Juliet Stevenson

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an actress. At the age of nine she was asked to recite a sonnet in front of her school audience. She felt, she says, as though a light had been switched on. Twenty six years later, she's now thirty five the light is burning at full power. She is one of the leading actresses of her generation, with a stint at the RSC behind her, some major roles including Hedda Garbler at the National, and two other performances which have brought her great acclaim. One is the lead in the film Truly Madly Deeply, the other the part of Paulina in the play Death and the Maiden. She won Best Actress Awards for both. She is Juliet Stevenson.

Presenter1:07

Juliet, what was that sonnet that turned on the

Juliet Stevenson1:10

What actually happened was that I was

Juliet Stevenson1:13

They were deciding who should read what at this event some sort of speech day.

Juliet Stevenson1:17

And I think I was being encouraged to read something from Winnie the Pooh, or something more appropriate for a nine-year-old, but I found this piece of paper, picked it up, and I read this poem.

Juliet Stevenson1:25

And it had this last line of every verse, which was If I could tell you, I would let you know. That was the line, it's the only thing I remember.

Juliet Stevenson1:32

And it was a it was a poem of such sort of uh sadness and sweetness, and great maturity, I suppose, and great passion, and I persuaded them to let me do it. I think that

Juliet Stevenson1:43

That's all it's always important later on in life when things get so confused to go back to your very early instincts. And that was an early instinct I had born when I first read that poem that although

Juliet Stevenson1:53

although I hadn't experienced it, although I didn't know what was involved, what the the s sort of the extent and range of the feelings involved, that I could communicate it and could make other people feel that they had.

Presenter2:04

So was it a case of then from from that age, from nine onwards, having a vocation, knowing that you had to be on the stage, you wanted to act?

Juliet Stevenson2:13

Well, it wasn't really as clear as that. It felt like a light going on in the s in the sense that I think from that point or from somewhere around there.

Juliet Stevenson2:21

I really did have a passion.

Juliet Stevenson2:23

for acting, insofar as I knew what that was. Um it was something to do with telling other people's stories or living other people's lives.

Juliet Stevenson2:32

But you dreamt apparently

Presenter2:35

not of playing the great female roles of the the the Juliets and the Titanias, you wanted to play Lear

Juliet Stevenson2:42

You should speak to it.

Presenter2:42

Yeah.

Juliet Stevenson2:44

I still do. Well, I played Lear. I played extracts from Lear when I was fifteen, which must have been grotesque for anybody watching, but I thought I was wonderful. And I think it's to do with the scale of those great male roles in Shakespeare, and some of the great women, of course, with the great women's roles.

Juliet Stevenson3:00

But there's something about those enormous great tragic heroes in Shakespeare that is is boundless.

Presenter3:06

But in the meantime at school you had to put up with just being toad of time.

Juliet Stevenson3:10

I think I probably played Toad as King Leo in retrospect.

Presenter3:14

Let's turn to your desert island for a minute. How important will music be to you when you're there?

Presenter3:19

Well, crucial really.

Presenter3:21

Yeah.

Juliet Stevenson3:21

I've been thinking about this a lot. I've just come back from two weeks' holiday in Italy and it's sort of um been a very sweet form of torture to to know I had to come back and do this programme because I've had plenty of time to mull over my desert island and how I'll cope on it. And the answer I think is very badly, uh because I'm not very practical and I shall I think get very, very eccentric very early on.

Presenter3:41

So your first record is what?

Juliet Stevenson3:43

The first record is um Bach.

Juliet Stevenson3:46

It's the second movement of the sonata for cello and piano, which was the well I suppose it was the theme music really for the film Trulimati Deeply which I made a couple of years ago with my great friend and collaborator Anthony Mingela. And Anthony I think was partly inspired to write the film by listening to this piece of music.

Presenter5:09

Part of the second movement of Bach Sonata No. three for cello and piano in G minor, played by Misha Maiski and Marta Agarich.

Presenter5:17

Tell me a bit more about the film, Juliette. You it was written for you, as you say, by Anthony Mingella. Was it also to some extent written about you?

Juliet Stevenson5:26

Well, the story wasn't wasn't my story.

