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"  It&amp;#039;s hard to say who&amp;#039;s got more nerve, the acclaimed English director Andrea Arnold or the then-17-year-old nonactor she cast as the explosive na\u00EFf at the center of her new movie, Fish Tank. Katie Jarvis was discovered in 2008 having a screaming match with her boyfriend at a train station in southeast England. Arnold immediately saw in her the volatility required for Fish Tank&amp;#039;s 15-year-old Mia, who has been expelled from school and lives in a state of war with her sexy, resentful young mother. &amp;quot;I just try to find someone who feels authentic and right for what I&amp;#039;ve written,&amp;quot; says Arnold, unfazed by her star&amp;#039;s lack of experience. &amp;quot;I do believe some people can naturally act and don&amp;#039;t know it.&amp;quot; Indeed, Jarvis, who now has an agent, is mesmerizing in the role, never more than in her scenes with her mother&amp;#039;s sweetly seductive new boyfriend (rising star Michael Fassbender).  So far, Arnold&amp;#039;s films have revolved around women living in vast public housing projects much like the one she grew up in. She doesn&amp;#039;t make grim kitchen-sink dramas, but something much more intimate, exciting, and unpredictable. In her suspenseful first feature, Red Road (2006), a security guard finds herself having mindblowing sex with a man she tracked down to punish for destroying her family; and in Fish Tank, a character you&amp;#039;ve come to love willfully terrorizes a child. Even in your shock, you don&amp;#039;t judge these people, because Arnold has brought you too close to them for that. Before honing her filmmaking skills on three dramatic shorts, Arnold worked as a television actress and occasional writer. She was 43 when her third short, Wasp, won an Oscar in 2005, the first in a stream of awards that now includes a BAFTA (Britain&amp;#039;s Oscar) and the prestigious Cannes Jury Prize for both of her features. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve written since I was a kid,&amp;quot; Arnold says. &amp;quot;But when I saw that I could use my writing to make my own work, it was like a bolt, that realization. It felt so strong.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/reviews/a10756/andrea-arnolds-fish-tank-389219/?click=main_sr>