Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Acclaimed character actor, Oscar-nominated for Breaking the Waves and Hilary and Jackie, with a 30-year career of critically praised film and stage roles.
On the island
Eight records
And this is a song my granny sang to me when I was a baby. I kind of wondered why am I drawn to this song to talk about it now… And the lyric that stays with me from this song is 'Do you want the stars to play with? Do you want the moon to run away with?' And that idea of being a dreamer and being free and having your imagination set on fire… is very, very powerful. Then sort of later in my upbringing, I was very strongly given the impression that dreaming was bad… But I think I had this very, very early connection to dreaming and how powerful it was. And I've always had wild dreams all my life.
Georges Durand and his Orchestra
Alain Romans / Franck Barcellini
This is part of the soundtrack to Monancq [Mon Oncle] by Jacques Tati… And it's a film and music that's about everything you see is absurd and delightful and hilarious. I'd sort of got so into this that by the time we arrived in Calais and drove off the boat, I thought everything I saw was hilarious… So it's a piece of music my sister and I listened to over and over and we loved. We didn't have access to very much music, but this was very special.
Adagio from Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major for winds, K. 361/370a (Gran Partita)
Academy of St Martin in the Fields Wind Ensemble
This is part of the Adagio from Mozart's serenade in B-flat for 13 wind instruments. This, interestingly, part of the culture at this SES was that music that we were allowed to listen to was Mozart. Mozart was conscious music… And so we had, in our very thin record collection, we had this, and my father loved it. Long before it became a brilliantly used piece in the film Amadeus… During lockdown early in the pandemic… we came around the corner… there socially distanced… were these kids from Trinity College Music playing this piece. And it was breathtaking in its beauty… it was a very powerful moment.
ErnieFavourite
When my daughter was, I think, five months old, we went to New Zealand to make a film. And the man who picked us up from the airport, a guy called Seamus… He said, 'Do you want to go the pretty way?'… And he said, 'Oh, we'll just stop off here at the Surf Club and have a bit of breakfast'… And he said, 'Oh, that guy over there, he's the drummer from Fat Freddy's Drop.' And we're like, 'What's that?' And then he started playing it to us… And this really is a song about finding your person. It's the person who makes you who you are and makes you make sense… It's a long, slow burn that's really ultra cool and then gets to the point where the lyrics are, 'I'd step out of the rush for you', which is what love is, I guess.
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85: I. Adagio – Moderato
Jacqueline du Pré, London Symphony Orchestra
My fifth track is the opening movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto, performed by Jacqueline du Pré… I first heard this when I was a student and in the aftermath of the storm in 1987… the news came through that she had died… and they played this piece of music on the news and it hit me like a steam train. And then obviously later in my life I then played her in a movie and I got to know this piece very intimately… Hearing that piece of music was the first time that I really started to have an inkling of what it was to be as an artist, to be… what I would call absolutely all in. She became that music. She gave everything. She was 21 when she made the recording… And here she was with every fibre of her vibrating in this piece of music. And that was mind-blowing to me.
This is part of the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso by Morricone… It's a piece of music that my son plays on the piano. Which absolutely turns my heart over every time I hear it. Because this is a film about, it's an absolute love letter to cinema and the power of storytelling… a film that I love, and this is the soundtrack.
My husband said to me, Emily, you cannot have Lee Morgan playing Sidewinder because it's like asking Mozart to play happy birthday. But we've already had Mozart, don't worry about it. I just love this piece… If there is a version of my children that reflects the little girl that I was going to France with Jacques Tati, this is a moment I remember so clearly, driving my kids in the car and listening to this… I just remember this moment driving in the car and listening to this and the kids suddenly getting the idea of it being the soundtrack of the way to see London and people just going about their business and the delight of being in a day when everybody's just… going about your business, walking down the street in London. To Lee Morgan, Sidewinder, just joy.
A piece by the Citizens of the World Choir, which is a choir that I am a patron of… it's a choir made up of refugees and displaced people and allies… fifty odd members of the choir from twenty six different countries around the world… They sing stuff from loads and loads of different cultures… And hearing them sing is like taking a bath in the opposite of hate. It's just a beautiful thing. And this is a song that was written for them by Felix Buxton of Basement Jaxx… one of their pieces that they are readying for Refugee Week this year.
In conversation
Presenter asks
12:33How did you navigate your own school days [at the SES school]? Did you see any of [the violence]?
