Penelope Wilton

Presenter0:00

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.

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The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

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My castaway this week is the actress Penelope Wilton. Her first love is the theatre. Ibsen, Shaw, Shakspere, Beckett, the difficult roles are the ones she relishes and shines in. Yet as one of our leading classical actresses she has no qualms about turning her talents to T V and film.

Presenter0:43

Calendar Girls, Shaun of the Dead, and Doctor Who are among her more recent on-screen appearances. And in spite of being one of our best regarded performers, she is intensely private, intent upon disappearing into the lives of her characters. She says the thing about being an actor is that you turn into other people. You have to hide yourself a bit in order to let that other person come out. Hide yourself then because too much knowledge about you gets in the way of people understanding the part, or because you rather prefer this veil of privacy.

Presenter1:15

Well, I suppose it's a bit of both, really. But professionally I think uh

Presenter1:19

If people know your inside leg measurement, they're going to say when they see you, they say, Oh, oh, look, there's Penelope Wilton in that part.

Presenter1:27

I think um it's more interesting if they see the play first rather than me. That's one of the reasons. And the other reason is I don't make a great thing of being private. It's just that's how I am. And it's it has its difficulties sometimes. Doing something.

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Where you get up on a stage and act, or you're in front of a camera and you're being photographed, and you're not really like that as a person, particularly.

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So it's of obviously something funny in me.

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I have these two things going along side by side. The basic belief that people have at a very crude level of acting.

Penelope Wilton2:01

Yeah.

Presenter2:02

Is that it is a bit of showing off. And if you quite like showing off and getting up on a stage, why on earth would you be private? I suppose that's the thing that people.

Penelope Wilton2:05

It's one of the things.

Presenter2:09

Distrust would be the wrong word, but it's the thing that people are curious about.

Presenter2:14

Uh I can see that, absolutely. But it is a way of expressing itself oneself. I mean, like a painter, luckily, can put everything on a canvas and a writer can write it on in a book or a novel or a play. The only instrument I have is me, my physical body, and my voice and my personality. So that is my instrument. We'll talk properly about your childhood a little later, but I know a lot of the time when you were growing up your mother was unwell. Often when that situation is in a household, in a home.

Presenter2:45

Children have to keep themselves in check. They have to sort of learn how to behave. Did you have to learn to become quite a contained person?

Penelope Wilton2:47

They have to support the

Presenter2:52

My my mother was unwell finally and died quite young, but I think the feeling we had about her was that uh she was very delicate. I mean, there was something fragile about her. She was a wonderfully amusing woman and full of life, but she used to have to rest a lot. You came home from school and she was having to lie down, you know. There were things like that. So I've always been slightly worried about

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Confrontation

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I've been in therapy for a while, so I understand how

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I was always worried that I would hurt her by taking a different view. So one was sort of being terribly amenable. Well, of course that's not in one's nature. I'm quite sharp and rather argumentative and rather temperamental, so I had to deal with those things rather quietly to myself. But now as I've got older, it's got much easier.

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Tell me then about your first piece of music. My first piece of music is Elgar's Serenade.

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I love walking and uh

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My younger sister and I, Linda and I, walk a great deal. Uh we went up to Northumberland last year and walked all the way down the coast, round Bamborough Castle, down to sea houses and on. English countryside is the most wonderful. And uh

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Elgar's serenade reminds me of England.

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the start of Elgar's Serenade in E minor. Chosen, because you said it's very English. It reminds you of the English scenery that you experienced only last year, going on this terrific walk with your younger sister. I experienced it every day. I mean, even in London, we walk round London's parks.

Penelope Wilton5:12

Reminds you of

Penelope Wilton5:16

It's terrific.

Penelope Wilton5:17

Younger sister

Presenter5:22

The English countryside is unlike any other, I think, and I love it. I'm wondering if you would imagine your island as a a a sandy island or a chilly, rocky island. I think you might be a chilly island. To tell you the truth, I've imagined it as a very, very hot place. I don't know why I have to put myself through this, but it's not very comfortable, this island. I seem to have been put there as a bit of a punishment.

Penelope Wilton5:32

Faction.

Presenter5:44

This might say a great deal about me. Would you prefer a chilly island? No, because I've chosen quite cold music to counteract this rather hot place I'm in.

