Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Actress.
On the island
Eight records
Eton Boating Song
The Skye Boat Song
Für EliseFavourite
Because at the moment I'm practicing it and I'm trying desperately to make it sound something remotely resembling what we're going to hear in a minute.
I feel one ought to have some kind of representation and this man's voice, I think, is, like the song he's singing, unforgettable.
Again, it's all to do with the past, you see. ... It evokes a picture for me. It conjures up a picture of... country fairs and when people have simple amusements and ... made their own amusement.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:44How efficient would you be at looking after yourself on a desert island?
Do you mean cooking? … [Or are they completely useless in both?] What a hope. I was drummed out of the brownies in my first fortnight. I'm afraid I wouldn't make old bones on a desert island.
Presenter asks
2:17Why did you choose the Eton Boating Song?
Oh, it's always been a favorite of mine. It has grace and rhythm. It's a lazy sounding tune. … It always conjures up for me a very pleasant English scene. The river Thames in midsummer in the days before petrol launches. Lovely ladies in parasols and flowing white gowns, willow trees and whiskery gentlemen in straw hats and blazers, all the charm of the three men in a boat period.
Presenter asks
3:30Which part of La Traviata do you choose?
Oh, the prelude to Act One. This is a foretaste, or in my case, a reminder, of all the romance and drama and beauty that is to follow.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Because I'm never going to get around to learning as much as I should learn in the my present life, so if I'm stuck on a desert island, I can at least learn something.
The luxury
it is allowed to have the music um stowed away inside the piano store. Because it wouldn't be any use to me without the music.
Have you ever appeared in a musical show?
Not since I was a fairy in pantomime. … I've danced in one or two pictures, and I learned to fly to music in Peter Pan.
Presenter asks
6:20Did you enjoy the flying?
Oh, I love this. I remember of one performance I was just going to make my entrance in the scene, where Peter flies onto the boat to rescue Wendy, you know? … I realized to my horror I hadn't got my harness on. … All I could do was climb down from the rostrum, creep along the back of the stage, and climb up the side of the boat. I wish you could have seen the faces of the rest of the cast. There they were, all standing on the boat and looking up in the air to see me fly down, and I climbed up on board at their feet from the opposite direction.
Presenter asks
8:44Do I detect that you're a bad sailor?
I'm the world's worst sailor. The thought of the scene turns me pea green. … I've only ever been in one seed picture, and I hope I'm never in another.
Presenter asks
0:31On a desert island, what would you be happiest to have got away from?
Noise.
Presenter asks
1:40What would you want music to do for you on the island?
Evoke the past, I think. I'm a very past person, really. ... I'm terrified about the future. I don't really like to think about the future. So I think a great deal about the past. I read a great deal about the past.
Presenter asks
4:53What was the first impact of the theatre? Was it one particular performance?
The first impact was not the theatre at all. My mother was an avid moviegoer. ... I had been brought up on Charlie Chaplin. That was the first picture I ever saw ... and I imitated him all the way home. And that must have been the moment when I decided I was going to act.
Presenter asks
6:07What was your first appearance [on stage]?
My very first appearance was when I was nine years old. And I was at the Italia Conti school. ... [The] Conti's put on two performances of a Midsummer Night's Dream at the Holborn Empire ... and I was a fairy. ... I knew every single line of that play from start to finish, everybody's part.
Presenter asks
11:35How do you feel when you see [your old films, like The Lady Vanishes]?
A very nostalgic one. ... You don't really feel you're watching yourself at all. ... But I think The Lady Vanishes obviously is a classic and the only thing that bothers me about it ... that the exteriors were not exteriors. You know, they were all shot in the studio and to me that's very obvious.
Presenter asks
14:54What was your first stage role when you came back to the theatre [after 12 years away]?
Henry Sherek wanted to do a play with me. ... [We] cast around and he came up with Private Lives. And it really was, I suppose, a glorified personal appearance tour as far as I was concerned. I wasn't ready to play this part and I really must have been looking back on it quite wrong and dreadful. But they came out in their thousands to see the Wicked Lady really, you know, on stage for the first time.
“I was drummed out of the brownies in my first fortnight. I'm afraid I wouldn't make old bones on a desert island.”
“I'd like to be able to say that I go and see every production of it in London. I'd like to. But somehow I don't seem to have a chance of seeing it.”
“I realized to my horror I hadn't got my harness on. All I could do was climb down from the rostrum, creep along the back of the stage, and climb up the side of the boat. I wish you could have seen the faces of the rest of the cast.”
“This music has the same effect on me as thunderstorms. It gives me a feeling of fear, a realization of the immensity of time and space, and a rather uncanny but pleasurable exhilaration.”
“I'm a very past person, really. I don't go in for science fiction at all. I'm terrified about the future. I don't really like to think about the future.”
“When I act, I must say I'm always happiest in some kind of costume. I love having skirts trailing the ground behind me.”
“It was like having got on a sort of merry-go-round when one couldn't get off.”