I did see some of it. And I think I navigated it by keeping my head down and being a good girl for as long as I could stomach that. Certainly while I was at school. As I got older, then I just sort of questioned it more and more and more and got when the logic of life is staring you in the face, you go, 'Well, hang on a minute, that doesn't make sense and that doesn't make sense.'
Presenter asks
15:20How do you now look back at [your parents'] choice to be part of the SES and their appeal, the central tenets of the organization for them?
It will always be confusing that because they obviously loved us so much, but they did, I think, unwittingly put us potentially in harm's way. We were okay because we had them, but other people maybe were not.
Presenter asks
24:21What do you remember about how Breaking the Waves was received?
It's quite the story because that was the point at which the SES said to me, 'Go on your undignified way.' Literally, they said that to me when I said this was what I was doing… and then everything of that upbringing had defined you. I was sort of I felt like I was in freefall. And the thing that caught me was this part, acting, giving yourself over to something. And the experience of making the film was amazing… It was the toast of Cannes. You were nominated for an Academy Award… and then it sort of spiralled into a whole press thing. I sort of became a little bit catatonic, to be honest. You know, I just didn't really quite know what to do… it was a sense of shock. I felt a bit frozen.
The keepsakes
The book
Bloodaxe Books (editor Neil Astley)
I think poetry is in a way the most insightful if you were to take philosophy, film, art, everything and boil it down to its essence, poetry would be the most successful way to express it.
The luxury
I spend quite a lot of time there when I'm not working. I think being a creative person is a bit like having a dog and you have to take it for a walk every day and just going to see other people's attempts to reflect the nature of life.
Presenter asks
35:46Tell me more about what you mean by 'acting, if you're doing it right, you're traumatising yourself.'
Well, I think… Possibly there's a lot of parts that I've played that have been, you know, had a lot of trauma and sadness involved in the nature of the roles. But I think you are putting yourself into an emotional place which is pretend, you're pretending, but your body doesn't know the difference. So all of those stress hormones and everything… And you're not just doing it the once, you're doing it over and over and over… You have to learn to sort of regulate yourself physically… you come away from doing it, a big scene and you feel like you've been through the ringer… I do worry about it, but I think being an actor is like, you know, you're sort of an amateur psychologist anyway… And I find walking, it's the rhythm of… all those therapeutic things that have rhythm, drumming, EMDR, all those kind of things. Meditative… just walking is something I do pretty much every day. And that helps you decompress.
Presenter asks
42:37What advice do you give to younger artists who are starting out and following you in your footsteps?
Don't bring your phone to set… I think that sense of sitting around the fire, being with the best company in the world, and you learn so much about being an actor, but also about being a person… And don't get a tattoo because it puts at least 45 minutes on your call in the morning trying to cover it up.
Presenter asks
43:48How good are you at adjusting to a new place when you land somewhere [for a film]?
Well, I like to think that I'm quite good, but I'm not very good at the lonely of it. I don't think. That's going to be the problem, the isolation. I like to jabber away and talk to people and, you know, that's sort of very feeding for me.
“And that idea of being a dreamer and being free and having your imagination set on fire by the imaginative world, by the dream world, is very, very powerful. Then sort of later in my upbringing, I was very strongly given the impression that dreaming was bad and it was a an activity that would be lead to my destruction and that dreaming wasn't allowed.”
“It will always be confusing that because they obviously loved us so much, but they did, I think, unwittingly put us potentially in harm's way. We were okay because we had them, but other people maybe were not.”
“The experience of making the film was amazing. If being on a sort of religious path is about a search for meaning. And that's what my life in many ways had been, this feels more alive and more full of meaning than I have ever felt.”
“I'd like to take credit for that path, but I get less and less sure of my kind of moral rectitude as I get older. I just think I've been lucky, I've been you do something that gets noticed in that way early on, and there are still to this day I meet people, filmmakers, who say 'Breaking the Waves is the reason I'm a director.'… And that has a currency that's just lasted, it's kept me in knickers, you know? A very long time.”
“Hearing them sing is like taking a bath in the opposite of hate. It's just a beautiful thing.”
“I think poetry is in a way the most insightful if you were to take philosophy, film, art, everything and boil it down to its essence, poetry would be the most successful way to express it. It's an expression of the human condition that is very potent.”