Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actress best known for her role in the television series Duel in the Crown.
On the island
Eight records
Trumpet Concerto in B-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2: II. Adagio
Frank Berger, Hans Dieter Weber
It's one of those pieces of music that you hear it and it just goes straight into your heart and just gives it a huge twist and a pull, which I love happening to me.
There were three of us and three children we used to sit around and sing this song, join in with Peter Sellers and Sophie Loren.
I learnt the piano from the age of five. I wanted to play jazz piano because really I wanted to be Nina Simone.
This was actually my brother and I were driving in his little Fiat six hundred through Gloucestershire or somewhere to go to a party, and this music came on the radio and we literally stopped the car to listen to it because we'd never heard anything like it.
This song ... It's very much about the late sixties and about rebellion and about wanting the world to change.
Siete canciones populares españolas: No. 5, Nana
It's the cello, and it's Pablo Casals, and he's playing a Spanish folk song, really, called Nana.
is for dear Ellie, who's um such a sort of amazing sweet person, and we have great cuddles, the three of us, and we often have cuddles, in the middle of the kitchen floor listening to this um song
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Wir setzen uns mit Tränen niederFavourite
English Baroque Soloists & Monteverdi Choir, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner
Because I want to learn all the different parts because I used to sing in a choir and I loved singing in a choir. I loved playing in an orchestra and I love being part of a company.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30What do you mean by [saying you will never be a star because a star makes all their characters into themselves]?
I think Hollywood does that with people. I think it wants you're asked to. People see you do something and they say, You did that in that programme, in that film, whatever it is, come back and do that for us,'cause we know you can do it. And I think what I've tried to do is to go, Well, I've done that, so I don't want to do it again.
Presenter asks
5:33Why did you identify yourself with [the character of Sarah Leighton in Jewel in the Crown]?
Sarah is rather lumpy and there's a line in it where she sees her face looking back at her and the bones in her face that won't move and won't reveal the person she feels she is inside and that's been something I've felt a lot during my life. Their mother is an alcoholic and our mother was an alcoholic and that has a very profound effect on a child. And when I was auditioning for the part ... I had to own up and say, I've been there. I know what it's like to be in the loo, in the cubicle next to your mother, and hearing the rattle of brown paper bag and the gin bottle coming out, and just that sort of despairing feeling.
Presenter asks
20:20What happened when you told your father that [you wanted to be an actress]?
The keepsakes
The book
Robert Hughes
It's a fantastic illustration of George and England and the prison ships and all of that. But I think crucially on The Desert Island it does talk about creating a new place. And I think I might need it a bit of help. And it's a huge book and will take me a long time to read.
The luxury
iPod with all the tracks I haven't been allowed
It's been difficult choosing eight pieces of music. So I'm going to say this quickly before you say I can't, but I'd like an iPod with all the tracks I haven't been allowed.
No, it didn't go down well at all. ... I've paid for this very expensive education. You're not going to throw it all away by going off and being an actress. And I said, Well, I am, and I'm very glad I did. I really felt it very strongly. I knew that it was the only thing I could do.
Presenter asks
20:54Were you ever eventually able to have those kinds of [honest] conversations with [your father]?
Yes, I'm very glad to say. Eventually he married for a third time and very happily to a wonderful woman and ... we both just sat there. And talked for the first time in our lives about the truth of his having the way he left Mummy and what had happened. And he spoke about what it's like to be married to an alcoholic. And we had a great, great sort of moment of friendship and honesty and openness.
Presenter asks
24:39Why would the director have chosen you to play the part of a deaf prostitute from Bradford [in Dummy]?
My first ever telly was a part in the Sweeney playing a croupier. And the morning after that was shown, I got a phone call saying they're making a drama documentary and they saw you on telly last night. Will you come and meet the director? ... he opened the door and said, oh, good, you're not too sophisticated. And I thought, damn, because I thought that's exactly what I was trying to be. And he started telling me this story about this woman. And it was everything that I believed acting should be to do with transformation.
“I think I've always had quite a strong imagination. And about not particularly feeling comfortable as myself, so needing to reinvent myself in different guises.”
“I used to think that it took me as long to get away from a part as it had taken to play the part, and eighteen months was rather a long time.”
“I went into a shop and it was really shocking because I could hear them giggling because I was trying to speak as she did to to buy something. And it just really brought it home to me that um how badly we treat people.”