WITH JULIET STEVENSON
Working
class wannabe,finest actress of her generation, Labour Party Luvvie - Juliet
Stevenson
has always suffered as a label victim. But one of the labels she likes
best
is that
of Woman's Hour listeners' All Time Favourite Reader. And, as reader,
Juliet's
back on Radio 4 in Kate Valentine's astonishing new production of Virginia
Woolf's
Kew Gardens. Jo Morris went to Juliet's London home to find out more:
Juliet Stevenson
has her arms full: Literally. One arm is cradled around her
six-month-old
son, Gabriel, who is frantically trying to eat my microphone, and the
other is
mechanically spooning spinach soup into her mouth at a furious pace.
Sorry,
Jo" she laughs apologetically in between a mouthful, "I've been running
around
like a blue-arsed fly all morning and I'm absolutely starving. Would
you like
some?"
At 43, Stevenson
has undoubtedly become a hands-on mum. Her life, once a whirl
of amusement
with old RSC contemporaries like Alan Rickman, has been whittled
down to
work and family. And she loves it. "I had begun to feel there
must be
more to
life than running around London," she tells me. "But the patience
parenting
requires ...the paaaaaaaaaaatience" she laughs drawing the word out to
the death.
"I mean I'm not a patient person and I've had to really change my
nature!
And it's astonishing to me that I can sit around for hours doing something
incredibly
dull, just because a child requires it to be done."
Kids
- yes they DO change your life
As if on
cue, we're interrupted by a sudden coughing fit from Gabriel. "Oh
darling
take it
easy," she soothes, patting him on the back. He emits an appreciative
burp.
"That wasn't me burping," she giggles into my microphone. "That was
my
son."
We're sat
in the kitchen of her three-storey house in Highgate, North London that
she shares
with her partner Hugh Brody, an anthropologist and writer, their
seven-year
old daughter, Hugh's two "burly, cool" teenage sons from his previous
relationship
and of course the latest edition to the family, Gabriel. It's a scene
of
relaxed
domesticity - there's a piano in the living room, lots of pine, plenty
of books
and toys
scattered everywhere. Does she think motherhood has enhanced her
acting?
Juliet
at home - in the radio studio
"That's
the really interesting question," she says, "I certainly have friends who
think
their work
has improved but I don't really feel that to be honest…People say it
opens you
up emotionally but I never really had that problem although I've plenty
of others,"
she laughs, "but it certainly means I have much less time to prepare for
a part."
(Indeed
in the past she has done intensive homework. Before she played a
Chilean
torture
victim in Death and the Maiden she went to the Medical Foundation for the
Victims
of Torture and when she was Yerma in Lorca she travelled through Spain.)
"But that
in itself gives you a necessary kind of bravery that perhaps you wouldn't
have had
before. You can't afford to fart around and I've found myself making much
bolder
decisions."
Stevenson
has been watchable ever since Truly Madly Deeply, the film that her
friend
Anthony Minghella wrote to celebrate "her unsung, larky side." With
her
intelligent,
mobile face ("rubbery" she says) and green mercurial eyes, her
heart-rending
performance as the bereaved Nina sent sales of Kleenex soaring.
Like many
exceptional actors, she comes from a family background that is neither
as stable
nor conventional as it might first appear.
The youngest
child of an army brigadier, she spent her childhood on the move as
her father
was posted to bases all over the world - Germany, Australia, Malta.
"I
didn't
come from anywhere which is strange," she says. "Acting is full of
refugees
from everything
- class, race, sexuality."
"Mamamaammmaaa"
Gabriel nods as if agreeing with this last point. "Will you
shush please,"
she whispers in her wonderfully resonant voice that had Woman's
Hour listeners
voting her their All Time Favourite Reader for her Anna Karenina.
She laughs
at the mention of this fact and is genuinely embarrassed when I ask how
she came
to be so vocally blessed?
Juliet
gets serious
"Oh god,
I don't know, I think you just have the voice you're born with. I
certainly
never worked
on it to be a particular way and it doesn't give me an awful lot of
pleasure
when I listen to it. There is a tone which creeps in sometimes that
I don't
like at
all….it's a bit velvety, a bit plush!" she sighs.
But surely
it's that precise quality people so admire? "Yes but it irritates
me!
Especially
when I'm reading poetry, I have to really work against it because I can't
bear that
sooooooooft tone you get with people reading poetry on the radio.
In fact
it drives
me BATTY!" she snorts suppressing a giggle.
Her partner
Hugh tells her when her voice is off cue and she welcomes the advice.
"I love
being strongly directed. You don't get a lot of help to be better
these days,"
she says
almost sadly. I wonder if it's because new directors might find her
intimidating?
"Probably," she says, "or they don't have the time or the
vocabulary.
But mostly I think they're scared. That's why successful actors
sometimes
get worse. I mean I've seen very famous actors deteriorate."
Oooh will she name names?
"Better
not" she smiles mischievously. "But all actors can get boxed into
their
mannerisms
because no one is helping them. You need someone to say 'I don't
want to
see you do that ever again. I'm sick of it! Find something
new! Otherwise
the work
becomes less daring."
Categorization
is something Stevenson has always shied away from. By the time
she was
thirty she had played three of the great Shakespearean heroines for the
RSC - Rosalind,
Isabella and Cressida - and her agent told her: "By 40 you'll be
taking
up the mantle of Peggy Ashcroft."
Much as
I love Peggy Ashcroft," she says, "I thought: I don't want anyone
to decide
that for
me. There are all sorts of things I want to be doing." The
agent didn't last
long.
"I never wanted to be just a classical actress," she says explaining her
decision
to leave the RSC, "I thought I mustn't get slotted. It's a kind of
death."
She may
be choosy, of course, but at 43, she can already survey a career that has
won her
huge acclaim. She can also sleep easy knowing that she hasn't sold
out.
And there
have been plenty of times when she could have done so. Most notably
after Truly
Madly Deeply became the biggest grossest British film of 1991 and
Hollywood
came knocking at the door. "Notoriously there was this Swarzenegger
movie I
was put up for." She read a few pages of the script and was not tempted
"My stepsons
were furious with me," she laughs.
One job
she had no intention of turning down was a new production for Radio Four.
"I don't
watch TV and rarely read a paper but I love radio," she tells me.
"I always
try and
say yes to radio jobs if I like the material." Indeed for a medium
that pays
notoriously
little, Stevenson has remained consistently loyal. She recently starred
in a production
of Hardy's, The Woodlanders and this week you can hear her in
Virginia
Woolf's little known novella, Kew Gardens.
The production
is a sensual weave of music composed by Sylvia Hallett, inter-cut
with Woolf's
impressions of people out for a stroll in Kew Gardens on a hot
summer's
day. Stevenson says she was intrigued with the producer, Kate
Valentine's
"wonderful ideas" for the piece, although she admits that on first reading
she had
her doubts.
"I thought
'oh really!" It seemed dated…over-refined and smelt of a classism
which
can be
off-putting about the Bloomsbury gang! And yet how wrong can you
be," she
laughs.
It wasn't
until she began work on the piece that she discovered all sorts of riches
that she
hadn't at first noticed. "I love it when you get it wrong!
I LOVE IT! It's an
exquisite
piece of writing. Woolf uses words as an expressionist painter might
use
colour.
It's so visual that you almost feel having read it that you've seen some
very
beautiful
short film. And it made me realize what she might have done with
film
had she
lived in a different time. She can place you so precisely in the
moment, in
the split
second, that nothing else matters."
Unfortunately
at this precise moment something else does matter. Gabriel who has
been snoozing
serenely for some time has just woken up. And he's hungry.
~The End~