Zoe Wanamaker Mark Lawson Talks To...

Zoe Wanamaker is strongly associated with two high profile families.

The first is the Wanamakers.

Her father, Sam, an ex-patriot American in Britain,

campaigned and fundraised for decades to build a recreation

of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.

The other is the Harpers, including matriarch and dentist's wife Susan,

who Zoe Wanamaker played for a decade

opposite Robert Lindsay in the top-rating BBC One sitcom.

Between those clans she became a familiar

and award-winning stage actress in classical and modern roles.

Inheriting a famous showbiz name,

she's made it even more celebrated in her own right.

Both your parents were actors

and you followed them into the profession.

Have you ever regretted it or wished you'd done something else instead?

No.

I wish I'd had...

..more time for my education.

That's all.

I think that's the only thing.

I wish I'd been able to go to university

and actually spend some time doing that.

Expanding my brain a little bit more in an academic way.

And looking at your list of credits,

there's a pretty decent job on stage or screen for pretty much

every year I can find since you started in the 1970s.

Is that the case or have there been spells of unemployment and despair?

Yes is the quick answer.

Yes, there have been.

I remember times when I had to count the pennies to find out

if I could buy a loaf of bread

or if I could get a pack of fags or something like that,

but, yes, I think there's an innate fear of not working.

And also, I love working. I love it.

A lot of actors don't work, as we know.

Because of the way it works, having to go for auditions

and the possibility of rejection and then reviews

and whether things run or not, or work as films,

insecurity is inevitable, is it?

Yes, absolutely.

I'm afraid it's a shadow that's there with you all the time.

It goes with the territory, I think,

which is a shame cos it can cripple you.

That's the only problem.

And is acting completely natural to you now,

or are there nerves and uncertainty?

Yes, there are nerves and uncertainty.

It's not natural.

It's instinctive.

But there are times when it becomes, as an actor,

for me, personally, anyway, there are times when my instinct stops,

and that's when I get stuck.

Then it's finding your way out of that, that is always the struggle

and is always the crisis point in any rehearsal period it seems to me.

Has it gone beyond that? Have you found yourself in a role

where you have ended up thinking, "I just can't play this?"

Yes, and I think that's when I stopped reading reviews.

And I did go to the director and I said, after a week,

"I don't think I'm right for this."

Which part?

Let me finish the story and then I'll tell you.

It was the only time that I felt American and Jewish.

It's never happened to me before

and I was surrounded by very English actors

and I felt that I was completely wrong for it.

Then I read a review after we opened and this one critic said that

I was completely wrong and it crippled me for the rest of the run.

Completely crippled me, destroyed me.

So I thought, "That's it, I'm never going to read a review again."

There's no point if that's what's going to happen to you,

that you actually can not function after that.

And it was The Importance Of Being Earnest at the National

with Judi playing my mother...

-Judi Dench?

-Yes, sorry, Judi Dench.

..which was our second outing as mother and daughter.

That was an example of being crippled by something.

I think I had another image in my head of what it should be,

not what it was.

So, in that case, did you say to Judi Dench,

"Look, I'm struggling here."

-Yes.

-And what did she say?

I can't remember. Probably something very encouraging.

But this is the problem.

If a film hasn't worked, people don't like it, you're away from it,

but on stage, if you don't feel it's working

or if the audiences aren't coming or the reviews have been bad,

you just have to carry on.

Yes, you do. You have to go on.

You have to keep on believing in that path that you've taken

and the reason that you committed yourself to that piece of work

and also to that character.

And you have to do it justice and you have to believe in it somehow.

That's why I don't read reviews. There's no point.

It just is damaging.

I can't take criticism until the play is done,

the character's put to bed, character's put to sleep,

and then maybe I'll look at a review

and think that was justified or not.

Another question of etiquette over reactions to roles is

you're married to an actor, Gawn Grainger,

so when you go and see each other,

are there rules about how honest you are?

I think one has to be very delicate about...

This doesn't just apply to my husband.

It applies to everybody, I think.

You can't destroy somebody's confidence like that.

Ever.

Do you carry in your head a list of the ones that worked

and the ones that didn't?

No, I don't carry it with me. Once I've finished a character it's gone.

But I do have happy, good memories of things that I feel I was,

on the whole, pleased with myself with.

In your episode of Who Do You Think You Are,

you described yourself as an immigrant

because you moved to the UK from America at the age of two.

Was that jokey or is that, in fact, how you think of yourself?

No, I don't think so.

I think the older I've become, the more I see around me

that most of us are immigrants in some way or other,

and it was just very visceral, that experience, I have to say,

and it's a privilege, that programme, in a way,

because the research is done for you.

Because you're father was a more public figure,

you tend to be associated with him.

Yours are the names that are connected when people talk about you

so were you, in fact, closer to your father than to your mother?

No, I wouldn't say. I think it was equal.

I think I was quite frightened of my father.

I loved him and hated him at the same time and I was quite nervous of him.

