Olivia Does Porridge

Olivia Williams is a busy lady. Hard on the heels of her success in Rushmore and The Sixth Sense she's back in Britain to promote her new film Born Romantic, which has been chosen as the film to close this year's London Film Festival. But the downside of being in demand means she's not sure whether she'll be able to attend the gala party in November. 'It's subject to schedule, I'm afraid,' she told Empire Online. 'I'm filming at the moment, so it depends on how everything comes together.' Moving straight from the Israel set of The Body with Antonio Banderas, Williams returned to her native London to join her current production, Lucky Break, the first film to be directed by Peter Cattaneo since the box-office bonanza that was The Full Monty. 'You could describe it as Porridge meets The Great Escape,' Williams told us. 'It's a similar balance to The Full Monty - gritty urban realism and comedy.' Williams is just one member of a dream British cast for Lucky Break which includes Jimmy Nesbitt , Timothy Spall, Lenny James (last seen in Snatch) and Bill Nighy - 'I've had a crush on him since I was five years old!' says Williams. Playing a prison psychologist, Williams and the rest of the cast prepared for the role by visiting prisons and talking over the scripts with prison officers - 'they said the storylines were truthful but that the methods used in real-life escapes were much more fantastical.' It may be the second project in Britain in as many years for her, but Olivia is keen to stress that the balance of working in both America and England works nicely for her. 'As soon as the first New Year party has finished, I'm off on Richard Branson's plane to LA for interviews and making films and then I come back to England to do what I really love - working amongst my peers.'