| Andrew Duncan,
Radio Times, June 1992 |
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At
lunchtime on location for the second series of Love Hurts,
Zoë Wanamaker flops into a heap in the relative cool of her
trailer, dabs moisturiser on to her famous retrousse nose and
forgets to drink her lunch, a milky slimming potion. “Adam [Faith]’s
idea”, she explains. “I'm permanently trying to lose weight,
but then I go and eat real food in the evening, which ruins the
whole thing!
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In
recent years Zoë Wanamaker has won a string of awards and
critical accolades for her performances on stage and on TV.
This
week she plays opposite veteran actress Dame Wendy Hiller, who
will be 80 in August, in The Countess Alice, which leads
the new ScreenPlay season on BBC2. But suggest to her
that she’s entered that league of actors who guarantee top
ratings and ticket sales and her face knits into a cartoonish
grimace. “A star!” she growls, in the tone of one who’s
just found something particularly nasty on the heel of her shoe.
“Me – a star? Oh, I hate that word. I don’t know what a
‘star’ is. I’m a purist, you see. To me, stars are pure
charisma, like Garbo or Monroe. A star is someone who twinkles
from afar”.
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Meeting
Zoë Wanamaker, you are struck by her feisty exuberance and her
rich gravely voice. Actressy, perhaps, but she is devoid of any
showbiz affectations, and the quality that strikes you most
forcibly is her eager honesty. Her conversation bubbles with
endearingly “unstarry” anecdotes which she acts out in funny
voices, with herself in the role of Queen Klutz.
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When
the producers took her to lunch to persuade her to do a second
series, she confides, they promised her anything she wanted.
Anything! Did she seize the day and demand diamonds or a fur?
“I asked them for a mobile phone. Like Adam’s,” she whines
in plaintive self-mockery. “Damn it! Another missed
opportunity."
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Sitting
in the lotus position, her impishly attractive face reflecting
every register of emotion, Wanamaker deftly rolls a cigarette
and attempts to explain why her youthful traumas conspired to
make her a reluctant star. “I am a bit odd,” she declares.
“Maybe it’s to do with my up bringing – and my looks.
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“When you realise that
you’re not conventionally pretty, you learn quickly how to
cope. It’s like comedians who tell you how they were puny
little kids, so they learned how to be funny. A cliché, I know,
but when you’re a bit odd looking, the only way out is to
develop it. Sometimes I don’t think I developed it enough,”
she adds, breaking into throaty laughter. “But I would say
that wouldn’t I? I mean, I’d like to look like Julia Roberts
– wouldn’t we all? But nobody looks like Julia
Roberts!”
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In
The Countess Alice she plays Connie, a frustrated middle-aged
woman who lives in genteel poverty with her 30s society-beauty
mother. Connie resorts to refilling Fortnum and Mason tea
caddies and jam pots with cheaper supermarket fare, so her
countess mother may keep up appearances. But when Connie goes to
visit the German ancestral home, she discovers that their lives
are an elaborate sham. Forced to rewrite her own history, she
breaks down.
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Surprisingly,
Wanamaker claims, she found “lots” to draw on from her own
life for this part. “When I was young, I felt I must be
adopted. I must be a foundling because my parents didn’t
understand me.”
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Her
father is the famous American actor-director, Sam Wanamaker.
“Like many children of famous actors – maybe the Redgraves
feel the same – you have this terrible thing that you have to
be as good, if not better, to make your parents proud of you.
And that’s an incredible burden.” She pauses, biting her
lip, briefly lost for words. “It’s true,” she adds, her
understatement implying the magnitude of that self-imposed spur.
“Of course, girls have this huge image of their fathers, but
my father was the first method actor,” she cries. “He was
larger than life!”
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She
was 3 years old when her father fled the United States because
he was blacklisted during the McCarthy witchhunt in the
early50s. The family settled in London. As a child with an
American passport, she never felt she belonged. “I felt
different, classless in that American sort of way. Now, of
course in America I fell English – and proud of it.”
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To
grow up a social misfit, so that you must adapt to different
social circumstances maybe the ideal schooling for an actor.