My mother was adorable and sweet

and funny

and vulnerable

and shy.

All those things.

She brought us up really because Dad started going...

After his passport was given back to him,

he started going back to work in America a lot.

So Mum was there looking after the three of us.

So it was hard. It was harder for her.

The question of the passport.

In your Who Do You Think You Are,

it was set up as a mystery at the beginning

that your Dad, Sam Wanamaker,

suddenly left the US in 1951, come here.

But I felt that I actually knew that there had been a lot of discussion

in his obituaries and even in interviews he gave

about him being a victim of McCarthyism.

Having to leave America and coming here.

Did you, in fact, know as little as you appeared to know

in the TV documentary?

Yes, I did know as little as that because...

It was never really mentioned when we were growing up.

The only time it was mentioned...

I do remember only a few times in my memory, which is not good,

that when the offices were broken into in the States,

Daddy was sent his file,

so I remember that very well because it was Sunday lunch time

and we all had a look at it and it was this thin.

So this was Senator McCarthy's investigation, yeah.

My god. 'A reliable informant, 1947' it goes back.

'Confidential informant advised that she, an actress,

'had been active in the theatre during that time in New York.

'She'd been told the Wanamakers, Charlotte and Sam,

had been members of the Communist Party for a number of years.'

It just looks like they were people they were working with

were informants.

And then the next time we spoke about it, which I think I said,

was when I was doing The Crucible at the National, and it was

the first time I can remember Daddy really talking about what happened.

Because, for people who don't know,

Arthur Miller's The Crucible was inspired by McCarthyism

-and the pursuit of alleged Communists in America.

-Yes.

-So it was therefore a very direct...

-The witch hunt.

The only reason why we came to England was because of Daddy knowing

that he was going to be subpoenaed to go before the committee.

He must have been tipped off.

I also didn't know to the extent he was a member of the Communist Party.

Now that was really interesting watching that programme that,

to adapt that terrible McCarthy phrase, growing up with him,

you had no sense he was or ever had been a Communist?

I don't think I was that politically aware, to be honest. Or interested.

That's my...

It may be a failing, but I just wasn't that...

It didn't matter to me.

I didn't know that he'd been followed. I didn't know that.

All I knew was what my mother told me, which I think

I talked about, that she was constantly, when living in New York,

worried about the phone being tapped,

about the knock at the door, who it was going to be,

about certain friends, so coming to England was a big thing for them.

And that detail you say of your Dad getting his passport back and being

able to go and work there, do you remember that happening at the time?

All I remember is that he took my big sister...

..on a weekend trip, I think, to Holland or somewhere.

Copenhagen or something, because he had his passport.

He just wanted to see if it worked.

But you didn't know the details of why he'd lost his passport?

No, I didn't know the details.

I just knew that he was very outspoken and he was very left wing

and he was part of the Hollywood Ten.

He'd met the Hollywood Ten in Washington.

I knew those sort of stories

and that a lot of my parents' friends in this country

were American immigrants running away.

So what was your relationship with America then,

when you were growing up?

-Did you ever go there?

-Yes, I went there.

Then, telephone calls were quite expensive and my grandparents...

You know, the telephone calls were usually on a Sunday.

My mother always used to say, "It's my nickel" or "It's their nickel.

"You can't talk for too long."

So I did go back, I think, the first time I went there was

when I was 17 or 18 to New York.

I went to New York and then I went to Chicago to see my aunt

and then I went to California where my grandparents had retired to.

I suddenly felt very English because we had mini skirts here,

we had bubble haircuts and we had the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

So suddenly, for me to be English, was much more cool

than it was to be American.

It was the sixties, you know.

Your father became very celebrated in this country and remained so

for the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe beside the Thames.

Was Shakespeare a big deal growing up?

-For me?

-Yeah.

No.

In fact, when I left drama school,

that time is about the seventies,

we're talking about the seventies.

For me, the most important thing was new writing

and that was very dominant with my generation of actors as well.

My friends.

So when I first went to Stratford I wanted to do new plays

rather than do Shakespeare, but then I kind of...

John Barton used to have sonnet classes on a Saturday morning

and those were illuminating and extraordinary and I would have...

If I got stuck, I would have to ask my friends

about how does iambic pentameter work.

I still to this day don't know.

Well, I do, ish, but it's instinct.

I mean, it's the wonderful thing about Shakespeare

and that's what I loved about being there.

It was like having a good education again

and learning again about Shakespeare and why people loved it so much.

But what became the Globe Project...

What became the Globe Project?

Yeah, was that there? Was that passion from early on?

That was a passion from his, I think,

from the 1960s, late sixties.

It suddenly became a thing with him, but my career was just beginning

and he's then started this whole passion for Shakespeare's Globe.

It is Shakespeare's Globe to most of us when we go past it or we see it,

but it's HIS Globe, is it, for you?

Yeah, he'd hate me for saying that, but it's true.

