Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actress who created Upstairs, Downstairs and House of Elliott, won Evening Standard Best Actress, known for Virginia Woolf adaptations.
On the island
Eight records
It was played in The Unexpected Man that I'd just done recently with Michael Gambon, and I loved it so much I sometimes didn't come in with my lines because I got carried away with it.
Well, I simply love... tap dancing and I I want the tap dancing from Forty Second Street.
Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1
Gervase de Peyer and Gwenneth Pryor
In um I'm mad about the clarinet anyway, and in The Unexpected Man, my character goes to an evening of Brahms sonatas and it made me s because of the part... And I started listening to them again and I thought I don't play music nearly enough and um it reminded me just how much I love this.
Get Off of My CloudFavourite
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
I'd love the Rolling Stones, Mick singing Hey You Get Off of My Cloud. I did a day's filming with Mick Jagger... The sexiest thing going, I thought, and rather still do, I think.
Concerto for Two Violins, Lute and Continuo in D major, RV 93
It it it was it was used in a production of The Duchess of Malfi... even though it was utterly disastrous, I had a wonderful time, and this music has lived with me ever since.
John Phillips and Michelle Phillips
I really love them. This to me is America. I used to listen to them all the time over there, and this is a totally American song.
Improvisation No. 15 in C minor (Hommage à Édith Piaf)
The next piece of music was music used by Patrick Garland... At the end of Eatron, Virginia, because um Virginia Woolf committed suicide by putting stones in her pocket... and lying down in a river. And this is the music he used
Oxford Camerata conducted by Laurence Cummings
When we were doing The Unexpected Man, I have to talk about Orlando Gibbons... and if there is a heaven... I would like them to be singing this as I go.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:02What is it that you like about [Virginia Woolf]?
I simply adore her. When people, friends of mine, say, How can you like her? She's such a snob, they were all such snobs... I think everyone has their own snobbery... and say, Oh, they were so vile to each other and they said such awful things, that was the whole idea of the Bloomsbury evenings, that they would be very critical of one another. But they could also be very funny... one has to remember that she was the person they most wanted at a party... because she was such huge fun.
Presenter asks
10:11Why did your mother put you to [dancing classes and performing in working men's clubs]?
Oh, um, a gipsy came to the door when I was about three and told my mother that I was going to be a great dancer... So I was sent off to dancing classes and I screamed and cried and hated it... I did dislike intensely doing the working men's clubs and I was very tired and it meant I was tired at school... I think she wanted to be, I don't know, famous something, I don't know.
Presenter asks
17:20What did your parents say when you eventually made it, when you did, in later life, become a great success?
They were told by other people... That I was a success. And I think they were proud, but I think they would have much, much rather... I'd been in musicals.
The keepsakes
The luxury
A painting by Atkinson Grimshaw
I'm absolutely mad about [Atkinson] Grimshaw. He does a lot of cities, twilight, moonlight with rain and lighted windows, and I love that moment. And the thing I love about England almost more than anything is our weather. And I love November and February when it rains, and I think on that island with endless sun I would just love to enter those pictures and be back in England.
Presenter asks
18:36You managed to con the Guildhall into teaching you to act. How did you do that?
I did a teaching course at Guildhall, for which I got a grant. And without telling anyone, I simply went to all the um lessons for the for acting... I simply got there at nine o'clock in the morning, came out at ten at night... My last term, they didn't find out. The principal had me in and said, Eileen, I don't understand this. You're on a teaching course... And you appear to be in three plays this term. And I said, I'm sorry, I've been doing it all along.
Presenter asks
20:41Do you still worry about class today? Are you still aware to alert to it all?
I hope I've stopped having the huge brick on my shoulder because really at my age it would be ludicrous and with my luck that I've had it would be ludicrous. But I'm afraid it's still that. It's there.
“It's very hard to be unhappy when you're tapping. It's a strange thing.”
“I would ban, I would ban children being employed... in any way in the entertainment industry.”
“I put bums on seats in New York and I'm always worried that I won't put a single bum on a seat in the West End.”
“I'm an agnostic. I'd love not to be, but I have to be honest and I'm an agnostic. Half of me hopes there's nothing. A lot of me I long for there to be angels, but I'm none too sure I want there to be a God, and I think He's such a cruel God if He is, unless He's got a jolly good explanation for a lot when I get there.”