With low-budget musical movie Once winning awards from Hollywood to Moscow, and its soundtrack ballad Falling Slowly climbing the charts worldwide, Czech youngster Marketa Irglova has experienced a fairytale rise to stardom.
There was a lot of very good fortune involved, almost magical, said the 20-year-old, whose star has risen alongside that of her partner Irish singer Glen Hansard – both onscreen and off.
The couple s meteoric rise to stardom began last year when Once, a film written and directed by John Carney, was given the audience award at the 2007 Sundance Festival.
Irglova and Hansard, the singer with Irish group The Frames, play two musicians who meet in the streets of Dublin and experience the musical ecstasy of performing together, and then go their separate ways. In real life, the pair are now firmly attached.
It was thanks to a small music festival organized by her father that the two originally met. The Frames passed through her home town of Valasske Mezirici in the east of the country and the singer-songwriter became a friend of the family.
That is how we started to play music together. I was a classically trained pianist and there was a piano in the house. During his visit, we sat down and tried things, she said.
Like in the movie, she added, but with the difference that the real life couple went on together to international success rather than returning to separate lives after their fleeting duet.
Critics were full of praise for the bittersweet romance which despite its miniscule budget grossed $9 million in six months in the United States alone. Fox Searchlight has now bought the rights for $1 million.
The success story continued when Falling Slowly, a song on the soundtrack composed by Hansard, won the Oscar for best original song in February.
Nobody dared to expect something this big, so when it came it was something magical for us, one of those moments when everything seems to flow miraculously, said Marketa.
In her Hollywood speech, she paid tribute to all the independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling.
The fact that we’re able to hold this (prize), it’s just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible, she added amid Hollywood applause.
The success is all the more surprising given that Once was shot in just two weeks with two small video cameras and a budget of barely ?100,000.
At the time, 17-year-old Irglova was unknown and had accepted the role because she had nothing to lose, apart from classes she skipped for the brief shoot.
Falling Slowly and the other single from the soundtrack If You Want Me, raced up worldwide charts, featuring among most-sold internet songs and were also made into mobile phone ring tones.
Along with The Frames, the two left on a triumph tour of the United States, taking in such prestigious venues as New York Radio City hall and the Chicago Theater.
The idea of being recognized or famous is strange. I d like to say life has not changed at all but I guess it has, it is like putting on a new suit, it takes quite a while to get used to it, said 37-year-old Hansard, who with The Frames was already an established star in his native Ireland.
In between two US tours, the couple will return to their pre-Oscar musical roots by playing a series of small Czech concerts this summer at offbeat venues.
These festivals are the ones we played when we were not Oscar winners, we met a lot of people who truly live for music, so it is nice to go back to them, Irglova said.
Irglova spoke to AFP during a short Prague concert stay ahead of engagements in Nashville and Chicago, and with gigs in New York, London and Berlin already in the bag.
We could play bigger venues but that would not be any fun, it wouldn t be good because what we do is so intimate, it is so quiet, so it would not be the same, added Hansard. -AFP