But he's dead! So he can't criticise me any more!

THEY GIGGLE

No, it's a fantastic thing and, in fact, what they've done is,

they're building this indoor Jacobean theatre now

and they're going to call it the Sam Wanamaker Theatre,

which he would again have hated,

because he didn't believe in naming buildings after people.

You know, as long as he's in the ether and his name goes in the ether,

I'm very happy. I think it's great.

So growing up in school, you had an American passport,

but I assume an English accent.

Yeah. Yeah.

But did you think of yourself as an American?

No, not really.

Um...

When Dad would go to the States,

he would always come back with suitcases of clothes,

as kind of apology for being away for so long,

and there was always a fight between the three girls,

you know, as to who would get...

Cos Dad's taste was always a little bit...

THEY GIGGLE

And there was always a fight as to who got what.

There was always colour involved,

whereas, and still, the '50s and '60s, everybody started to wear black

and everybody was being a Beatnik or white lipstick, I remember.

White lipstick and black eyeliner and lots of blond streaked hair, I had.

Dreadful, with peroxide.

And so when he brought colour into the house, there was always that.

The other time I felt American was when we'd go to English houses,

and there was no central heating and it was freezing cold,

and the showers would always pee at you

rather than actually having a full-grown shower,

and when I was on tour, putting money into the metres for the gas,

and having Flannelette, you know - those sort of things were not...

..not how I was brought up!

THEY LAUGH

Because my mother imported... stuff from the States.

Sheets that would...were nice.

-And the power shower is part of the American dream.

-Yes.

An actual shower that does you, rather than does bits of you.

It's cold. It's horrid.

That's when I felt American.

Also I felt American in as far as we watched Lucille Ball,

we watched Bill Coe, we watched those sorts of things, which...

which were part of my heritage.

My children's books were -

The Bobbsey Twins was something that I used to like.

So I felt in that way American, very much a part of that culture.

The humour, really.

And schoolchildren are very, very alert to outsiders

and people who aren't quite fitting in,

but did you pass as a perfect English schoolgirl?

Well, like all middle-class girls, you start having a cockney accent,

and start trying to be street, so that's what I did,

and so yeah,

I tried to be cool.

And you said earlier, The Importance Of Being Earnest,

it was the only time you'd felt American and Jewish.

-Yes.

-The Jewish aspect of it.

So, although your family were, they were not observant.

We were Jewish, yes.

Oh... There was a time when Dad got suddenly very worried

that we weren't learning about our...our culture as Jews,

so I went to the Saturday morning classes.

I think cos he knew Hugh Gaitskell quite well,

and so I think one of the Gaitskell girls were going there as well,

so I went to Saturday morning classes for a few months.

That was through the then-Labour leader,

so that was through left-wing politics?

Definitely. Definitely.

So in your childhood, that sense of what it meant to have been blacklisted,

to have been accused of being a communist in American show business

and then left, you were aware of all that.

It was openly talked about.

Yes, that was openly talked about.

So when you said earlier, I seemed to have no knowledge,

I think I had not gone into it deeply.

I didn't, at that time, connect with -

in my completely selfish way -

had not connected with the pain and suffering and...and...

..conflict that must have happened within these people,

my parents included.

I wondered about that.

Were they visibly, noticeably angry about it or they kept it hidden?

I don't think they kept it hidden at all.

I bought Dad for Christmas Kazan's, Elia Kazan's biography,

and he wasn't too pleased, he didn't think that was funny.

-Because Kazan was on the other...

-Because he named names.

He named names. Yeah.

And I think that he didn't find that interesting at all.

He was clearly, as we see because the Globe is there,

he was determined, your father.

That's what was scary about him. He was a powerful force, I have to say.

I think the three of us were all...

We loved him and also hated him. Hated is too strong a word.

Yes. Sometimes we would hate him. I know I did.

Angry, just angry with him.

Why? Why would he make you angry?

You know, we only remember the good things. Isn't it funny?

Erm...

I think because he was...erm, always right.

THEY LAUGH

Erm, and also he was combative.

And sometimes would be...

Let me see, he wouldn't take any prisoners.

If somebody crossed him, that was it.

He could be very strong like that.

He was a first-generation American and that says a lot,

and particularly in this country, sometimes I would find it embarrassing.

Fathers are very embarrassing sometimes as well.

And he talked to people in the street and I thought that was embarrassing.

You know, he was nice to people.

I think I have more of my mother in me,

which is slightly more shy and reserved and get self-conscious.

But he was also a first-generation American who'd been kicked out of the country,

which is pretty... You can see why... I think I can see why,

psychologically, that is a pretty extraordinary thing, isn't it.

Mmm.

-So you have the immigrant pride and then you have the anger.

-Yes.

Yes. I think the anger.

But he was also that kind of person, he never liked to sit still.

He never liked to... If he wasn't working, he'd create work.

