Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A classical actress known for theatre (Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare, Beckett) and on-screen in Calendar Girls, Shaun of the Dead, and Doctor Who.
On the island
Eight records
Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20
Elgar's serenade reminds me of England.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
It comes from that northern clime, and it it's it's those enormous mountains and that enormous scenery. It is deeply romantic. I love it.
This is really for my mother and by way my father, who adored my mother, so she was a great francophile, and it's rather her time, I think.
Well, I love jazz. The jazz I can understand, and I love Erogan. I love the way he sings along.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956Favourite
Sometimes I find very jolly music. Very depressing. And extremely sad music, which I think this is, very uplifting. I don't know what that says, but that's what I feel about this piece.
The song is for Alice actually, that's all I can say, it's for Alice.
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47
It's the human spirit and the battle. I think it's a wonderful piece. It's also a complicated piece, and I would get to know it very well on this desert island.
Well, it's very happy and uh. There are days, and there were days when I was just beginning, where I everything was just so wonderful. And this reminds me of that time.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:45Did you have to learn to become quite a contained person [because of your mother's illness]?
My mother was unwell finally and died quite young, but I think the feeling we had about her was that uh she was very delicate. … I was always worried that I would hurt her by taking a different view. So one was sort of being terribly amenable. Well, of course that's not in one's nature. I'm quite sharp and rather argumentative and rather temperamental, so I had to deal with those things rather quietly to myself.
Presenter asks
11:06How much was the fact that your mother was ill discussed?
It was never. Never. So we didn't really know. I didn't know she wo uh wasn't very well.
Presenter asks
14:28Where did the wanting to act begin?
I think I always. Wanted to act, really. I remember f sitting even at pantomime and younger than that when I was taken by my grandparents, and there was a whoosh of warm air came out at you, and I used to sit in the dark thinking, I don't want to be sitting here, I want to be up there.
The keepsakes
The book
An anthology of poetry of the twentieth century
Various
Well, I would like an anthology of poetry of the twentieth century. And I would also like not just English poetry. I want Spanish poets and French poets and Irish poets. And I would like the original language, the language they write in, to be on the on the opposite side of the page so that I can learn. How it sounds in the original.
The luxury
a small open air cinema for one person
I would like a small open air cinema for one person. It doesn't have to be, you know, air conditioning or anything just me, so I'd have somewhere to go in the evenings. Under the stars. Yes, I just go out in the evenings and I don't have to I can pretend to have, but I could go and sit in quite a nice cinema chair. And um watch These films. It would take me away from the island because I think I'm going to get pretty bored on that island. So if I can be in the mean streets in San Francisco and then I can be somewhere in Rome, you know, I'd get about a bit, wouldn't I?
Presenter asks
Why is [the Drama Centre] tough?
John Blatchley was a wonderful teacher, but it was also somewhere that wasn't too interested in how you stood in Elizabethan dress and how you got work, which was a bit of a downer when you came out of drama school, because that's what you wanted was work. … But of course, I'd I didn't mind that really. It did make you wonderfully brave.
Presenter asks
22:29What is it about [the theatre] that differentiates it from the sort of work you would do on screen?
You can't really. compare the two, in my opinion, because uh there are great film scripts I know and great films, but it's a director's medium. In the theatre it's the playwright and the actor, and you choose what is seen. You and the writer are there, what he's created. It demands of you. … But theatre demands of you and it demands of the people watching you.
Presenter asks
33:06Does [therapy] change your approach to the way you look at characters?
I think it probably has illuminated. Because, um, you put into other people things that you don't like to addressing yourself. And once you start to own yourself, then you're a much rounder person.
“The only instrument I have is me, my physical body, and my voice and my personality. So that is my instrument.”
“I like all the ritual, the incense, and the seriousness it all, and those weeping statues, and all the sort of mystery.”
“I'm certainly enriched by the parts I play because I know more about the human condition.”