Penelope Wilton5:52

And this rulemaking

Presenter5:54

So, Penelope, you were the middle of three girls. Very interesting in your background. You have this very sort of practical, roll-the-sleeves-up coal merchant type of business. And on the other hand, you have this.

Penelope Wilton6:01

And on the other

Presenter6:04

A fascinating theatrical tradition in your family, because your grandfather was he a theatrical manager and then went on to be a film distributor. Isn't that a good idea? That's right. Well, my great-grandfather was a.

Penelope Wilton6:07

Yeah.

Penelope Wilton6:11

That's right.

Presenter6:14

Sacred recitalist. And then my grandfather was a film distributor in the North East and uh they went into first of all into the theatre, local theatre in Newcastle, and then some of them went into the films. They were a very good looking glamorous family, all of them. So did they occasionally sort of waft into your life with their glamour and they did. And um my mother and her sisters they were all of them very glamorous.

Penelope Wilton6:32

They did

Presenter6:39

And they cared a lot about what they looked like. And uh, do you remember watching her get ready? Oh, yes.

Penelope Wilton6:43

Oh wait.

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hours lying on a bed, as you do as a teenager, while she made up.

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And seeing a

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My father, who is a very straightforward, rather sort of sensible businessman who liked rugby football and you know all that sort of thing and I was lying there one day and um she was making up.

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I looked at the bookshelf by my mother's farther side of the bed, and it has Salah the Salmon and

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Fly fishing in the south west of Scotland.

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And then I suddenly saw a book that said Sex and the Older Woman.

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I was absolutely astounded.

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I said, Mum, look at that book. She said, Yes, it's no good at all. I said, Why? She said, The older woman is thirty-eight.

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So I thought, oh, well. Anyhow, it was all an astonishment to me. We had a lot of laughs at home. Very different people. Were they a good match together? They were.

Speaker 47:37

They

Penelope Wilton7:38

Uh

Presenter7:38

I mean, he she used to she used to lose his temper with him, and he used to laugh.

Presenter7:43

I mean all the time. He laughed a lot.

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I was very, very lucky. We had a very happy childhood, apart from mummy being not terribly strong.

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But she'd say things to him like, you know, you can't carve the joint in those trousers and

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And you'd come in and he'd put his swimming trunks on, with his suit on the top, and she hadn't noticed, and she'd suddenly notice we, of course, hadn't noticed you'd be bringing in whatever, through the hatch, you know. And there he was with his swimming trunks on.

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I mean, he did make us laugh. They were good fun.

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Tell me about your next piece of music.

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My next piece of music is Sibelia Symphony No. 2. And why have you chosen it?

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I'd chosen it because

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It comes from that northern clime, and it it's it's those enormous mountains and that enormous scenery. It is deeply romantic. I love it.

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The opening of the last movement of Sebelius's Symphony No. Two, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Carrian. I was so busy there asking about your parents that I forgot to ask about you. What sort of little girl were you? How did you get on at school, for example? Oh, very badly. I wasn't good at school. I mean, I wasn't naughty or anything. I just wasn't very good at anything much.

Penelope Wilton9:48

Oh god.

Presenter9:54

I was a very late reader and um

Presenter9:57

I don't think that

Presenter9:58

The schools I went to quite catered for people who needed help, really. But then you say you were a late reader. When you were around about ten though, you won didn't you win a a competition, a was it a poetry competition? Yes, oh, I was very good at poetry and uh learning things. I liked that and

Penelope Wilton10:08

Yeah.

Presenter10:13

I was sent up for this Lambda poetry competition to London. My mother said, Well, we'll get the train back at lunch time'cause, you know

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I got through the first one. She was amazed.

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Then I was sent into another room.

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and did it again, and got through that, and they said, You've got to come back for the final.

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So

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She was astounded, and so was I, actually so, in front of all these hundreds of children and schools and people, I got up and said The Ship by J C Squire, and won this cup.

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And then we were going to school the next day.

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And there were these awful head mistresses there were two of them, Miss Bowen and Miss Bannister.

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And my mother jumped out of the car and said, Here, you see, she can do something.

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Good old mummy. Yes, good old mum. She she was really behind you, you know.

Speaker 411:02

Yes, good old mom.

Presenter11:06

You say that you were sent away because your mother had these uh periods of being ill. You w you went to boarding school. I mean how much was the fact that your mother w was ill discussed? It was never. Never. So we didn't really know. I didn't know she wo uh wasn't very well. But we went for a term to this boarding school and uh

Speaker 411:10

Yeah.