I think that's how the Globe started to some extent,

because he was taking his brother, who was a doctor, on a visit to London

and they walked around Southwark and found everything in dereliction,

and found this plaque.

So then he got fired up about that.

It's very him that he would have been that driven

because a lot of people would've given up

and a lot of people would never have achieved it, but he did both.

Yeah. And also from a lot of people saying no.

Southwark Council saying no. The people of Southwark saying no.

Erm...

I think they thought he was an American and therefore either

they should be given the money or he should go back to his own country.

LAUGHTER

I don't know what.

But to spend 27 years of his life on this mission, I would have given up.

Just...

And your parents sent you, at one point, to a Quaker school.

Was that for religious reasons or just because it was a good school?

I think they felt that I was...

SHE GIGGLES

I wasn't doing well at my other school, I was distracted,

and that I needed to go elsewhere and I should be sent away,

and the Quaker boarding school was a lovely idea.

Really fantastic. But it was too late. It was too late.

But I did love going on the Sunday meetings,

I really enjoyed that very much.

I think it was so that I was away from London, away from distractions.

I had a boyfriend at the time, and that was not right.

Erm... Not "not right", it was just distracting.

Were you a bad girl?

I was a bad girl.

I smoked cigarettes behind the bike sheds, literally.

I mean, really.

Also, unbeknownst to myself,...

..I have dyslexia, so that made things a little more...tricky.

Also, half my concentration was out the window, anyway.

I was away with the fairies most of the time.

But I was taken off maths because they said there's no point.

There's just no point!

But there it is, they were right.

They just gave up.

When was the dyslexia diagnosed?

-Only a few years ago.

-Right.

I'd always...

..used it as an excuse.

So you had self-diagnosed yourself?

Yeah.

I had said, "I've got dyslexia", with my cockney, right-on accent.

I've got dyslexia so I can't make no head nor tail of what this script is

or I can't read, any excuse to not actually get to the point,

which is what drove my father insane.

Hence me being frightened of him!

But I was diagnosed a few years ago,

and it's a relief to know that I wasn't wrong.

Now I wear it as a kind of...

badge of honour really, cos I've managed to get this far with it,

and I think it can be a very crippling thing.

So all those years, before you were diagnosed,

of reading scripts and learning lines,

was it significantly more difficult than it should've been?

Sometimes.

Sometimes it was hard,

but that's usually when a thing was... If it wasn't written well.

Which is quite interesting.

Shakespeare, I found very easy to learn because there is a rhythm.

There is something in that writing which is easier, instinctively,

to get under your belt.

Poor, key-cold figure of a holy king.

Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster.

Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood.

Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost

to hear the lamentations of poor Anne.

Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter'd son.

Stabbed by the selfsame hand that made these wounds.

And since you were diagnosed, have you done anything about it?

No, I've been very lazy about it.

I haven't had time, which is nice.

It is, isn't it.

Some acting parents urge their children to follow them and others

urge them not to follow them so which side were your parents on?

Completely against it.

I was quite good at painting and drawing,

and so of course my father said, "You should go to art school".

I also had a great passion, when I was quite young, of costume.

I thought costumes were quite interesting,

and theatrical design I thought was interesting,

so Dad sort of encouraged me in that direction

and I went to Hornsey College of Art

and did what was called a pre-diploma year at Hornsey,

which I loved. I really loved it.

But I knew that after about nine months of being there,

I had to apply for a diploma,

to get another three-year course and I was going to go into fine art

and I just realised that I didn't like being on my own.

It's a very solitary thing.

And it sort of made up my mind, I wanted to go to drama school.

And so at school when you weren't behind the bike sheds smoking,

you did some drama.

Yes, I did.

The school that I went to had an open-air theatre

and they would do plays in the summer there,

and they would also do them in the gym hall, or whatever it was called,

and I did the Admirable Crichton there,

and I did As You Like It there.

What did you play in As You Like It?

SHE SCOFFS

Rosalind?

THEY LAUGH

And did people immediately think you were good?

I don't remember. I don't remember that bit.

I think that's when my parents got worried, more than anything.

That's when they got a bit nervous that I might be an actress.

And they did try to talk you out of it, did they?

Well...

Yes, they did.

In the sense, it's tough to be a woman in this business...

Erm...

if you don't fit a certain stereotype,

what it was particularly in those days you had to be very pretty,

you had to be very thin, or very, very, very good.

And I don't think I was any of those things.

My mother was also an actress,

and also had known what a dispiriting thing it can be

and as you started our interview with saying, it's very insecure,

it would just...

They knew that it would feed on my insecurities

and that it wasn't going to be good for me.

-And yet for some reason you were determined to do it.

-Mmm.

Is that because you thought you were good

or you wanted to defy your parents?

Erm...

There must have been a bit of ego in there somewhere.

I fell in love with the smell of it.

I've also fell in love with the, not the academic side,

but the discovery of a story, a play.

The discovery of a character. The...

The machinations, the ways of becoming somebody else.

And that is a constant...

