Filming Woody Allen's 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' was a dream fulfilled for Rebecca Hall

IT WASN'T likely that Rebecca Hall was going to be able to sneak quietly into an acting career in England. Her father is one of the world's most renowned theater directors, Peter Hall. Of course, in the less-than-stage-crazed United States, that heritage is no bar to her anonymity.

"It's quite refreshing, actually," she says happily. "In America, I think people are a bit more welcoming to the idea that your family might all do the same thing. In England, they get the knives out and they're ready to crucify you."

The 26-year-old actress, full-lipped and long of limb, has emerged as a star of British stage and is currently appearing in Woody Allen's film "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" as a young American who spends a season in Spain with her best friend and is forever changed.

Hall has been an Allen fan since seeing "Sleeper" when she was about 11. During an interview for her 2006 film "Starter for 10," she mentioned the filmmaker was working in London and whimsically said, "If Woody Allen is reading this, I want a part!"

Three months later, Allen summoned her.

"I literally went in and he said, 'Nice to meet you. Can you do an American accent?' And I said, 'Yes,' and he went, 'All right, bye.' That was it.

"I had no clue I was going in for a casting; all I knew was that he wanted to meet me. So two weeks later, I got a call saying, 'Woody Allen really wants you to be in his next film, set in Spain.' So I said, 'Give me the piece of paper to sign. I'll play a doormat, that's fine.' "

Her Vicky turned out to be the emotional heart and thematic spine of the film. Considering this, Hall's brain churns under russet locks. She frequently interrupts herself, words gathering at the dam, then overflowing:

"It's peculiar when the things you fantasize about when you're 14 actually happen. . . . This is the kind of role that I had fantasized about, being in a Woody Allen film."

Vicky is one of Allen's most fully realized female characters since "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Mighty Aphrodite," perhaps even back to "Hannah and Her Sisters."

"I thought it was important to not play everything in the first 20 minutes, to let her be annoying," she says with eyes saucered and lips curled in a close-mouthed smile. "To not necessarily show she was capable of great emotion and vulnerability, allow her to be a bit of a difficult customer. That gave me some distance to travel."