Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actress, one of the leading of her generation, acclaimed for her performances in Truly Madly Deeply and Death and the Maiden, winning Best Actress Awards for bo
On the island
Eight records
Sonata No. 3 for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord in G minor, BWV 1029: II. AdagioFavourite
Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich
It's the second movement of the sonata for cello and piano, which was the well I suppose it was the theme music really for the film Trulimati Deeply which I made a couple of years ago with my great friend and collaborator Anthony Mingela.
Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24 "Spring": I. Allegro
Yehudi Menuhin and Wilhelm Kempff
We brought him back from hospital and he died at home, which was which was very lucky for all of us to have him there. And the last couple of days, when he was obviously slipping away, my brother Tim kept a continual sort of concert going for him ... there was this wonderful oasis of about an hour when he put this piece of music on.
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622: II. Adagio
Jack Brymer, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
was simply the very first piece of music I remember hearing. Um it was in Malta. I must therefore have been about six and my father was accompanying a friend of his, who presumably was somebody in the army, who was a clarinetist.
In a way they're singing for all women everywhere and for all black people everywhere and they're much of what they sing about is a is a form of protest song or freedom song. It's sort of inspirational to listen to and I think it would give me great courage on my island.
String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810 "Death and the Maiden": I. Allegro
for obvious reasons really. I just have had a wonderful year doing this play uh at the Royal Court to start with and then in the West End. It's a good choice for a programme like this in the sense that the whole significance of this piece of music in the play is that for the character Paolina it embodies an experience, in her case, torture, which she cannot escape from
I wish I shall dance on um yes, I'm gonna find a hard, wet piece of sand, hard enough to stamp on, and I shall dance every morning to cheer myself up.
I listen to a lot of rock music and some blues and a lot of contemporary music and so I've chosen a sort of classic um which is Bob Dylan, Sheltered from the Storm from the album Blood on the Tracks.
Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor, BWV 1060R: II. Adagio
Itzhak Perlman, Neil Black, English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim
I've grown to love Bach a great deal and since I am um rather a wayward creature I think that he ha there's a kind of formality and uh almost stateliness and order at the heart of his music which I think would keep me um keep me it would impose a sort of discipline in my life
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07What was that sonnet that turned on the light for you?
They were deciding who should read what at this event some sort of speech day. And I think I was being encouraged to read something from Winnie the Pooh, or something more appropriate for a nine-year-old, but I found this piece of paper, picked it up, and I read this poem. And it had this last line of every verse, which was If I could tell you, I would let you know. That was the line, it's the only thing I remember. And it was a it was a poem of such sort of uh sadness and sweetness, and great maturity, I suppose, and great passion, and I persuaded them to let me do it.
Presenter asks
6:51How did you manage to capture that feeling [of grief in Truly Madly Deeply]?
Well, I didn't really research that film. I mean, I I only do research if it's necessary, if I feel I'm having to, you know, play somebody or explore a situation which I have no knowledge of. And it's only ever as a trigger to the imagination anyway, which is the central kind of tool of the trade, you know.
Presenter asks
7:48Had your pretended grief in acting that part come anywhere close to resembling the real thing [when your father died]?
Well, I th yes, I I I do. I mean I think he what he wrote, what Anthony wrote, was fantastically accurate um testimonial to what it's like to lose somebody in in bereavement. I think it's very different in some ways losing a parent to losing a lover or a husband or whatever. And in some ways of course it's not. Um but it's true that when my father died I did find myself in the months afterwards sometimes saying or feeling things and thinking where am I Where have I said this before? Where have I thought this before? And then remembering it was connected to playing the part two years ago in the film.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats
I think it has to be poetry because I do read a lot of poetry, largely because I don't seem to have time to read nearly as many novels as I would like to. Um and I think in the end probably you'd tire of of any novel that you had to read thousands of times.
The luxury
Masaccio's frescoes from the Brancacci Chapel
I thought I'd take a great painting because I would be lonely, and a great peopled canvas would be a wonderful thing to look at.
Presenter asks
22:32How did you tackle the research for [Death and the Maiden]?
Well, that one I did do quite a lot of um preparation for because It was a long time before I felt I really could give myself permission to play it. She had been through this horrendous experience, and I don't think Although the imagination can take you almost anywhere, I just felt on this occasion How can I play this person who's been to hell and back basically? In fact, not come back. I mean, only got halfway back, you know. And so I did. I spent a lot of time trying to find and talk to or listen to. Largely Chileans who had survived the experience and come here during the seventies.
Presenter asks
28:13How much do you fear ending up without [children]?
Oh, very much. I mean, if I got to the point where I was too old to have children and hadn't had any, I would consider myself to have really, really mismanaged things terribly. I I hate to think that will happen.
“That's all it's always important later on in life when things get so confused to go back to your very early instincts. And that was an early instinct I had born when I first read that poem that although although I hadn't experienced it, although I didn't know what was involved, what the the s sort of the extent and range of the feelings involved, that I could communicate it and could make other people feel that they had.”
“I believe passionately in the theatre and in films capacity to change lives or to shift perception, to enrich our lives in all all the ways that we know about, but um it's also true that a lot of it is very silly.”
“this is what it is, you know, this is what it is. It's when you connect what you say to what's pumping around your bloodstream and there isn't any separation and what you say next is absolutely what you need to say next. And um and it was a wonderful feeling. It was like jumping out of a plane and the parachute works, you know.”
“losing him was you lose more than a parent, don't you? You lose the whole um idea, the whole notion that you've taken for granted hitherto, of any sort of permanence.”