A constant thing with me.

But also if you were dyslexic,

I've spoken to other dyslexic actors about this, that it freed you.

It got you into stories in a way that you couldn't as a reader.

I think that's right. I think it did.

It's all so very...

..romantic in a funny way. I think that's what first...

My father always said, you're only in the theatre to dress up!

Which was partly true.

And that word that understandably annoys actors, "luvvie"

that has come in in the last couple of decades,

that idea of being very theatrical and calling everyone "darling".

Are you that kind of actor?

I don't know. You'd have to ask somebody else.

I think this country has a kind of...

There's a kind of anger

that people can have a good time

doing the thing that they love doing.

When you go to America in particular,

you go to France, Italy, Germany,

there is a complete understanding that it is a craft,

that it is a technique, that there is some kind of intelligence behind it.

I think this country has a kind of weird...

..view of the arts, in particular, and particularly actors.

Once you decided you were going to go to drama school,

did your parents give you tips of the "eat a banana during the interval

"and don't deliver a line from behind a sofa" type?

LAUGHTER

No.

My father was wonderful at notes.

He would give me notes which were fantastic, and my mother too.

My mother, Dad always said this, was probably a better actor than he was.

But my father was fantastic at notes, really, really wonderful.

Had you been the child of Richard Burton, say,

there are lots of people called Burton,

but Wanamaker is quite a distinctive name.

Was it immediately recognised at drama school and casting directors and so on?

Just before I left drama school,

I thought maybe I should change my name.

And I mentioned this to Dad and he said,

"Why? Are you embarrassed about me?"

And I thought that did it for me.

The other thing is that I remember Vanessa Redgrave saying,

if it can get my foot in the door...

..then, you know, they don't have to hire me,

so I thought, well, that's a good thing to remember.

But it's a hard act when you know, in those days, people knew that

Dad was the first method actor to come to this country,

that there was a lot at stake to some extent and a lot of burden,

which I'm sure every child of a famous parent has had to go through,

that you have to somehow prove yourself even more

that you're worthy of that name.

Was there any ever bitchiness at drama school or in your early years

in the business that there had been nepotism?

No. Not that I can remember.

There've been people, actors, coming up to me

and poking me in the chest and saying, "your father!".

There was a lot of that!

LAUGHTER

You went, quite early on, to the Royal Shakespeare Company for really quite a long time.

It's uncommon now.

People tend to do one or two productions.

But the word is there in the title, Royal Shakespeare Company,

but it really was, you signed up for a long time in those days.

In those days you'd sign up for basically two years.

My first job with the Royal Shakespeare Company was in 1976

and then they asked me to go to Stratford,

which I'd always wanted to do because it was a bit like Mecca.

And I felt it was a place where I could study Shakespeare,

I could study my craft,

and so, in the end, I was with the Royal Shakespeare on and off for 12 years.

And one of the breakthrough roles, significantly to me,

was an American play -

Once In A Lifetime by Moss Hart and George S Kaufman.

It seems sensible casting to me, but were you conscious

that you could bring out that side of your heritage?

-I assume American accents are easier for you.

-Yes.

American accents are not difficult at all.

I thank Barbara Streisand for that.

In what way?

Well...

Funny Girl for me was sort of like,

she was Jewish, she was American, she was funny,

she was...sassy.

And she wasn't "pretty".

And so I related to that.

Then along came Bette Midler, so I could relate to that.

Women being slightly out of control and getting away with it.

Which I loved.

I think it was, instinctively, I felt with Once In A Lifetime

that that character was somebody I knew very well.

Was your father pleased that you were doing an American play

or did it not register in that way?

I never asked him.

He did say once though my American accent was dreadful.

LAUGHTER

Yes.

So I always have a coach now when I'm doing an American play.

Although you have done a lot of them.

Arthur Miller, All My Sons, Crucible, Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets.

Another important role early on, Piaf by the late Pam Gems sadly now.

Jane Laportaire played the title role.

You were in a supporting role, but a good one, a good part.

Toine.

Pam Gems based it on a book,

I think that Piaf's half-sister wrote, that was a new play,

and we improvised on the script a little bit,

and we created I think a lovely piece of work, a really good piece of work.

And although you were in the Royal Shakespeare Company,

even at that stage you were beginning to be picked out as a star

and an individual and the awards happened very quickly,

because there was the Olivier Award for Once In A Lifetime, which is pretty impressive.

You were a young actress. Did you think this is really taking off?

No.

I think, I think that season, it was '78, '79 season.

It was the first time I didn't put my hands across my chest,

or in my pockets or...

So that something happened in my head

which was more concentrated than I'd probably been.

That took eight years out of drama school!

LAUGHTER

I then went back to New York and did Loot, which got...

A Joe Orton play, another nomination.

And then I did Awake And Sing!, which is Clifford Odets.

And so, but always working with the most fantastic actors,

I had the most wonderful time.

Oh, and of course Electra.