Juliet Stevenson5:29

It was entirely his. But I suppose he based a lot of the characteristics of Nina, the central character, on me and my life. You mean someone who lives in domestic chaos? A certain amount of domestic chaos. Which is I try not to live in too much of the time, but certainly was the case then. I had bought this rather disastrous flat. Well, it's a very nice flat, actually, but everything went wrong that possibly could go wrong that year. And he is a great picker-up of unconsidered trifles, as Autolychus says in Winter's Tale. Antony adores, I think, peopling.

Presenter5:40

You make so

Presenter5:52

Everything.

Juliet Stevenson6:05

So did you have rats in your

Presenter6:10

So did you have rats in your kitchen, Hyena?

Juliet Stevenson6:12

I had rather

Presenter6:13

And are you also slightly, like Nina, although quite a serious and passionate person, also vaguely loony?

Juliet Stevenson6:22

Well, I don't suppose any um loony person thinks that they are, but I I think I'm a bit I'm obviously more chaotic to other people than I think that I am to myself.

Juliet Stevenson6:32

Um I'm a bit of a dreamer. I'm quite vague.

Presenter6:34

The story of the film, you say, is not yours, and and for those who haven't seen it, I should say that it's about this young woman, Nina, who's struggling to get over the death of her lover, and she's so grief stricken that in fact he and he comes back from the grave to comfort her and try and help her find peace.

Presenter6:51

You hadn't experienced that kind of personal grief, but I know you're somebody who who researches her parts very meticulously. How did you manage to capture that feeling?

Juliet Stevenson7:02

Well, I didn't really research that film. I mean, I I only do research if it's necessary, if I feel I'm having to, you know, play somebody or explore a situation which I have no knowledge of. And it's only ever as a trigger to the imagination anyway, which is

Juliet Stevenson7:18

the central kind of tool of the trade, you know.

Presenter7:20

Believe in ghosts?

Juliet Stevenson7:22

No, I don't. I don't. But I think I do believe um and have experienced, like everybody, uh has loss. And I think in this instance um the film is about loss of really any sort. In in her in her case it's loss of a loved one, but it could be loss of really anything. And so you just draw on your own experience.

Presenter7:41

But since making the film you have experienced bereavement. I think your father died very recently, didn't he?

Speaker 47:47

He didn't take the data.

Presenter7:48

Ha had your pretended grief in acting that part come anywhere close, do you feel in hindsight to resembling the real thing?

Juliet Stevenson7:58

Well, I th yes, I I I do. I mean I think he what he wrote, what Anthony wrote, was fantastically accurate um testimonial to what it's like to lose somebody in in bereavement. I think it's very different in some ways losing a parent to losing a lover or a husband or whatever. And in some ways of course it's not. Um but it's true that when my father died I did

Juliet Stevenson8:23

Find myself in the months afterwards sometimes saying or feeling.

Juliet Stevenson8:28

things and thinking where am I

Juliet Stevenson8:30

Where have I said this before? Where have I thought this before? And then remembering it was

Juliet Stevenson8:34

connected to playing the part two years ago in the film.

Juliet Stevenson8:37

Record number two.

Juliet Stevenson8:39

Well record number two is the first movement of the spring sonata by Beethoven, when my dad was um.

Juliet Stevenson8:48

We brought him back from hospital and he died at home, which was which was very lucky for all of us to have him there. And the last couple of days, when he was obviously slipping away,

Juliet Stevenson8:58

My brother Tim kept a continual sort of concert going for him. I mean he kept a contin the music was continually being played in the other room.

Juliet Stevenson9:06

And of course it was a very unhappy and rather chaotic time, but um there was this wonderful oasis of about an hour when he put this piece of music on.

Presenter10:16

Yehudi Menouin and Wilhelm Kempf playing part of the first movement of Beethoven's Spring Sonata No. V for piano and violin in F major.

Presenter10:25

What what did your father do for a living, Juliette? He was in the army. So did that mean you had a very peripatetic childhood?

Juliet Stevenson10:31

Yes, we did. I didn't live in England until I was um well, I came to school here when I was nine, but I didn't actually live with my family here till I was about eleven or twelve.

Presenter10:39

And no theatrical background then in the family at all.

Juliet Stevenson10:42

No, no, I don't think so. I mean, I think both my mother and father are keen and were keen.

Juliet Stevenson10:50

On

Juliet Stevenson10:51

acting. My father um used to talk about playing Medea in Greek when he was at school, which which uh which he did. And my mother, I know, w was very keen as well, but neither of them really had opportunities like we do now to sort of explore those things.