Presenter11:23

It was an awful place.

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My sisters laugh, but I am going to say it didn't suit me to go to Morton.

Presenter11:29

I didn't like being away. I liked being at home. So Why does that make your sisters laugh? Well, because I've said that a few times when I was in hospital. M my mother said to my elder sister, Oh, do come with me, because Penelope gets so cross with me, because it doesn't suit her to be

Presenter11:45

Hospital. I hate being at a disadvantage like that, you know. You mean having other people in charge? Yes, I find it really difficult.

Penelope Wilton11:51

Yeah.

Presenter11:53

It's authority rally, like doctors or

Presenter11:57

school headmistresses or someone like that who's going to take you over. Do you kick against it at the time or did you just quietly button down and be resentful?

Penelope Wilton12:05

Yeah.

Presenter12:08

It's a pain in the neck, probably. But there you go. And you were taught later on. You went to you went abroad and you were taught by nuns. Yes.

Penelope Wilton12:15

Yeah.

Presenter12:16

My mother had been to La Sagesse. We all had our periods in convents when we were our education, which were the happiest times the nuns always liked.

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And we're not Catholic, but we went to La Serges'cause she'd been as a girl, from the convent in Newcastle, to teach English and piano, which she really couldn't play, but she used to learn the lesson before

Presenter12:39

They're only little children she was teaching, and that was before the war, and she had made friends with a lot of the girls. By the time we came along, Rosemary and and and myself and Linda, they were all sisters, and it was a

Presenter12:51

Quite a strict order. So there was Jersey-Marie Elizabeth and all these people, and all been her friends. So we went, and we were au pairs during the day, and we went and learnt French, and we learnt all sorts of things. What did you make of the nuns? Well, I liked them, actually. I was very taken with all people dressing up. Of course, that's probably why I'm an actor. And I like all the ritual, the incense, and the seriousness it all, and those weeping statues, and all the sort of mystery. And is religion a part of your life now? You say you were.

Penelope Wilton13:25

No p

Presenter13:27

I enjoy all the ritual. I'm not sure quite what I believe, but I was brought up with it, so it's sort of very familiar and rather comforting.

Presenter13:35

And the dressing up you get to do elsewhere, so you don't need to do that. Exactly. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Speaker 413:37

So you don't need to do that.

Presenter13:40

Um my next piece of music is Charles Trenet singing Cares etil de nos amour. This is really

Presenter13:48

For my mother and by way my father, who adored my mother, so she was a great francophile, and it's rather her time, I think.

Speaker 313:58

So

Speaker 313:59

Levantifera Pamaport.

Speaker 314:02

Me par des amours morde, de von le feu qui cetin.

Speaker 314:08

So

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C'est chance.

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Not a missile

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E pens au jourloin tale.

Speaker 314:22

Uh deal.

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De no Zamo

Speaker 314:26

Girl I stood

Presenter14:28

Charles Rene and Corais d'Etile de Nausamour. Um we knew then that you could deliver lines at a young age. As you say, you you stormed through and won the cup, which surprised not just your mother, but your teachers too. But there's a leap between that and wanting to act. Where did the wanting to act begin?

Speaker 314:34

Yeah.

Penelope Wilton14:35

Uh

Presenter14:46

I think I always.

Presenter14:50

Wanted to act, really.

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I remember f sitting even at pantomime and younger than that when I was taken by my grandparents, and there was a whoosh of warm air came out at you, and I used to sit in the dark thinking, I don't want to be sitting here, I want to be up there.

Presenter15:07

It seemed very warm and very

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Tantalizing up there.

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When we began talking, you described very vividly the idea that you have, the sense that you have, that you express yourself through your body rather than through paint or sitting at a piano. It's your way of expressing yourself. At such a young age, had you made that connection, or was it more to do with the the smell of the grease paint and the waft of warm air and and the the glamour associated with with your relatives?

Penelope Wilton15:20

Let's do your

Penelope Wilton15:23

Piano

Penelope Wilton15:24

Yourself.

Presenter15:37

Well, actually, it wasn't terribly glamorous. My father had a perfectly ordinary job, and we had a very normal upbringing.

Presenter15:44

But I was aware that it wasn't always easy.

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It wasn't the glamour of it. I was interested, actually, when it finally came in, because I suppose I wasn't a very good reader, by the hearing things, and I I love the spoken word.