Yes.

Electra, which was great to be on Broadway with.

People queuing around the block - for Sophocles.

That was so exciting.

Shakespeare, as you say, you'd gone to the Royal Shakespeare Company

to try to learn that, but then that began to take off.

Twelfth Night, Othello - the big Shakespeare roles started to come.

I was playing Emelia which was a lovely production by Trevor Nunn,

with Ian McKellen and Willard White,

Imogen Stubbs, Michael Grandage - I could go on.

So that was great too.

And by that stage, you were feeling at home in Shakespeare?

Yes. I mean, when I get stuck with Shakespeare, I always ask.

But to be honest, you know,

the most difficult Shakespeares are not on the women's side.

We go into the history plays really to get the trickiest bits of Shakespeare, I think.

Ah! We've jumped forward now to one of my favourite of your productions

which was just a few years ago, Much Ado About Nothing,

with Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre.

A Nicholas Hytner production.

In that, I think you have one of the hardest lines in all of Shakespeare,

which is the scene where Benedict says,

"I will do anything for you" in effect, and she says,

-"Kill Claudio".

-"Kill Claudio".

Which is an astonishing line.

So you're in a comedy and then it becomes a tragedy,

or potentially one, but that must be one of the hardest lines there is.

No. I don't think so.

I think the hardest lines for Beatrice were cut, thank God!

Which was at the beginning of the play,

which are Elizabethan jokes, which, you know, you don't understand.

It's about Cupids and poignards and God knows what else,

and Nick Hytner was right saying, we won't even try these

because it's in the first beat of the play,

half the audience will be going,

"Er, where's the dictionary? Erm, what does this mean?"

And you stop an audience from enjoying and understanding or listening.

So thank God those lines had gone, but "kill Claudio" is the most beautiful...

That scene between Beatrice and Benedict is one of the most...

wonderful love scenes I... It's just glorious.

And we didn't have to rehearse very much because we both understood it,

and it's the first time that they admit that they love each other,

and at the same time she's asking him to kill this man,

but I know where it comes from, you know where it comes from,

because the story has gone before us

and it either gets a laugh from the audience

because it's quite funny - and it's also very shocking.

And that's why...

I saw it twice, that production, but you got a gasp, which I think...

Is the best.

I think if it doesn't work, you do get a laugh from the audience.

-If it works properly, it's chilling, as it was in that production.

-Yeah.

I don't remember the reaction but sometimes if kids laughed,

usually it's kids, but that's good.

That's a kind of a gasp in a way.

THEY CHUCKLE

Beginnings in TV,

which is how it works I suppose, you are just trying to get in to it,

so Village Hall, Crown Court, those kind of things.

It's just you go up for what there is, really,

just try to get into it.

My first one was called Sally For Keeps.

You know, there was a religious slot

and I worked with Barbara Leigh Hunt and I was very method at that time,

in a way still am, but that was really method.

Just explain. Method, which your father had been, is,

and this is to parody it, but if you're playing a butcher,

you go and try to be a butcher if you can.

You try to get as close as you can to the reality of it.

Yes. And it's also, erm...

You have to be ready to say what you have to say,

emotionally and imaginatively,

so you have to be the character to some extent,

and allow it to come

from an emotional base and an intellectual base,

so that the concentration, you have to really concentrate

and transform yourself into that human being.

It could be self-indulgent, but it can be brilliant.

When you say even now, to some extent, you're method,

but if you're playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing,

then how can you apply the method to that?

You could apply it in all sorts of ways.

You can't become an unmarried woman on the shelf,

because you weren't, for example?

No, but I nearly was an unmarried woman on the shelf.

Ah! So you can go back to what you...?

You can relate to that, it's just finding the sense memory

of what those experiences were or could be.

It's a fascinating, and I think most actors do it instinctively.

But there is a deeper way, the American method,

now by Lee Strasberg,

went, you know, as when I did My Week With Marilyn...

This is an amazing production.

In My Week With Marilyn, you play Paula Strasberg,

Marilyn Monro's acting coach,

wife of Lee Strasberg, the pioneer of method,

which your father had been part of,

so that was a direct connection to the theatre he came from.

Absolutely.

I couldn't find very much about Paula on the internet

or indeed anywhere else.

I only had one friend who was a publicist in New York who,

when I mentioned it, he's 89, and he said, "Oh no, not that woman!"

It was fascinating only because it was part of

my parents before I was born stuff,

so they were both there at Lee Strasberg's,

at the beginning of the Lee Strasberg school,

so that connection was wonderful in that way,

so that I was back in that era.

Paula?

Christ!

I don't get it.

Such a strange man, I think she'd have already figured out

-he only invited her here to sleep with her.

-So, what is the...?

The reason Marilyn can't remember the line

is because she doesn't believe the situation her character is in.

Then she should pretend to believe it.

Pretend?

We're talking about the difference between the truth

-and artificial crap.

-We agree. Acting is about truth.