Presenter11:03

So when when you read this poem and the light came on for you and you started talking about wanting to go on the stage, uh were they slightly shocked or did they think you'd grow out of it or?

Juliet Stevenson11:14

I don't know. I mean, I don't remember them being anything other than completely supportive.

Juliet Stevenson11:19

But um and I don't think they thought I would end up doing it as a career, but nor did I.

Presenter11:24

I came across a wonderful line in the Research On You. It said, Her mother knew Alec Guinness slightly through some friends in Malta, so she wrote and asked him for advice.

Speaker 411:33

Yes, she did.

Presenter11:34

What was his effect?

Juliet Stevenson11:35

Well, uh I I don't remember the details of the letter he wrote back, but he did very kindly write back. And I think he probably said, Look, if she wants to act, if she really wants to do it, then the best thing to do is to train,'cause it's a it's a craft, you know. Yeah.

Presenter11:46

So drop the idea of going to university and go to drama school.

Juliet Stevenson11:50

Yeah, yes, that we took his

Presenter11:51

Is it fine? But but I also sense in reading about you that you're not entirely convinced, nevertheless, despite the fact that you've been on this fairly single track, that it's what you might call a proper job.

Presenter12:02

It's not a a serious occupation.

Juliet Stevenson12:04

Well

Juliet Stevenson12:06

No, I do think it's a serious occupation, so but I do get very, very frustrated with its parameters. You know, um

Juliet Stevenson12:13

At its best, there's nothing in the world I'd rather be doing, and at its best, I think there's little that's more significant unless you're feeding the starving or you know, I I believe passionately in the theatre and in films capacity to change lives or to shift perception, to enrich our lives in all all the ways that we know about, but um it's also true that a lot of it is very silly. Well I suppose what I'm and

Juliet Stevenson12:35

bumbling towards saying is that I feel sometimes very ambivalent about it, but I'm completely single-minded about it as well.

Juliet Stevenson12:43

Next piece of music.

Juliet Stevenson12:44

Well, this is Mozart, the Clarinet Concerto, um in A.

Juliet Stevenson12:49

Which

Juliet Stevenson12:50

was simply the very first piece of music I remember hearing. Um it was in Malta. I must therefore have been about six and my father was accompanying a friend of his, who presumably was somebody in the army, who was a clarinetist. They were just playing one afternoon.

Juliet Stevenson13:06

But this piece of the slow movement came kind of searing out of the room, and I remember being incredibly overwhelmed by it.

Presenter14:13

Part of the second movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto in A played by Jack Brimer, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.

Presenter14:22

So you went, Juliet Stevenson, to Rada in the mid seventies.

Presenter14:26

What sort of figure did you cut then? You know, where where did you come from? Oh, well.

Juliet Stevenson14:32

I mean, I was I was trading around London in the mid seventies trying to tag on to the tail end of the hippie movement really, so I was wearing long cheesecloth skirts and clogs and rolling my own cigarettes and had hair all over my face. And uh I couldn't stand.

Juliet Stevenson14:45

And actually in some ways I still can't.

Juliet Stevenson14:47

The whole business of, you know, um, what you look like and having to kind of keep everything in good shape and meet certain requirements. I've always been happier as a scruff. And uh so I was very, I think, a bit balshy to start with about having to wear makeup even on stage, you know, I was flying.

Presenter15:04

But they gave you, apparently, a speech from Cleopatra to tackle and um and sort of reduced you to size.

Juliet Stevenson15:10

They did. Yes. I I didn't know where to start. I had no experience, and there were some other students in my A who were really quite mature.

Juliet Stevenson15:17

And we're making a great start, and I think I was really flaming around all over the place. I didn't know how you got up and created another person at all.

Juliet Stevenson15:23

It's obviously a part which I was in no way up to playing, aged eighteen, you know, and without any experience of anything.

Juliet Stevenson15:30

And so I was torn several strips off by the director, and suddenly I thought I'll either go to pieces now, or I'll or I'll explode and I kind of exploded.

Juliet Stevenson15:39

And we started the scene again, and suddenly there was all this language, which had seemed so alien and impossible to get into the mouth and the heart. You know, suddenly it was there and it was and somehow I suppose I just channelled this rage and fury.