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I found

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the menace that you find in a lot of plays and the confrontation and

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The difficulty of it. I like the diff I liked the difficulty of it. Yes, I want to ask you about that. Now, you you went to the drama centre in North London and that is known. You went there to train, and that is known for having this very

Penelope Wilton16:12

And that is

Presenter16:17

Intense, rigorous approach. Can you explain something? Because people talk about it being a very tough place to learn their craft. Why is it tough?

Penelope Wilton16:24

And why is it

Presenter16:26

I was there very early on. I think I was the fourth here. It was a break away from the Central, and it was started by John Blatchley and Jat Malngram. And John Blatchley was a wonderful teacher, but it was also somewhere that wasn't too interested in how you stood in Elizabethan dress and how you

Presenter16:42

Got work, which was a bit of a downer when you came out of drama school, because that's what you wanted was work. And if all you'd been allowed to do was play older ladies, because, Penelope, you need to have a lower voice and you need to have gravitas. When I came out of drama school, no one had seen me at my own age. But of course, I'd I didn't mind that really. It did make you wonderfully brave.

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I did an audition for the Royal Court.

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It was a general audition. It was five minutes and

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And I said, I'm going to do some from Mother Courage, and I'm going to do the Great Capitulation song.

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And I'd bought a chicken down the King's Road, and had a pipe with tobacco in it, and my practice skirt, and I plucked a chicken, smoked a pipe, and sang this inordinately long song. It has about fifteen verses. That goes long, long ago. Anyhow,

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They allowed me to do it, and at the end there was silence.

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And then I had the odd

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And then I said, And now I'm going to do

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A piece I wrote myself Can you imagine?

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And it's called Appreciating Henry Moore.

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I mean

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Oh, I dad. I have not but this school.

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Did you pass the audition? I didn't get anything from that audition. But actually I did work at the Royal Court a few years later. Yes, I did. But John Blatchley had said Go out and you do what you want and I thought, Yes, I'm going to do this. So when I joined Nottingham Playhouse,

Presenter18:21

You know, I was forever putting false noses on and sort of pot marks and it was nothing about being glamorous. It was all to do with acting. Were you in London, being a student then, in the heart of the swinging system? Yes, I was, yes. It was we were all walking around with no shoes on.

Penelope Wilton18:32

Yeah.

Presenter18:35

And throwing flowers at each other. And there were places like Bieber, where you went and bought boots up to the top of your thigh in bright pink and shorts and were you very brave? Were you a brave girl? I mean, you sound like you were rather sort of embracing life. Oh, I I l I loved all that. Yeah, I was just an ordinary girl. Yes. Doesn't sound that ordinary, thigh-high pink boots and taking your shoes off and throwing flowers at each other. To be quite honest with you, Kirsty, that's what we do.

Penelope Wilton18:57

To be quite

Presenter19:00

We used to draw enormous eyelashes on ourselves. I must have looked extraordinary, but it was great fun.

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Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

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I'll remember April.

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Played by Errol Garner.

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Well, I love jazz.

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The jazz I can understand, and I love Erogan. I love the way he sings along.

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Yeah, like this, while he was playing. And, um, the father of my daughter, uh, Dan Massey, introduced me to Erolgana.

Presenter19:30

I'll always be grateful to him for it.

Presenter20:29

I'll Remember April by Errol Garner. So, Penelope, you left the drama centre where you had trained, a rigorous training, and you went into rep, as actors did then, and the role call of people that you worked with is quite extraordinary. People like Michael Horden, Jonathan Miller, Leonard Rossiter. You describe it as a very, very useful time.

Speaker 420:36

Yeah.

Penelope Wilton20:37

Yeah.

Speaker 420:37

Yeah.

Presenter20:47

Oh, Barry Those two wonderful years. Well, because you did a lot of plays, and I was at Nottingham Playhouse run by Stuart Burge, who was the most wonderful man.

Presenter20:58

And gave me this job. He'd been forced to come and see me at the drama centre playing quite a lot of old ladies by John Blatchley, and I wrote to him.

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every week,'cause he'd expressed an interest and no one else had. And uh finally he gave me a job.