If you can fake that, you'll have a jolly good career.

Maybe we should try for another take.

Marilyn needs time to give a great performance.

Give her as long as it takes. Chaplin took eight months to make a movie.

Eight months of this?

I'd rather kill myself.

We were talking about the development of a TV career.

Love Hurts, 1992,

Laurence Marks, Maurice Gran,

which was your first co-starring

-co-lead, I suppose, wasn't it, on TV?

-Yes.

Thank God.

It won't turn off. The pop-up waste is stuck.

The whole flat's a disaster. I bought it off a do-it-yourself

with the mechanical aptitude of a subnormal prawn.

We didn't install this, love.

What do you mean?

You said you bought this from us? But we don't stock this model.

Tsk, tsk. You fibbed, didn't you?

No, no!

Yes. I was desperate. You were the only plumber who answered the phone.

I've a reception in Mayfair in an hour! Please!

All right.

Go and get dressed, I'll sort it out.

Adam Faith. Now, he's reputed to be a bit of a character,

but what was he like to work with?

Adam was extremely bright.

Extremely bright.

Absolutely charming.

Erm, but his mind was

all over, I mean, he...

His hyperactive mind, all the time.

He was...

annoying and...

a really good actor.

He could be really good, if he concentrated

and that was really good.

-I'd also done a Paradise Postponed before that.

-Ah, John Mortimer.

With a John Mortimer script, which was also fascinating.

That was a really good bit of filming as well. I really enjoyed that.

Now, one of the roles for which you will always be remembered,

My Family started in the year 2000.

Susan Harper, dentist's wife,

when you were first offered that, did you see the...

You wouldn't have thought 11 years, but did you see potential?

No.

What I saw was actually quite a funny script, the first ones,

because it was quite quirky, something I hadn't seen before.

It was also written by Fred Barron initially, as an American.

I was going to say, this is another weird connection

because it was the first Anglo-American comedy, in effect,

because they brought Fred Barron in from American TV

to try to create a kind of American domestic drama

so there you were, an Anglo-American actress in an Anglo-American sitcom.

It was, the humour was a little bit more off-the-wall,

which I enjoyed.

You know, it was somebody who watched I Love Lucy

and Mary Tyler Moore shows.

To me, that was slightly more in my, in my direction.

We didn't know from one series to another whether it would get,

the BBC would pick it up or not.

I was watching that first episode again and it is,

it's very much in the American sitcom style.

There's a scene where you and Robert Lindsay are in bed

and you've been to another dentist.

-Oh...

-And they have a conversation about whether

the technique and equipment of the other dentist were superior

but it's obviously about two things.

But that seemed to me, looking at it again,

very, that's very kind of American sitcom.

Yeah. Yeah.

I like that. It's quick.

It's quick, it's fast, it's...

It was quite witty, because he had to stick his tongue down my throat

to check on the fillings. Is that the one?

Ha! I think that's great.

'That's sexy!

'It's sexy and odd, you know? It's good.'

You know, I read somewhere

that the older you get, the less sleep you need.

Really? What are you supposed to do with all that extra time?

I've got a few ideas.

Well, I'm always open to ideas.

That's not true, but I'm not going to argue.

-Oh, my God.

-What's wrong?

That molar. Upper right five.

-What about it?

-The cracked filling, you've had it repaired.

'11 years, though, that,'

the risk is boredom, isn't it?

Sitcoms...famously, the situation doesn't change very much.

It's not the boredom, actually.

It's usually, it's always to do with the writing.

It's always to do with...

the storylines and the writing.

That's why I came into this world in the first place,

the interest in new work and new writing,

and the writing sometimes wasn't...

..witty enough, it wasn't following

that kind of humour that was...

initially attracted it to me in the first place.

And that's when it starts to become frustrating.

But mathematically, over 11 years, there are only so many times

he can think she's having an affair or she can think he is.

-That's right.

-That's the problem.

-There aren't that many possible situations.

-No. There's the...

-What's the story? That there are only seven stories?

-Yeah.

Or something like that!

This new level of public recognition, I assume this was when,

like walking down the street, going to the supermarket,

you realise you're in a TV hit.

Oh, yes. That was Love Hurts.

That was the first time it happened to me,

quite dramatically, really.

Somebody had a minor car accident.

So it, you know, that's a shock.

-What, they saw you and drove...?

-Well, they did a double take

and I think they bumped into another car. It wasn't a major thing, but...

-I'd love to have seen the insurance form.

-I know!

He filled in, "I saw her from Love Hurts in the street..."

I know. But that's when you realise the power of television.

I mean, it was then, you know,

how many millions of viewers and then it starts,

now it's started to get smaller and smaller and smaller,

so a good audience is now what? 4 million? 6 million?

I don't know. It used to be 12, 18.

When My Family came to an end,

were you angry or did you just accept it?

Well, no, I wasn't...

To be honest, I was just angry as to how they handled it,

that was all, really, more than anything.

