Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Irish actress who triumphed as Cleopatra at the Royal Shakespeare Company and won Best Actress for Our Lady of Sligo.
On the island
Eight records
Well, simply because it reminds me of home, and there's a there's a phrase in it about the sea and not being able to swim over, nor having the wings to fly, and when I feel lonely for Ireland.
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26Favourite
Kyung-Wha Chung, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe
I heard that record played at my school, and it was the first time that classical music really hit me. It moved me to tears. I thought it was so beautiful.
Romeo and Juliet (The Arrival of the Guests)
London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn
I love that. particular Bally because it's so theatrical and so dramatic, and also because I've played Juliet, and it will remind me of um how bad how badly I played Juliet.
Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp
Well, the reason i it's a silly reason, really. I adore the flute, mainly because my sister plays it and I love hearing it. And she lived with us for about two years, and I used to hear her endlessly practising the flute. And so I knew I had to have some flute music somewhere, and I love this piece.
Bundle of Sorrow, Bundle of Joy
And it's for Sam, my son, who is a bundle of sorrow and a bundle of joy. He's now four and a half, but I remember when he was a bundle.
Jacqueline du Pré, Osian Ellis
I've chosen that because uh I have a brother who plays the cello and a brother in law who plays the cello, and I love the instrument, and I think this is a very beautiful piece.
All my life I have been told by my family and by my friends that I can't sing a note and indeed I can't. I am the despair of any musical director who has ever worked with me. But while we were at Stratford a couple of years back we did a pantomime called the Swan Down Gloves. And in it I was asked to play the character of Lady Alice Cornflower, who's the sex kitten. and I had a number to sing. which was called demure, but dangerous.
I would need this to soothe me and help me on my island when I first arrive.
Irish was my first language pretty well. Every Irish schoolchild is taught this song. It's about the celebration of a woman called Grace O'Malley, who was a famous warrior woman, noblewoman, at the time of Elizabeth I. And it's about her coming back across the seas to claim her rightful place in Ireland and to scatter the invaders to the four winds.
My mother was a wonderful woman. She wanted us all to shine musically. So we were all put on pianos towards the age of three. I, um, unfortunately didn't really cut the mustard as a musician. I have a tin ear. Um but all my sisters and brothers play instruments, and my sister Nieiv, who is now an actress and doing extremely well, but she was a flute player. And I had to have a flute piece because it was so much a part of our family life.
Cello Sonata in A major: I. Allegretto ben moderato
Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich
Well, this again, it's really about my family, and my family are terribly important to me, my siblings. My brother Porik, who's the youngest, he was a cello player before going on to become head of planning at the National Theatre. He, I think, gave up the cello because his concert now has got very bad, so he stopped. But he still plays. And it it's just it reminds me of my mother and of all those concerts that we used to go to, the Fesh Kjole it was called, where Irish children this still happens in Ireland, where they all come and and perform their pieces.
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Now the reason I want this record is because on my desert island of course I won't be able to get what I want. Also, I mean the Rolling Stones are part of my growing up. They were wild and anti-establishment and everything I thought I was.
My boys, and that includes Jeremy and Sam and Max, twenty four and seventeen, they all play guitar. And this one all three sing and they trot it out every Christmas and every every time we're together. And I suppose they're some of the happiest moments of my life.
Oh yes, this is really for my two sons. Wonderfully, my boys are starting to introduce me to music that I probably would never have come across.
Requiem, Op. 48: Pie JesuFavourite
Victoria de los Ángeles, Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire & André Cluytens
This is just such a soaring piece of music and would keep me grounded. And I think it's just beautiful and I want to have it there, that's all.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:56How much does music mean to you?
I'm not very musical myself, and I am the butt of a lot of family jokes … Because I simply can't remember. I l there's certain pieces of music I adore. I can never remember who composed them or who played them
Presenter asks
6:07Did you take it for granted that you were going to be an actress?
Oh, no, indeed I wanted to be a nun. Quite a long time. In fact, I wanted to be a saint. … And then I did a play with my father. He asked me to do a play that he'd written. an adaptation of Kafka's Trial … And that, I think, was when the the bug hit me.
Presenter asks
10:13Could you manage both the theatre and your studies [at university]?