Presenter21:13

I was an assistant stage manager too, which means that you, you know, make sure all the props are correct and and make sure everything's in the right place, and then you walk on as the maid, or or sometimes you don't, you're just on the ASM. So I was an ASM for the entertainer. But Dennis Quilley did it. And I forgot to put

Presenter21:31

The gin in the bottle in the scene when he was supposed to get drunk at the end with his daughter. I mean, can you imagine? He had to mime drinking the whole way. You did learn enormous about responsibility. Did he give you hell for that? Well, actually, he was terribly nice about it when I think of because, of course, I was devastated. I'd practically fainted with the worry of it. You find your feet on the London stage pretty quickly. I went from Nottingham Playhouse to the Royal Court with a play by Bernard Shaw called Widowers' Houses: Playing a Maid.

Penelope Wilton21:42

Did he give you hell for that?

Presenter22:00

And then, um, I did auditions and I did a play by Christopher Hampton called The Philanthropist.

Presenter22:06

And then I went on to do another play there, West of Suez, with Ralph Richardson. Explain to me what it is. I said in your your introduction that your first love and r is theatre. It has remained theatre. Now a lot of people, successful actresses of course, have their roots in theatre, but ultimately it's television and of course the pinnacle as people regard it, film, that that eventually wins their hearts.

Penelope Wilton22:17

Yesterday.

Speaker 422:27

But eventually

Speaker 422:28

Hmm.

Presenter22:29

Clearly that's not the case for you. You continue to work regularly in the theatre. What is it about it that that differentiates it from the sort of work you would do on screen?

Presenter22:40

You can't really.

Presenter22:42

compare the two, in my opinion, because uh there are great film scripts I know and great films, but it's a director's medium. In the theatre it's the playwright and the actor, and you choose what is seen. You and the writer are there, what he's created.

Presenter22:59

It demands of you. I'm not saying that the others don't demand of me. But theatre demands of you and it demands of the people watching you. And it is the most exquisite thing when it works well. It's also the most

Presenter23:12

disappointing thing when it doesn't work well because you put so much into it. Tell me about your next piece of music, then. Sometimes I find very jolly music.

Presenter23:22

Very depressing.

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And extremely sad music, which I think this is, very uplifting.

Presenter23:30

I don't know what that says, but that's what I feel about this piece.

Presenter24:33

The second movement of Schubert's String Quartet in C major, played by the Hollywood String Quartet. So you met Dan Massey, Daniel Massey, the actor, whilst you were acting. And you went on to have a a daughter, Alice. Alice. And Alice was, I read, two pounds nine ounces when she was born. What what happened?

Penelope Wilton24:41

Mass head.

Presenter24:52

Well, I had a little boy actually before, Alice. The little boy was um twenty nine weeks and didn't survive. Five months later I was pregnant again. And then, of course, at twelve weeks I started to have problems. So I had to go into hospital. So I lay there for the entirety of the rest of the entire time. And um

Penelope Wilton25:07

For the entirety of the rest.

Presenter25:11

At thirty weeks things started to go wrong and they said, Look, we're going to have to deliver this baby.

Presenter25:16

I thought, I can't believe this is happening again, because I'd just got over twenty-nine weeks I was really feeling good about it. Alice arrived.

Presenter25:25

Two pounds nine. She's never looked back.

Presenter25:29

She had to of course stay there for a long time, and uh I stayed there with her. And I went out with my baby at five she was five pounds then. And she is thirty now, a happy, healthy, thriving. That's the best thing that happened to me.

Penelope Wilton25:38

Healthy, thriving.

Presenter25:42

It's extraordinary that thirty years ago, at that weight, she did survive. Oh, amazing.

Penelope Wilton25:45

Yeah.

Presenter25:47

Absolutely amazing.

Presenter25:50

And um

Presenter25:51

She was beautiful.

Presenter25:53

In fact, she wasn't really, but I thought she was beautiful. When she came out I used to linger outside boots sometimes, thinking people are going to say when she was in the pram, look in and say, That is the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen.

Presenter26:08

And nobody did actually. Tell me then about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is Stevie Wonder singing Isn't She Lovely? because Stevie Wonder had a

Presenter26:18

a little girl when Alice was about three.

Presenter26:21

The song is for Alice actually, that's all I can say, it's for Alice.

Speaker 426:28

Through us he's given life to one

Speaker 426:34

Forgiven she lovely neighbor.

Presenter26:53

Stevie Wonder and Isn't She Lovely? And that's for Alice, your daughter. And she was at £2.9, and she is now as a thriving thirty-year-old, people were saying. Unusually, you've worked with both of your husbands. Daniel Massey, who we've just mentioned, you were also married at one time to Ian Holm. Is it a difficult thing to work with your husband on stage? Well, no. I really liked working with both of them.