Juliet Stevenson15:54

into the language of the scene and something connected and I'll never forget it because I suddenly remember in the middle of the of doing this, you know, I suddenly thought this is what it is, you know, this is what it is. It's when you connect what you say to what's pumping around your bloodstream and there isn't any separation and what you say next is absolutely what you need to say next. And um and it was a wonderful feeling. It was like jumping out of a plane and the parachute works, you know.

Juliet Stevenson16:18

And uh you don't have that feeling very often.

Presenter16:22

You you mentioned just now that you were a bit balshy then. I mean, by all accounts you still are, dare I say?

Presenter16:28

I I mean the stories are that that you often take on directors and and sort of challenge them and their interpretation of the of the f the female role obviously that you're playing.

Presenter16:38

Yeah.

Juliet Stevenson16:38

Uh

Presenter16:38

Well, I'm Yeah.

Juliet Stevenson16:38

Uh

Juliet Stevenson16:39

This is um

Juliet Stevenson16:41

Yes, I d I don't know. I d I don't think I'm balshy really, Sue. I mean I do I suppose I'm I have strong responses to things, but I hope um I'm reasonably open minded about the negotiation that goes on in rehearsal, because you have to be. It's a collaborative form. The difficulty is very often in rehearsal of of finding that kind of communal and collaborative expression be when when actually people are very maybe very anxious to make their own personal response felt. On stage you're freer in a way to do that because when you get out on stage there is a sense that you can do anything.

Juliet Stevenson17:19

Although, you know, it's kind of uh courteous to stay within the bounds of what you've rehearsed.

Presenter17:23

But have you on occasions when you've been arguing with a a male director about the interpretation of the role, have you been made to feel like something of a a feminist nuisance?

Juliet Stevenson17:34

Well

Juliet Stevenson17:35

I d I've never really felt that. Maybe I was perceived as that. I mean, I my interest in doing the classics has always been.

Juliet Stevenson17:43

To re

Juliet Stevenson17:45

discover them. I'm not really interested much as I love him in doing Shakespeare for

Juliet Stevenson17:50

You know, any sort of historical or archaic reasons. I mean, I think the only motive for doing classical work.

Juliet Stevenson17:57

is because it still speaks to our times, and discovering what ways it still speaks to our times.

Juliet Stevenson18:02

Record number four.

Juliet Stevenson18:04

Record number four is Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Juliet Stevenson18:07

Which is the name of this wonderful All-American, All-Women, All-Black singing group.

Juliet Stevenson18:13

I heard them play in London at a concert a few years ago and they were sensational. In a way they're singing for all women everywhere and for all

Juliet Stevenson18:23

black people everywhere and they're much of what they sing about is a is a form of protest song or freedom song. It's sort of inspirational to listen to and I think it would give me great courage on my island.

Juliet Stevenson18:35

Until the c

Speaker 418:37

Killing of black man black

Speaker 418:42

Mother Son.

Speaker 418:44

Is as important as the killing of white men.

Speaker 418:51

Mother Son

Speaker 418:55

We who believe in freedom and God reigns.

Presenter19:00

Ready to get tonight.

Presenter19:04

Ella's song sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock. You were with uh the Royal Shakespeare Company for eight years altogether, and you played Cressida and Titania and Isabella in Measure for Measure, Rosalind. Were you getting the big roles right from the start, practically?

Juliet Stevenson19:19

Not quite. I went there at the bottom of the rung, as it were, but I ha I did have a lot of luck in that first year.

Juliet Stevenson19:25

Um incredible luck really. Various actresses fell out for for reasons of illness or

Juliet Stevenson19:31

pregnancy or whatever. And so the odd role, speaking role, became available.

Juliet Stevenson19:36

Um and then at the end of that first year I had this wonderful break, not not in a Shakespeare role actually, but in uh a play by Bull Garkoff called The White Guard.

Presenter19:44

So you were there really through your twenties building up your reputation as a classical actress and being compared and I can say this'cause you can't being compared to Peggy Ashcroft. Does does such a comparison worry you?

Presenter19:58

Well, is it a responsibility?

Juliet Stevenson20:01

Yes, I mean, yes, I I I adored Peggy Ashcroft as a I mean, as a person not that I knew her at all well, but I mean I I loved what she stood for as well as th the way she worked, so it's um it's fantastic. I suppose I would be a bit daunted to have to match up t to somebody whose work load never seemed to fall off. I mean she seemed to get better and better as she got older and refined her craft, you know, which I I hope I'll be able to do.