But
her parents initially dissuaded her from joining what they
considered “a soul-destroying profession”.
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Destiny,
thankfully, played a crucial role. She failed spectacularly in a
series of apprenticeships and jobs – as painter, dancer and
audio typist. Eventually, her parents relented, and she went to
Central Drama School. Only months after graduation, she was out
of work, “down to counting out pennies to see if I had enough
for a loaf of bread or a packet of cigarettes.” The
frustration and claustrophobia of those memories, she says,
fuelled her performance as Connie.
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Shortly
afterwards, Richard Eyre, now artistic director of the National
Theatre, gave Wanamaker her first job at the Royal Lyceum in
Edinburgh. Later, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and
has worked continuously ever since. But the burden of self doubt
and insecurity plagued her for years, sometimes manifesting
itself as mischievous demons, sitting on her shoulder on stage
and in front of the camera, taunting her with inadequacies. |
Finally,
in Stratford, working with the Royal Shakespeare Company six
years ago, the demons – what she describes as “my
blackouts” were miraculously exorcised: “I suddenly realised
I was enjoying myself. I realised I wasn’t bad …”
She
pauses, as though this admission might be tantamount to hubris.
“I suppose that’s why people think actors are silly,
self-obsessed people because we are the instrument of our craft,
so feeling comfortable with yourself is very important. Acting
is instinctive. Like a dog or cat going round and round in a
circle to make itself comfortable, I suddenly found I could sit
down comfortably and enjoy it. I gave myself a break, and
actually my parents are good people. Maybe I talk about them too
much.”
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Liberated
from her “blackouts”, out of her parents’ shadow,
Wanamaker began her finest work – on stage, Elizabeth Proctor
in Miller’s The Crucible and Amelia in Trevor Nunn’s Othello,
and on TV, in Prime Suspect, Tessa Piggott in Love
Hurts, and now Connie in The Countess Alice. Each
drama was by different writers, yet there is a striking
similarity in all her roles. Is she cornering the market in …
“long suffering women!” she interrupts, leaping to her feet.
“When I did Amelia in Othello, I thought, ‘Oh God,
not another woman who’s been hard done by!’” Hand on her
hip, she interrogates herself in mock TV American-ese. “Hey!
What is it about you, Zoë, that makes you so right for all
these parts? Is it that you’re a failure in relationships?
Oh,
I don’t know,” she groans with laughter. “If only I did
know.”
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Richard Eyre says: “She’s the person I know who’s changed
least in the past 20 years. She carries moral weight as an
actress, because as a person she cannot dissemble. She’s very
open, very direct and warm – and she wears her heart on her
sleeve. I find her terribly touching because she’s so
trusting. She is cast as put upon women but, played by Zoë,
they’re never whinging victims because she gives them a
nobility. Everything shows in her face. It’s an enchanting
face, a bit like the pantomime cat! I want to draw whiskers on
it.” |
Guy Slater, producer of Love Hurts, the BBC series that
propelled her to stardom, says: “Zoë’s looks and honesty
break the mould of the sexpot archetype star. She breathed into
Tessa – and everyone she plays – an extraordinary bravery
coupled with an acute vulnerability.” |
The ten million fans of Love Hurts will not forget her
face close up, sometimes awash with mascara furrows, her nose
red with dripping tears. At the climax of The Countess Alice,
her face mirrors her internal agony. “Pain is ugly,” she
insists. “Anguish is extreme.”
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For 11 years, Zoë Wanamaker lived with another actor. She says
she probably never got married because marriage is an oath, and
an oath seemed such a huge thing to make. “I take it all
terribly seriously.”
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Today she lives alone, and admits there are times, especially
after bad days, when “you do miss having someone who’s on
your side, who adores you no matter how bad-tempered you are.”
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But Zoë Wanamaker, recently turned 43, is fulfilling her
life’s ambition, playing “strong, quirky women – the
quirkier the better.” One might add they are women that other
women identify with. Certainly, she is adamant that, “there
should be more screen actresses like me. Because people aren’t
perfect. To me it’s a relief when I see somebody in a leading
role who’s not drop-dead gorgeous. It makes me feel better.
It
makes me feel like a real human being.
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