| Edward Goodland, TV
Times, 3rd-9th August 1996 |
When her father died, Zoë
Wanamaker thought she'd never recover. Then she met
someone who knew just how she felt... |
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It's almost as though Zoe Wanamaker is stuck in a time-warp.
It seems that for some people the petite, crop-haired actress
has never really left Love Hurts. It may have been
three years since the feisty Tessa and her on-screen partner
Frank left our screens but, as Zoë's constantly told, it still
feels like yesterday. "Odd, isn't it?" she says.
"I think we left it at the right time but I'd do another
one day. It'd be nice to see what happened to
Tessa..."
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But Zoë herself has moved on. This week sees her return
to TV in The English Wife, and she hopes that more roles
will follow. Zoë's personal life, too, has changed.
The final series of Love Hurts coincided with the death
of her father, director and actor Sam Wanamaker, after a long
battle with prostate cancer. And even now, as she sits in
one of her favourite Soho haunts, you sense that the wounds of
recent years are still raw.
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She's friendly and relaxed, and looks wonderful in chic dark
trousers and a summer top, her hair bleached blonde with a
buzz-saw cut that suits her pixie-like face. But when she
speaks of her late father her voice drops a little.
"I don't know how I got through it," she says.
"I started rehearsals for a play the day before Dad's
funeral, then it opened in the West End. At first it was
good to have structure in my life. But it caught up with
me in the middle of the run -- I felt completely
exhausted."
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During her father's illness, Zoë, 46, turned to the Voluntary
Euthanasia Society for guidance but discovered that, despite her
father's wishes that he should be helped to have a dignified
death, the law would not allow it. "It was horrific
and traumatic because he didn't die as he wanted, without fuss
and people running around. The quality of his life had
disintegrated and he was suffering tremendous pain. It was
ghastly to watch my father go through that." |
Sam Wanamaker's legacy was to raise millions to rebuild
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, but he died before seeing
that project open. "That was very sad," says Zoë,
who continues to help with fundraising for the Theatre. |
After her father's death, Zoë's friends rallied round to offer
comfort. One of them, the actor Gawn Grainger, was himself
grieving for his wife, the actress Janet Kay, who had also died
of cancer. "I'd known Gawn and Janet for a
while," says Zoë, "We'd been friends and on occasion
I'd borrow Gawn as an escort." |
Gawn and Zoë's friendship, deepened by a mutual understanding
of each other's grief, deepened into love, and they married
almost two years ago. "It sort of happened. I
suppose I just continued borrowing him as a friend and that's
how it started," she says. "Marriage is
fantastic. It couldn't be better. And I've inherited
two step-children, so that part of my life has changed
completely. |
The children are wonderful. One of them comes in for pit
stops and the other is just becoming a woman, so all these
different things are going on, which is great." Right
now she's at home in London with Gawn -- who stars in Anthony
Hopkins' film August, due to open this month -- and the
children, 19 year-old Charlie and 15 year-old Eliza. |
She'll be ploughing through scripts, hoping to find something
that catches her eye in the way that The English Wife
did. Zoë plays Madam Griveau, and Englishwoman married to
a Frenchman. On the surface they lead a glamorous life.
"But beneath that, rather a lot is going on and they're
really in big trouble," explains Zoë. "It would
have been easy to make them cardboard villains but my character
is actually rather sad and I felt sorry for her." |
The English Wife is a one-off drama but before too long
Zoe hopes she'll be back on screen in a long-running series.
"I'm quite picky about what I do," she says.
"But it's just a question of when the right thing comes
along." In the meantime, Zoë is enjoying life with
the man she loves and her new family. "Doing domestic
things and having a nice time." Who said love hurts? |
Thanks to Kerrie |
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