Juliet Stevenson20:28

Tell me about your next piece of music. What's Schubert?

Juliet Stevenson20:32

The string quartet Death and the Maiden.

Juliet Stevenson20:34

for obvious reasons really. I just have had a wonderful year.

Juliet Stevenson20:38

doing this play uh at the Royal Court to start with and then in the West End.

Juliet Stevenson20:42

It's a good choice for a programme like this in the sense that the whole significance of this piece of music in the play is that for the character Paolina it embodies an experience, in her case, torture, which she cannot escape from, although it's seventeen years since she was released. And the whole play is an attempt to escape from it by by giving voice to that experience and then sort of exorcising it. So for her the music contains that experience, and for her it's been it's her love of Schubert has been ruined by its association. On an island the associations will be happier ones.

Presenter22:13

Part of the opening of Schubert's String Quartet No. fourteen in D minor, Death and the Maiden, played by the Mandelring Quartet. Well, now the play that took that title and which had that music as its theme, Death and the Maiden, is the story of a woman who thinks she recognises the man who raped and tortured her ten years earlier.

Presenter22:32

Tell me how you tackle the research for that.

Presenter22:35

Uh

Juliet Stevenson22:35

Well, that one I did do quite a lot of um preparation for because

Juliet Stevenson22:40

It was a long time before I felt I really could give myself permission to play it.

Juliet Stevenson22:46

She had been through this horrendous experience, and I don't think

Juliet Stevenson22:51

Although the imagination can take you almost anywhere, I just felt on this occasion

Juliet Stevenson22:56

How can I play this person who's been to hell and back basically? In fact, not come back. I mean, only got halfway back, you know.

Juliet Stevenson23:03

And so I did. I spent a lot of time trying to find and talk to or listen to.

Juliet Stevenson23:09

Largely Chileans who had survived the experience and come here during the seventies.

Presenter23:14

And you read about women prisoners every night before you went on stage?

Juliet Stevenson23:18

Well, I kept a lot of books in the dressing room. Um I love tapping into stuff regular. I think uh if you're in a long run of anything you need to keep restoring yourself. You need to keep reminding yourself of the source material in a way, if it's that kind of play. And I did have a big stash, yes, in my dressing room of Latin American literature on the subject. And so I did. Yes, I did keep dipping into this.

Presenter23:40

And you gave, as was said, a very powerful and passionate and ultimately a award winning performance. But you didn't get to star on Broadway when the play transferred to New York.

Presenter23:54

Were you very, very annoyed?

Juliet Stevenson23:56

Well, I was very disappointed for a few days. I mean um that's the diplomatic word. Where are you annoyed? I really do believe that parts belong to nobody. I do think that. I mean

Presenter24:00

Well you are not.

Juliet Stevenson24:06

However, you felt quite possessive at the time. Oh, I did feel possessive. I do feel possessive about roles because, in a way, it's the only way you can go out and play them is to seize them, you know, and I did, of course, and I still do.

Presenter24:06

However, you felt

Presenter24:07

Oh, I

Juliet Stevenson24:16

in a way about that part.

Juliet Stevenson24:19

Record number six.

Juliet Stevenson24:21

Flamenco. It it was very difficult choosing what. I I um I did a play by Lorca, Garcia Lorca, at the National Yama, the play was, a few years ago, which I adored. It's a wonderful play, and I didn't know Lorca and I'd never been to Spain and had absolutely no knowledge about any of it. And uh it started a kind of love affair with Spain which has been going on on and off ever since. This is Peccopene, the great flamenco guitarist, playing Las Ferialas.

Presenter24:45

to which you will dance.

Juliet Stevenson24:46

I wish I shall dance on um yes, I'm gonna find a hard, wet piece of sand, hard enough to stamp on, and I shall dance every morning to cheer myself up.

Presenter25:55

PACO PENA, playing Las Ferialis. So you'll dance on the edge of the sand, Juliet. You'll live, as you do now, in a certain amount of chaos on this island. You'll also live perforce, as you do now by choice, alone.

Presenter26:08

D do you you don't mind aloneness? You don't suffer loneliness?

