| Alan
Kennaugh, TV
Times, 8th May 1975 |
I'm not normally stumped for words, but actress Zoë
Wanamaker floored me when she said her face was ugly.
Cheeky, maybe, I suggested. Impish sometimes, but
ugly? Never. |
|
'Well, ugly in the context that it's an individual face.
I'm not complaining - I can never be typecast,' says Zoë.
|
|
It's certainly true that not even her best friends would say she
is a raving beauty in Village Hall on Sunday. 'I'm a dowdy
North country girl, simple and not very clever.' That is
how she describes her role. Of her first lead part on
television, three years ago in the play Lorna and Ted, Zoë
recalled: 'I was a prim nurse, a bit boring. But who'd
believe, say, Raquel Welch in the part?'
|
|
If ugly means being one of the brightest young TV acting talents
Zoë is welcome to the label.
|
She is the only girl among three daughters in the famous
Wanamaker family to take up acting. Zoë, who is 25, says
she is 'the piggy in the middle'. Abby, her elder sister,
is a speech therapist in America, and Jessica is at Bristol
University. Zoë claims that she chose acting because she
'freaked out as a temp', tried painting (she did a pre-diploma
course at the Hornsey College of Art, in London), but found it
'too much like hard work'. |
'Acting was there all the time,' she says, 'and now I can't
avoid it.' |
But it took some strong words from her father, Sam Wanamaker, to
get her going. At drama school, Zoë had the reputation of
being the girl who hid right at the back of the class. So
Sam Wanamaker pulled up his budding wallflower sharply.
'Do you think someone's going to say, "Ah, that little girl
behind the radiator. She's fantastic. We'll have
her"? If you want to be in this business you've got
to do something about it.' |
And she did. She was in the stage musical version of Guys
and Dolls and Cabaret, and she has rarely stopped working since,
with parts ranging from Shakespeare to Dick Whittington's
cat. She was in the TV series Jennie, Lady Randolph
Churchill and The Way of the World and recently appeared in The
Taming of the Shrew, in London - a production which is
transferring to the Open Air Theatre, in Regent's Park, next
month. |
Back |
|
news - about - bio - interviews - film - stage - tv -
gallery - fanclub -
fun - contact -
links
|
|
If you have come to this page through a search
engine, click here to see zoewanamaker.com
properly.
|
|