| Philip
Oakes, Cosmopolitan, December 1979 |
Introducing Sam's daughter, the girl with odd looks and a talent
for delivering the wittiest one-liners in the West End. |
|
Zoë Wanamaker does not love her own face. There's nothing
specifically wrong with it. It has the usual components:
eyes, ears, mouth etc. 'But it really belongs to my
father. Here especially'. She sketches a circle
round her nose and upper lip. 'You see what I mean?
It's the Sam Wanamaker look. Fine for him but funny on a
girl. What's more, we've all got it. Both my sisters
and me. When I left drama school I thought I'd never make
it because my face wasn't normal. I used to watch people's
reactions when I went for an audition. I could usually get
that far because they wanted to see what I was like - daughter
of a famous father and so on. It helped me to get my foot
in the door, but after that - nothing. They'd look me over
and I could almost read their minds. What could she
play? How could we use her? And it was
because they thought I looked odd. It's the reason, I
suppose, that I've done a lot of costume parts. No one
seems to think I have a contemporary face. And that's
quite something to live with.'
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Hopefully, she thinks, it's a stage in her life that's
over. This autumn she scored a stunning success as May
Daniels, the peppy, ex-vaudevillian who barnstorms Hollywood in
the first days of the talkies in the Royal Shakespeare Company's
production of Moss Hart and George S Kaufman's 1930s comedy,
Once in a Lifetime. Her performance is tough, funny and
salted with that brand of true grit that movie heroines like
Jean Arthur and Rosalind Russell created at the time when screen
lovers were required to be staunch as well as sexy.
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It's an image that's oddly apposite today and fits Miss
Wanamaker like a glove. She's not unaware of the
fact. 'It's important to have the right self-image, but in
the theatre it takes time to know exactly where you fit
in. The business is so mercurial, so fluid that if you've
not got it right you can be stuck in the wrong groove for
ever. It's also very difficult for a woman coming into a
company like the RSC. It's still very much a man's world
and you have to discover a way in which you can be accepted both
sexually and intellectually. You want to be regarded as a
woman but you also want to demonstrate that you've got a mind,
that you're not stupid.'
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She's far from that, but - ironically - her understanding of
where she's headed and what's in the way has hindered as much as
it has helped her career. 'Both my parents were in the
business. My mother - her name is Charlie - quit acting
when we came to England from America. I was born there, by
the way, and I'm still an American citizen. My father went
on and did everything - films, TV, theatre. But both of
them vehemently opposed my following in their footsteps. |
'They felt that, as a profession, acting was demoralising and
destructive. To succeed, they argued, you need loads of
confidence and self-awareness; qualities which most actors
lack. They believed I could be easily destroyed by
it. And pretty soon I could see what they meant.
Success in the theatre doesn't have a great deal to do with
talent. It depends on the taste of other people. If
you're the best architect or the best dancer, the evidence is
there and you know it without being told. But with acting
it's different. You can be rejected not because you are
bad, but because you don't conform to the idea of whoever may be
watching you.' |
For three years she attended Hornsey School of Art. 'In
the long run I always meant to act, but it seemed to me
important that first I should prove to myself that I had other
talents. Hornsey was good for me because I learned how to
draw. I dropped it immediately after I left, but I'd
learned something, I had a skill. After that I did a
speed-writing course. The course was supposed to produce
results in three months. After six months I realised that
I was a disaster. I couldn't type. I couldn't
spell. And things weren't made any easier by my being
slightly dyslexic. |
'I fled from there and for a while I worked for the press office
at the Royal Court, typing up releases in a shed at the back of
the theatre. After that I had a brief spell of working for
an agent, then I applied for a place in drama school.
Central [School of Speech and Drama] offered me a place and I
grabbed it - I couldn't imagine anyone else wanting me. I
was terrified of being rejected.' |
The time at Central was a mixed blessing. 'I learned about
movement and how to use my voice. But what I really craved
was to find a method, a way of working; something that I could
conform to or reject. I wasn't given that and during my
last year - it was a three year course - I decided that I knew
absolutely nothing about the theatre and it was time I went out
and got some practical experience. |
'So I went to Bromley as a student assistant stage manager and
my education began. I was put to work on a production of A
Streetcar Named Desire with Ty Hardin and Veronica Lake and it
was quite a show. For a start Veronica Lake was an
alcoholic, in her early fifties and looking twenty years
older. She'd been such a beautiful woman and wonderful in
films like I Married A Witch. But she'd hit rock
bottom. She couldn't remember her lines and had to be
coached all the way through. On the first night the dress
rehearsal went on until seven thirty and we staggered through to
the final curtain, praying for the best. It was then that
I really started to learn about the business.' |
Her education accelerated. She played in repertory in
Manchester, Edinburgh, Leeds and Nottingham. She starred
as Sally Bowles in a production of Cabaret at Farnham ('One of
the best things that's ever happened to me'). She appeared
on TV in plays as diverse as The Beaux Stratagem and A Christmas
Carol and finally arrived in London by way of The Young Vic and
the Roundhouse. She joined the RSC in 1977, making her
mark in Wild Oats, The Devil's Disciple and Ivanov and came of
age both professionally and emotionally by weathering a season
at Stratford. 'The Stratford year is important in all
sorts of ways to an actor. You are isolated with the
company. The world goes away and life becomes very hived
off, very intense. I think the pattern is much the same
for everyone the first time you're there. You feel
yourself removed somehow and, of course, you plunge into the
first big love affair that's going to change your life.
Certainly that's what happened to me. But I've changed in
ways I didn't expect. It probably wouldn't happen the same
way again.' |
At thirty, Zoë Wanamaker is very much her own lady. She's
at ease with her family, including her two sisters - Jessica,
who's studying Chinese in Peking, and Abby, who's teaching
English in the Congo - with whom she was nearly always daggers
drawn as a child. She lives in a flat below her parents'
house in London. This season with the RSC she is playing
Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew at the Aldwych; Toine in Piaf
by Pam Gems and Gemma in Captain Swing, both at the
Warehouse. |
Unmistakably she has a name and a reputation to conjure
with. But she is nervous of boosting either by an
ill-judged interview. 'I'm quite certain that there are
times when actors simply should not speak. Often they come
over as stupid and inarticulate, confirming people's worst fears
about the profession.' |
Ideally, says Zoë Wanamaker, they should get on with their
work, guard their self-image and lay down the law as little as
possible. The reason has little to do with modesty; more
with self-preservation. 'You see', says the exceptional
Miss Wanamaker, 'actors are really such ordinary people.' |
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