Juliet Stevenson26:13

Well, I do a bit. Yes. I suppose everybody does, in some form, and I suppose it just depends what form.

Juliet Stevenson26:20

But, um, no, I mean, I have a a fantastic network of love and support from from all over the place, really. I've lived with other people most of my life. Uh, this is my first sort of uh prolonged session of living on my own. I've been living for three years on my own. And I do enjoy it.

Presenter26:39

A horror of marriage, but you quite like to have a child.

Presenter26:43

So how do you plan to resolve that one?

Juliet Stevenson26:44

I have only I n I'm not a horror of marriage, but I it's it's an institution which I've never really seen myself getting to grips with. I don't know why. I just um

Juliet Stevenson26:56

I suppose it's the idea of

Juliet Stevenson26:58

Well

Juliet Stevenson26:59

Being committing yourself to being with the same person for the rest of your life, which if you know which I have never even from childhood quite been able to

Juliet Stevenson27:09

get my head wrapped round, I suppose, because I

Juliet Stevenson27:12

I feel that life's a journey, you know, and that you change and evolve, and if you can change and evolve with one other person and stay that way, that's fantastic. But I suppose I never really

Juliet Stevenson27:20

um perceive that I would be able to do that.

Presenter27:23

But you like

Juliet Stevenson27:23

To have a baby.

Presenter27:24

Yeah.

Juliet Stevenson27:25

Oh yes, I would very much yes.

Presenter27:27

So it is it pregnancy you yearn for, is it parenthood? Or

Juliet Stevenson27:32

All of it, I think, really. I mean, I'd love I'd love to have children, um, more than one, ideally, but um yes, it's going to be difficult on my island, isn't it, to sort this out?

Presenter27:40

How high is it on your agenda?

Juliet Stevenson27:43

It's getting higher and higher all the time.

Presenter27:45

That's'cause the bar

Juliet Stevenson27:46

Hello.

Presenter27:46

Logical clocks t

Juliet Stevenson27:46

Thinking mm, I suppose like a lot of women in their thirties, it's uh it's almost a cliche now to say it, but it's true.

Presenter27:46

The king

Juliet Stevenson27:53

And I felt it very much more since um my father died. It it seemed to immediately become much stronger desire, I suppose, because

Juliet Stevenson28:03

Um, losing him was you lose more than a parent, don't you? You lose the whole um idea, the whole notion that you've taken for granted hitherto, of any sort of permanence.

Presenter28:13

And so how much do you fear ending up without one?

Juliet Stevenson28:16

Oh, very much. I mean, if I got to the point where I was too old to have children and hadn't had any, I would consider myself to have really, really mismanaged things terribly. I

Juliet Stevenson28:26

I hate to think that will happen.

Juliet Stevenson28:28

Record number seven.

Juliet Stevenson28:30

Um oh this has caused me much agony because I when I made the selection I realized at the end that I hadn't really chosen anything. I mean I listen to a lot of rock music and some blues and a lot of contemporary music and so I've chosen a sort of classic um which is Bob Dylan, Sheltered from the Storm from the album Blood on the Tracks.

Speaker 428:56

Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood.

Speaker 429:00

When blackness was a virtue, the road was full of mud.

Speaker 429:05

I came in from the wilderness, A creature void of form.

Speaker 429:09

Come in, she said, I'll give yer shelter for the storm.

Presenter29:21

Bob Dylan and Shelter from the Storm. It said that as a result of the success of the film Truly Madly Deeply that the that the doors of Hollywood were open to you. But you haven't stepped through. I mean, don't you like it over there.

Juliet Stevenson29:34

Um

Juliet Stevenson29:36

Yes, I like aspects of it, but it's certainly not true that the doors are all opened, and I haven't really spent any time trying to open it. But you've had offers.

Presenter29:42

No, but you've had offers and you've turned them down.

Juliet Stevenson29:45

One or two. I mean, it would be really an exaggeration to say I've had a lot. Um, I mean, as soon as the film opened I committed myself to a long period in the theatre here. So I haven't been able to go out there anyway much.

Presenter29:57

And in any case you don't see yourself as a poolside starlet.

Juliet Stevenson30:00

I don't really see I'm sure they don't see me as that either.

Presenter30:04

What about here? What about television sitcoms and things like that? I mean, obviously you could become a total household name. You could make a lot of money. If that's what you wanted to do, perhaps it isn't.

