Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Acclaimed actor with a career spanning theatre, television, and film, winning numerous major awards including an Oscar and multiple BAFTAs.
On the island
Eight records
I've chosen it because my passion is Scotland. We used to go every single year, Michael and I, and Finkey. And I am absolutely bewitched by it.
Well, my very first night in New York. I went to Birdland and as we arrived, it was the two men at the door. This man hit the other one straight through a plate glass door and down the stairs. I thought, this is living and it was Count Basie and Joe Williams that night. It was thrilling.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18)
My third disc is uh I want my brother Geoffrey, who really inspired me so much about Shakespeare and about being a student and and being an actor. We did a C D called Exits and Entrances and on it he does Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
When Fint was at Central, she has a lovely singing voice, and she was in a little night music, which I had never seen before. And I just fell for it in such a big way, and I don't think it was long after that. Oh, a few years, I think, and I was asked to play Desiree in the National Theatre production of Little Night Music, and then I became a complete devotee of Stephen Sondheim, who I think is a genius. And I love this song. I love it from Follies.
I've Got You Under My SkinFavourite
This is Sinatra, who I think I've probably chosen every time I've been ever asked to choose a record. Um I can't be anywhere actually without Frank Sinatra. Michael and I saw him at the Albert Hall and uh we went to a pub for a drink beforehand and Michael started crying in the pub before before we even got there. He said that Sinatra got more people in and out of bed than anyone in history. Of course he's quite right.
This is something that I listen to regularly. It's the shipping forecast. Every night that I hear it, I go right round the country listening to them all. I see the country so clearly, and the most romantic of the names, almost, is Finisterre, or was Finisterre, because now, of course, Finisterre has been changed to Fitzroy. And I know that Fitzroy was remarkable, and he actually is responsible for a weather forecast. But at the same time, I miss Finisterre.
I have to take Miles Davis with me on my island. Although my really up musical upbringing is really entirely classical, I'm still rather amazed at this this extraordinary list I've chosen. But I would have to take Miles Davis, because I knew him in New York too. Yes. Because we were six months in America and we just, you know, followed everybody around. He was a friend of one of the actors in the company, Job Stewart. And so we went and heard him playing. And so now, the moment I hear him, I'm back in one of those wonderful smoky rooms. Oh, in New York. Glorious.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:16Is it more difficult when a live audience is there?
Those are the people you don't want to meet before it, I tell you. I well, just the thing about, of course, being in the theatre is that you get a chance to do it again the next day if you make if you mess it up.
Presenter asks
2:43Are you very brave in other parts of your life?
I do drive very quickly. Not so much now. I used to drive very quickly indeed.
Presenter asks
5:12You've never done a one-woman show. Why is that?
I couldn't do it because so much part of being in the theatre is being part of a company, being part of kind of jigsaw of um being able to present this finished picture to the audience. And I wouldn't even know who to rely on if it was on my own, and I wouldn't even know who to get ready for.
Presenter asks
6:27You've said sitcom is the most difficult thing you've ever done. Why?
The keepsakes
The book
Lord Wavell
If I can have an audio. Machine? And what I would love is More than anything, I would love my daughter to have recorded. Wavells are the men's flowers.
The luxury
Cardboard cut-outs of friends and family
I'm going to turn my island into kind of Easter Island, 'cause I would like cut outs of all my friends and my family and the people I love most. I would like cut outs of them, and then I would put them up and rearrange them all round the island.
Oh, well, it's very, very simple because you read it on a Tuesday. You know it at the end of Wednesday. You set it by the end of Wednesday, and then you rehearse it Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then you do it a comedy for the first time in front of an audience on Sunday. And you know, in the theatre, if we're doing a comedy, you have previews and you hear where the laughs are, and you then know how off your timing is, and how to get the laugh. But you don't get that with a situation comedy. And at the beginning we used to stand there and they used to introduce us one by one. And every single time of all the fine romance and all as time goes by, I used to stand there every Sunday night and say, How have I got myself into this position? I cannot believe that I've got to go out 'cause it it also is splitting the … atom, in a way, because you have to say hello to the audience, hello, yes, very nice, and then suddenly you have to go and do the scene.
Presenter asks
14:03In 1957 you were cast as Ophelia, hammered by the critics and replaced. What went through your head at the time?
Um, I played it for a year at the Vic, and then when we went to America I didn't play it any more. Well, I think I had to do an enormous swallow and uh I and strangely, after being in six months in America, where we were, and we came back and went to Yugoslavia with it, and I got the part back again. And I had watched Barbara Jefford play Ophelia in America on the tour, and I think I had watched and learnt a great, great deal more. And it is a question of just being allowed to learn it. That's wonderful. I mean, I could have been fired and that would have been it. I don't know what would have happened. But I went on to play lots of other parts that season. And so it was all experience.
Presenter asks
18:55When your daughter Finty was born, you were prepared to give up work altogether. Why, and why did Michael persuade you not to?
I wanted to give it up because I wanted to be a a proper mother and be around. And Michael didn't want, I expect, because of the gentleman who pays the rent, I expect. I'm not sure.
“I remember playing the snail. That was my first performance, and I remember it very well. And my father made me a huge shell, buckram kind of shell, which I had to creep under, and at one point creep out of and when it came to the day that the parents came, I stood up with this thing tied round me, looking out at everybody, and I just heard this wonderful principal of the school, Miss Meeby, saying, Down, Judith, he said nicely.”
“I saw Billie Holiday and I heard her sing Strange Fruit.”
“It was uh fantastically worthwhile. It happened for twelve years and a family community was something that I always wanted. And my Pa had died, so one Easter Michael's parents and my ma all came for Easter, and we were in a tiny cottage in Stratford, and they all just got on so well, and we had the most lovely time. And it was Michael, actually, who said to me when they'd gone back, Wouldn't it be rather wonderful to have everybody together? And that's what we did.”
“It was a rather kind of grim time for me, that, because Michael had just died and I was not in a frightfully wonderful place. Um and uh I just remember Billy Connolly being very, very, very funny, 'cause my BAFTA fellowship was at the Haymarket. And Fint and I sat on the front row. He made us laugh a lot, and that was lovely.”
“Michael and I saw him at the Albert Hall and uh we went to a pub for a drink beforehand and Michael started crying in the pub before before we even got there. He said that Sinatra got more people in and out of bed than anyone in history. Of course he's quite right.”
“It's the shipping forecast. Every night that I hear it, I go right round the country listening to them all. I see the country so clearly, and the most romantic of the names, almost, is Finisterre, or was Finisterre, because now, of course, Finisterre has been changed to Fitzroy. And I know that Fitzroy was remarkable, and he actually is responsible for a weather forecast. But at the same time, I miss Finisterre.”