the times | Monday August 3 2020 1GT 9

arts

STEVEN CAMERON FERGUSON

The teenager

who vaulted

past illness

to movie

stardom

Gymnast Frankie Box overcame a

severe disorder to make this summer’s

feelgood hit, she tells Kevin Maher

Frankie Box in Perfect

10 and, top, in the film

with Alfie Deegan.

Below: Frankie at the

premiere with Eva

Riley and Alfie Deegan

Perfect 10 is released

on Friday on Curzon

Home Cinema and

BFI Player

O

n the night of

October 3 at the

London Film

Festival something

remarkable

happened on the

red carpet. No, it

wasn’t the poster

boy Timothée Chalamet, who was

there to dazzle a throng of tweenie

fans in front of the Odeon Leicester

Square for the premiere of The King. It

was on another carpet, a stone’s throw

away at the Vue West End, where a

second premiere was taking place.

This film was a deeply accomplished

coming-of-age drama called Perfect 10,

and the premiere might have been

another workaday festival bunfight

were it not for the presence of its

standout star, Frankie Box. The

glamorous young woman was dressed

in black, hair miraculously coiffured,

jewelled necklace sparkling, the whole

knockout ensemble topped off with a

long white medical feeding tube

attached to her nose.

“I was actually feeling quite positive

that night,” says Frankie, 17, via Zoom

from her home in Dartford, Kent. She

says that the tube, which ran directly

from her duodenum up through her

gut, out of her nostril, across her face

(held in place with medical tape) and

down below her waist, was not a

bother. “I’d had it in for so long by

then that I had almost forgotten about

it,” she says. “And my friends said that

they didn’t even see it on my face any

more.” Besides, she adds, the premiere

was extra special because earlier that

day the staples had been removed

from her stomach after a complicated

operation to fit a gastric pacemaker.

Frankie had been afflicted with

gastroparesis, an extremely rare

digestive disorder. She puts it more

simply: “My stomach stopped

working.” She had been living

undiagnosed with the illness since she

was 11, experiencing crippling stomach

cramps after every meal, relentless

vomiting and multiple stays in hospital

while being treated by puzzled

physicians and suffering dangerous

levels of weight loss. Several times at

school she collapsed, unconscious.

It’s baffling to comprehend how,

during these six years of incapacitating

trauma, Frankie decided not to lie in

bed and wallow. Instead she became a

high-level gymnast, winning a bronze

medal in the TeamGym British

competition, and in 2018 moved into

acting, starring in Perfect 10. She says

that it’s not baffling at all, and that the

body and mind can get used to

anything, no matter how extreme.

“By the time we started filming

Perfect 10 I was so used to feeling sick

and being in pain that it had just

become part of my everyday life,”

Frankie says. “So, for example, when

I went to school I’d be in pain all day,

then I’d come home and try and eat

something, then go to gym and be in

pain at gym, and sometimes be

physically sick. I was so used to it that

I started to think that somehow

everyone must also be in pain.

Honestly, it got to the point when

I assumed that everyone must

get stomach ache when you eat

and that’s just what happens.

Because I’d had it for so many

years, and been told by so

many doctors that there was

nothing wrong with me.”

Her gymnastics coach had

spotted the casting call for

Perfect 10 on Facebook. And

after a couple of auditions

with Eva Riley, the young Scottish

director, Frankie was cast as Leigh, an

aspiring gymnast whose world is

upended when she meets her hitherto

undiscovered stepbrother Joe (Alfie

Deegan), a petty criminal. He

introduces her to the heady world of

lawbreaking (stealing motorbikes

mostly), for which she displays an

unerring affinity. She must choose

between gymnastics and crime, love

and loyalty, old family and new friends.

The shoot, Frankie says, was an eye-

opener. Eating before a big scene was

a no-no, but she managed her

condition by shifting her mealtimes

about and scheduling snack times. The

illness, in fact, helped her to “find” the

character of Leigh, who, like Frankie,

is good at hiding her feelings. “When

I’d get ill I’d put a big front on, as if

nothing was bothering me,” Frankie

says. “Which is quite like Leigh.”

The shooting finished in August

2018, not long after which

Frankie’s health suddenly

started to nosedive.

By then the condition had

been officially diagnosed

and she was waiting for an

expensive operation to fit a

pacemaker that might fix

her stomach. The procedure

is not covered by the NHS

and so the £17,000 cost was

crowdfunded by Frankie’s

gym club. Her health was failing so

swiftly, however, that she was worried

the operation might never happen.

“Right before my surgery I went

downhill really quickly,” she says. “My

stomach just shut down, the weight was

falling off and you could see my bones.”

Around this time, in the summer of

2019, Riley invited Frankie, her

parents and younger sister to a

screening room in London to view the

finished film. Frankie is the obvious

standout of the Brighton-set story,

effortlessly charismatic as the no-

nonsense Leigh, carrying every scene

and lifting the film with that climactic

and quietly moving gymnastics

routine. When the lights went up her

family were in tears, not because of

the impact of the film, but because of

how healthy she looked on screen

compared with the cadaverous waif

she had become in real life. “I wasn’t

doing great at the time,” she says. “So

obviously everyone found it really

emotional. Even my dad was crying.”

The story has a happy ending.

Frankie’s surgery was an unqualified

success, the feeding tube has gone and

she can now eat anything she wants,

whenever she wants. The film has been

a festival smash wherever it’s played —

in February Frankie was treated like a

celebrity at Annonay in France after it

wowed at that festival. “When I’d go

out for a meal people would come up

and ask for a picture with me, and I

remember thinking, ‘Oh my God! This

is real!’ ” she says. She has got herself

an agent and done auditions, self-taped

because of the pandemic.

For this singularly determined and

unflappable person, there is only one

future. “I had always loved doing gym,

and had imagined continuing it after

filming,” Frankie says. “But as I was

doing the film I kept thinking, ‘You

know what, I’m really enjoying this.’

And then it became, ‘This could

actually be what I want to do.’ And

then finally, when the film was

finished, I decided, ‘This is it. This is

what I want to do.’ ”