

"Because the material in Angela's Ashes was so upsetting, I'd find myself a bit lower than usual at nights.

"Physically, this was a difficult role. I'd arrive in the mornings feeling fairly healthy and chipper. Then they'd slap on my wardrobe that was always dirty and full of holes.

"The days they dressed me in black I knew I'd be burying another child. That was depressing."

Though the material in Angela's Ashes is bleak, the set itself had an strangely upbeat atmosphere.

"There were always so many children on the set and they were determined to have fun.

"We had to work around the children, which proved most exhausting. They had very short attention spans, especially the little twins, so we had to be letter-perfect for each shot in case it turned out to be the children's best effort."

Watson and her older sister were raised in London by their architect father and teacher mother.

"I had a happy childhood, but I've met people who had a difficult time emotionally or financially. It's made me a cheerful, sensible girl, which may explain why I'm able to wallow in misery for the camera."

Watson, 33, studied English lit at Bristol University before attempting to pursue an acting career.

Eventually Watson was accepted into the London Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and, two years after her graduation in 1990, she was hired by Britain's prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company. It was in an RSC production of Taming of the Shrew that Watson met her husband actor/writer Jack Waters.

"He's a wonderful, supportive guy. We were working on Angela's Ashes right until Christmas Eve of 1998. I got home (from Ireland) to London and he'd done all the Christmas shopping and decorating."

She attended the Oscars a second time last year for Hilary and Jackie.

"The second time I was less naive, so I could see the Oscars are more of a marketplace than they are a fairytale."


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