It was a very schizophrenic existence, and it was a very mad existence, and I shouldn't have attempted it. The problem was I auditioned without telling my father and mother. I auditioned at the Abbey and I got in, so it was fait accompli I presented them with.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The luxury
A very big hat and a lot of muslin
The muslin is to keep the insects up because I have an anaphylactic reaction to [wasps or bees] – I'm dead within twenty minutes if I'm bitten by a wasp or a bee, so my time on the island might be very short indeed if I didn't have a lot of muslin to wrap round my big hat.
Are you superstitious in the theatre?
I'm superstitious about certain things, yes. I don't like the Scottish play Macbeth being mentioned in the dressing room. … our year was blighted by quite a few deaths. and accidents and things, not within the Macbeth Company itself. But within others of the company. Strange, strange. It it does give me the heebie cheeby set.
Presenter asks
34:47How well could you look after yourself on a desert island?
I don't know probably not very well. I'm I'm not very practical. … No, I'd be hopeless, Castaway. I'd be hopeless.
Presenter asks
0:28Why were you so determined to be a classical actress [despite your father's judgment]?
I suppose because even then I had a feeling that that was the world I would most enjoy inhabiting and it has proved so. It's instinctive, I mean and that's how you act. Yes, and also I suppose you see what what my dad forgot was that he was the role model. I'd seen him on stage much more because we weren't allowed to go to the movies when we were kids.
Presenter asks
2:11Why did you turn down [the role of] Cleopatra twice before accepting it?
I was thoroughly intimidated by Cleopatra. I thought, you know, that phrase that everybody remembers from the play. A woman of infinite variety. I thought, well, you can't. How can you do that? How can you ever imagine or have the gall to think you can play such a woman? But you see, I think what really fascinates me about acting is peeling away the layers. So you pull away the iconography of Cleopatra down over the centuries, and you stop pulling it away, and you find yourself
Presenter asks
6:47Do you have a horror of aging, like so many of us do?
I do. You see, I love age in other people. You know, the crow's feet and the lines of women of 80. ... Well, your husband Jeremy Iron says your beauty gets more intense as you grow older. Gosh, does he? So that's all right.
Presenter asks
9:56How did you end up being expelled from your convent boarding school?
I decided to write a little sketch about the Perfumo affair. My grasp of the profumo affair, I have to say, was minimal because the nuns used to cut out all the titillating bits out of the Irish Independent ... I played Christine Keeler, my best friend played Mandy Rice-Davis, my other friend played Stephen Ward, and I think we got about halfway through the sketch before the nuns understood what was going on. And then mayhem, all hell broke loose. The entire day was cancelled. My father was called back from France where he was filming, and I was to be expelled. We had to get down on our knees, mother, father and myself, to beg for reinstatement. But I was made to sleep with the seven-year-olds from that point on.
Presenter asks
23:53Did you choose to stay home and keep the home fires burning [while Jeremy Irons had a meteoric rise]?
Um no, th there was an understanding'twixt the two of us that um there would always be a parent in place. People say, you know, she must have sacrificed so much. I didn't really have to make many sacrifices, because all all I ever really wanted was the theatre. And I was able to do that with my children.
Presenter asks
28:17What happens when these characters [like Cleopatra or May O'Hara] come to an end and you have to leave them?
It's very bad. I mean, I say I'm in mourning at the moment, which sounds very grandiose and a bit silly, but I do. I miss them because they become the closest person in your life. So at half past seven in the evening, when you would normally be walking on stage, you feel I'm a bit low. It won't last, but at the moment it's a bit sad and grim.
“I'm one of those awkward people who um like to be alone, but hate being left alone.”
“I left two months before my finals. … I've never regretted it at all. I had a row about Paradise Lost. … Oh, the devil is definitely [on my side].”
“I think Celia might have been my favourite. … Because Celia was before I had to take on responsibility, really. 'Cause when you start playing the big leading parts, you actually carry a huge burden of responsibility. With Celia, all I had to do was sit in the background and giggle.”
“I could so easily have been undermined by my dad's judgment of me as an actress. But in fact, it spurred me on.”
“Nothing compares with being up on that stage and what happens between an actor and an audience. It's just magical.”
“I remember standing in the wings with sweat pouring off me and my body a sort of galvanic battery of shocks, thinking, What on earth am I doing?”