Penelope Wilton26:56

Daughter Ann.

Penelope Wilton26:59

That's right.

Presenter27:15

They are both wonderful actors. So of course I should be so lucky they were both wonderful actors.

Presenter27:21

Now, you say rather wonderfully that you've had a few languors in your career, but actually is that that's not really true. You have consistently worked, haven't you? You seem to me I mean, the roll call of the amount of stage plays that you've done, and also, as we've mentioned, plenty of of radio plays and T V and film too. It's not luck, is it? You're one of the very few actresses who continues to be virtually constantly employed. Well, it it sort of looks like that from the outside, and I suppose indeed it is true I've been working forty years. But within that time there have been long girs where you thought the phone's never going to ring, and I'm never ever going to work again, so I might as well

Presenter28:04

Think about something else.

Presenter28:06

Now, of course, I've been doing it a long time, so

Presenter28:09

If people want s what I can offer them, they ask me.

Presenter28:13

And uh that's what they do. You took an interest I mean, to me it it looked like a a bit of a a detour in into the area of sitcom. You did Ever Decreasing Circles, which is a big hit with uh Richard Breyers. He had done The Good Life just before that with Felicity Kendall. Did did you feel nervous about

Penelope Wilton28:22

Cool.

Penelope Wilton28:23

Richard Brown

Penelope Wilton28:26

That's before that.

Presenter28:30

I mean, obviously not replacing her because it wasn't the same show, but but taking on a partnership with him on T V after that. No, not in the least. I had the best time in the world.

Penelope Wilton28:33

The same sh

Presenter28:40

I loved doing Ever Decreasing Circles, and I I love Richard Bryers, and I'm not saying that in I truly love him. He's of one of the goodest people I know, and he's got the best timing, comic timing, of any actor I've ever worked with. How did you feel about being s I mean, presumably you were you were suddenly recognised in the street. I mean, you couldn't just go to Waitrose, as you always have done when you started doing Ever Decreasing Circles. Did did that bother you?

Penelope Wilton29:01

Darted.

Presenter29:05

I wasn't uh recognized that often, you know.

Presenter29:07

Occasionally I used to be recognised. I was once recognised in Budgeons, I think, with my sister.

Presenter29:15

And uh

Presenter29:16

They come people come up and touch you.

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And Linda said to me, Oh, I had no idea so many people had seen Andromache.

Presenter29:26

I don't mind at all. People will come across and say how much they'd enjoy your donkey, how how flattering is that? There was no chance that you would then be seduced forever by the by the um the audiences and the money and the apparent glamour of television. I mean you didn't say well this is also nobody

Penelope Wilton29:40

Didn't say well this is

Presenter29:43

Nobody asked me after that.

Presenter29:45

They didn't say, Oh, you've done ever decreasing circles. Let's write a wonderful series for you, Penelope. I did the work that came along. Well, sometimes I didn't, actually. In fact, I was asked to do a film by Stanley Kubrick, and a not a very big part, but I was also asked to play Sonia.

Presenter30:00

in Ancouvania.

Presenter30:02

I preferred

Presenter30:04

You know, there's something to get your teeth into.

Presenter30:07

And also

Presenter30:08

The Journeys

Presenter30:10

I wonder about that. I wonder, of course, audiences go on journeys, don't they? If you see a wonderful piece of theatre, then it it's not only at the moment that you see it, you take it with you and you think about it, and you think about the words and the power of the way they've been communicated by an effective actor.

Speaker 430:16

And it

Speaker 430:19

Yeah.

Presenter30:26

I wonder about you. I wonder how much you are changed by the parts you play.

Presenter30:32

I'm certainly enriched by the parts I play because I know more about the human.

Presenter30:36

Condition. You think, well, Chekhov has taught me something here. Yes, he's taught me an enormous amount.

Penelope Wilton30:41

Yes.

Presenter30:43

He's taught me.

Presenter30:45

Great compassion. And also, he doesn't tell you how to think.

Presenter30:50

He doesn't take a moral stand.

Presenter30:53

He displays everyone and you make up your own mind. And that's what great writing does. It's been a wonderful career, as far as that goes.

Presenter31:01

And not over yet, indeed. Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. I heard this piece conducted by Rostapovich, who was a great friend of Shostakovich, and at the end of the piece he picked up the score and he kissed it.