Juliet Stevenson30:15

So I don't know whether I really could. I mean, I think I'm a bit too much of an oddball to fit into that sort of format. I mean, maybe not, but I've always thought so. But I suppose in the end, um

Juliet Stevenson30:26

I've just done what interests me to do, and that's the only guideline you have. What what instinctively does your sensibility want to do next and what interests you? And um so I just sort of have waited for those things to come along. It's difficult now because I I have had a very lucky time the last two years with material. Wonderful stuff has come my way. And uh it it is difficult in a way to kn to know what to do next because when you've had that kind of

Juliet Stevenson30:52

you know, food, as it were, to feed on.

Presenter30:53

Or

Juliet Stevenson30:56

Yeah, a lot of things do seem obviously less interesting.

Presenter30:59

But apparently there's an all-singing, all-dancing Juliet Stevenson trying, waiting to get out.

Juliet Stevenson31:03

Waiting to get out and I'm going to use my time on my desert island to basically be a cabaret star and do a lot of hoofing. But I'd love to sing. Yes, I'd love to sing in something. I mean I don't sing particularly well but I'd love to get better at it and I've only ever worked on anything if I had to be done for a job and so I if if the ch chance came along to do a musical or something I would have to get better at it and I'd love to, yeah. Last record.

Presenter31:11

The two added up.

Juliet Stevenson31:27

Um last record is more Bach. Um it's the uh violin and oboe concerto in D minor and there's no sort of particular reason for this at all. It isn't attached to anything. It's just I've grown to love Bach a great deal and since I am um rather a wayward creature I think that he ha there's a kind of formality.

Juliet Stevenson31:48

and uh almost stateliness and order at the heart of his music which I think would keep me um

Juliet Stevenson31:55

keep me it would impose a sort of discipline in my life, but it's uh just a phenomenally beautiful piece of music.

Presenter33:02

Itzak Pellman and Neil Black playing part of the second movement of Bach's concerto in D minor for violin and oboe, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Presenter33:12

So if you could only take one record, Juliet, one of the eight.

Juliet Stevenson33:15

Oh no, this it has all this awful choice.

Juliet Stevenson33:19

I think it would be

Juliet Stevenson33:21

One of the baches.

Juliet Stevenson33:24

And I suppose if I had to make a choice, which I do, don't I?

Juliet Stevenson33:29

It'll probably have to be the um cello and piano sonata. Because of its I mean, I think Bach you would never ever tire of listening to. It would never cease to sort of replenish you. Um so that's why Bach and I suppose of the two I would take the cello and piano sonata because it's added associations with a with a piece of work which I was very very happy making.

Juliet Stevenson33:51

And your book. What book would you like to take?

Presenter33:53

Yeah.

Juliet Stevenson33:54

I think it has to be poetry because I do read a lot of poetry, largely because I don't seem to have time to read.

Juliet Stevenson34:01

nearly as many novels as I would like to. Um and I think in the end probably you'd tire of of any novel that you had to read thousands of times. So it's poetry, and I think um it would have to be the complete works of WB Yeats.

Juliet Stevenson34:17

And your luxury?

Juliet Stevenson34:18

I've agonized about this too. I thought I'd take my piano.

Juliet Stevenson34:21

First of all.

Juliet Stevenson34:23

But then I think I'd get actually incredibly frustrated'cause I'd never get any better at

Juliet Stevenson34:27

I'm playing it'cause there'd be nobody to teach me.

Juliet Stevenson34:30

So, in the end, having just come back from a holiday in Italy where I spent a lot of time looking at a very wonderful Renaissance painting, I thought I'd take a great painting because

Juliet Stevenson34:40

Because I would be lonely, and a great peopled canvas would be a wonderful thing to look at.

Juliet Stevenson34:45

And I stopped off in Florence with my family on the way home, and we went to the Brancacci Chapel, where they've just restored the wonderful Masaccio frescoes there. And he is a great, great painter, and these huge biblical themes that he's painting are very peopled, but they're also very personal. He never paints without aspects of very ordinary life going on in the background. So while the main event is taking place at the front, there's always somebody holding a child or hanging out washing in the background. So kind of all human life is there. So I think I'd like to take Masaccio's frescoes from the Brancacci chapel, if that's not too pretentious.

Presenter35:22

Juliet Stevenson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 335:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.