And, um, I don't mind.

11 years is a good, long run

and it was great fun when we were doing it,

we worked together really well,

we enjoyed it, we enjoyed each other's company...

There was a hint that they thought,

they pretty much said it had got tired and was too cosy, didn't they?

No, all I got was that

the BBC didn't want to have any more middle-class sitcoms,

which was kind of shooting yourself in the foot, really,

as a statement, because

along comes Miranda Hart, who is the most wonderful...

And she's not exactly working class.

You also famously,

you discovered that Mr Lindsay was getting paid more than you.

Oh, wow. Yes, that was a long time back.

I feel very strongly

that women should be paid the same.

And that's that.

I mean, I've always felt there's an equality,

there should be an equality.

Woman's rights should be...

So yes, I did find that out.

I found that...demeaning.

So when you go into, say, a West End play,

do you insist that you are paid the same as a male co-star?

It varies, depends on the play.

It depends on the play and it depends on the production. It depends on...

It always depends on who's more famous than the other.

You know? And who's left and who's right of the poster.

So in All My Sons, the Arthur Miller with David Suchet,

was he officially more famous than you, or...

Definitely.

Well, Poirot is such a...

Because in Poirot, he's Poirot and you are Ariadne Oliver.

-Yes.

-Although of all the roles to play in Poirot,

apart from Poirot, which wasn't available to you,

it's a fascinating one, that, isn't it? Because clearly

it is a self-portrait by Agatha Christie of a crime writer,

which is therefore one of her most interesting characters, I think.

Oh! Sorry! Sorry!

-Good gracious! It's you, Monsieur Poirot.

-Madame Oliver!

-What are you...?

-I'm so sorry.

-But what was it?

An apple core. Won't do any harm.

-What are you doing in the sticks? You don't live here, do you?

-No.

No, you live in that awful Modernist place in town.

So it's a murder!

Right.

-Not my hostess, I hope.

-Well, who is your hostess?

She lives somewhere around here.

A place called Laburnums. Any idea where it is?

I love Ariadne Oliver.

I think when I first was asked to do it,

David gave me a book,

to read about Agatha,

and you can see why

she created this character.

It's really against herself. She's...

talks too much, she makes assumptions,

she's...eccentric,

she changes her hair all the time,

I mean, Agatha has written a most wonderful human being

and such an antithesis to him.

It's great.

In theatre, you've achieved what I think all people want to do,

which is to alternate classics and new plays.

They've come along at various times.

Terry Johnson's Dead Funny,

-which was an extraordinary marital farce, very dark marital farce.

-Hmm.

But you did that, and then a few years later,

you did Euripides' Electra.

That's the ideal balance, I suppose, is it?

To go between classics and new plays.

It's fabulous.

It's...

That's why I want to be an actor.

And with, obviously, it's a draining and emotional play, Electra.

Are you one of those actresses who can switch it on and off?

No.

These women do stay with you,

particularly Electra.

I think she had to be put in a box at one point.

Because you'd taken too much of it?

Because I think, yes, they can be emotionally exhausting,

and Electra being one of them,

not surprisingly.

No, I did have to find a way of actually

not letting myself...

..be with her all the time.

It's funny how these things...

It's all...a mystery.

That's what interesting, maybe that's...

Does this sound pretentious?

-Try.

-I don't know, it's just,

sometimes it is a mystery to actors themselves

what happens to them as people

when they work on something.

And maybe that's why...

the English like to call them luvvies.

But I don't care.

I mean, I really don't mind, because that is part of its...

that's part of its fascination, I think, theatre, really.

It's a common complaint of actresses in the latter parts of their career

that the roles are not there,

partly because the classical roles,

the senior classical roles are better for men than women,

you have to accept it, don't you?

Yeah.

Yeah, you do. Which is sad.

Um...

It's a fact. You just have to face it

and get people to write more

for women of a certain age,

over 40 would help.

There are two things you said several times during this interview,

that you're not very bright and not very attractive,

but is that a shtick or is that,

do you really feel insecure about those things?

Well, that's probably a very bad habit.

Erm...

I think that's what I felt in my youth.

A lot.

I didn't feel that I fitted into a norm.

And...

You just, come on, you have to accept who you...what you look like.

And I suppose I do, to some extent, now.

And it works on screen, clearly, doesn't it? Your face.

Yeah. I hope so.

Well, it has by now, anyway.

The traditional final question for actors, which we touched on already,

are there specific roles you have in mind

or will you just wait and see what comes along?

No, I have no specific roles in mind,

at all.

That's the fun of it, I suppose.

And you can, there's no retirement age either, but you would go on,

if the roles come, you'll go on as long as you can?

Yeah, gosh, yes!

We like what we do, and it's not a hobby.

It's, it's an ongoing...

..discovery, I think, in a way,

and also, I suppose,

you want things that you haven't done before.

Yeah.

-Zoe Wanamaker, thank you.

-Thank you.

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