Presenter31:16

and it was one of his last concerts at the Barbican.

Presenter31:19

And, um, I felt like doing the same. It's the human spirit and the battle.

Presenter31:23

I think it's a wonderful piece. It's also a complicated piece, and I would get to know it very well on this desert island.

Presenter32:27

The beginning of the first movement of Shostakiewicz's Symphony No. 5 You've talked a lot about your sisters. I'm I'm wondering how much you'll miss them on this island.

Presenter32:35

I'll certainly miss them. I I'll miss my family. I'm a very big family, and I've got twenty five first cousins. I don't see all of them, but some of them I see a lot of.

Presenter32:44

And my sisters particularly, yes. And the walking. Would would you I mean, you say you think this is going to be a warm island. You walk a lot here. You stride out. I do.

Penelope Wilton32:51

You stride out.

Presenter32:52

I find it very, very therapeutic.

Presenter32:55

I was let's talk a bit about therap the therapeutic nature of life. You mentioned right back at the beginning when we started talking that you had done some, I don't know what you want to call it, therapy, psychotherapy, whatever.

Penelope Wilton33:04

Yeah.

Presenter33:06

Does it change your approach to the way you you look at characters, the way you understand characters? I think it probably has illuminated.

Presenter33:14

Because, um, you put into other people things that you don't like to

Presenter33:17

Addressing yourself.

Presenter33:19

And once you start to own yourself, then you're a much rounder person. That's sort of what I'm getting out of it, I think. I'm

Presenter33:28

Of an age now, but I never stop learning things all the time and

Presenter33:33

Lanning too.

Presenter33:35

Be better at what I do, hopefully. I've got to do it better. Not in a sort of competitive way, but with me and the piece. I've got to

Presenter33:46

Give it my best. Do you allow yourself a sense of achievement? I mean, you have won lots of accolades, you get um brilliantly reviewed, especially for your stage performances. Do you do you allow yourself quiet moments of triumph?

Presenter34:03

Not much.

Presenter34:04

You caught hard on yourself? No, I just uh

Presenter34:09

I don't allow it much. I wish I did. I I would like to enjoy myself more.

Presenter34:15

Tell me about your final choice then. My final choice is sunny.

Presenter34:19

Sung by, and I think written by, Bobby Hebb. And why have you chosen Sunny? Well, it's very happy and uh.

Presenter34:26

There are days, and there were days when I was just beginning, where I everything was just so wonderful. And this reminds me of that time.

Penelope Wilton34:36

Uh

Presenter34:36

Uh

Penelope Wilton34:36

Uh

Penelope Wilton34:38

Yesterday my life was filled with rain

Penelope Wilton34:43

Sonny

Penelope Wilton34:45

You smiled at me and really eased the pain

Penelope Wilton34:50

Now the dark days are done, and the bright days are here.

Penelope Wilton34:54

My sunny one shines so sincere

Penelope Wilton34:59

Sunny one so true, I love you

Presenter35:04

Bobby Hebb and Sonny. So, Penelope, I will give you I'm about to send you off now the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you're allowed to take one other book. What are you going to take? Well, I would like an anthology of poetry of the twentieth century. And I would also like not just English poetry. I want Spanish poets and French poets and Irish poets. And I would like the original language, the language they write in, to be on the on the opposite side of the page so that I can learn.

Presenter35:33

How it sounds in the original. And a luxury, too, you're allowed.

Presenter35:38

I would like a small open air cinema for one person. It doesn't have to be, you know, air conditioning or anything just me, so I'd have somewhere to go in the evenings.

Presenter35:48

Under the stars. Yes, I just go out in the evenings and I don't have to I can pretend to have, but I could go and sit in quite a nice cinema chair.

Penelope Wilton35:49

Yeah.

Presenter35:57

And um watch

Presenter36:00

These films. It would take me away from the island because I think I'm going to get pretty bored on that island. So if I can be in the mean streets in San Francisco and then I can be somewhere in Rome, you know, I'd get about a bit, wouldn't I? You can certainly have that. Thank you. And I'm going to force you to pick just one disc if you had to, which one would it be? Well, in the end, I would choose the Schubert String Quartet and C major, because we only heard one little movement of that. But it is something that I have never ever.

Presenter36:29

Got tired of. You may have it. Penelope Wilson, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter36:41

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