A few weeks later, when I gave a talk to the local Jewish ladies’ coffee morning, I told the story. Of course, everybody knew who she was. They were suitably shocked. Some people thought I shouldn’t have said anything, but she had behaved badly. If I think somebody has done something wrong, I will expose it. In her case, it was a positive pleasure to do it.
Quite a few of the Fiddler cast have stayed in touch, although it’s fifty years since the show closed. Some have died, particularly the male dancers. John Chester was our Fiddler until one night he was on the roof and got drunk and fell off, and got the sack, God rest his soul. He was a sweet boy. And then there was Rex Stallings, playing one of the grooms. Rex and I kept in touch and when he died in California I was living nearby. His ex-wife asked me if I would bring his ashes back home to London. It was a strange, sad feeling to be sitting on a plane, holding in this little box all that remained of my tall, handsome friend.
During the tour I had been learning to drive. I took my first test in Birmingham, and I failed: I remember my knickers fell off as I opened the driver’s door. It wasn’t a ploy to distract the examiner: the elastic gave out. Then I took another test in Liverpool and passed. Right away I bought a brand-new car — a white Volkswagen Beetle. It cost £850. Now I could leave a party when I wanted, no more waiting around for lifts. This was true liberation.
Going on the Stage: A Masterclass of Sorts
Strangely enough, it was a film rather than a play that made me think that acting might be the profession for me. I was sixteen when I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis at the Scala Cinema in Walton Street, Oxford. It intoxicated me.
Made in the early 1940s, while France was under German occupation, the film deals with love and rejection and the passionate rivalries between different nineteenth-century theatre companies. Jean-Louis Barrault plays a mime hopelessly in love with the actress, Arletty; we see behind his mask and sense the pain of rejection he’s feeling — a most extraordinary piece of acting, with not a word spoken. The film is not so much about individuals as the world they inhabit; it leaves you with a great sadness at the end, a melancholy, that’s very much in keeping with my own nature.
What I found thrilling was the way it portrayed theatre: it made me realise that this was a place where art happened: it wasn’t peripheral, superficial nonsense. It was about the development of the souclass="underline" people spent their whole lives in the theatre and relished it and grew in it. And I wanted to be a part of that world.
I love an audience. If I hadn’t been a professional actress, I would have been a terrible show-off. Many would say I am! To have a live audience of hundreds and hundreds of people, all looking at you — that to me is heaven. I love contact. I love action and reaction. It’s how I know I’m alive. I cherish my audiences and I’m grateful for them.
My father was baffled by it. He said, ‘Oh, I don’t know how you do that. It would frighten me to death. Who would do such a thing?’ The thing is, standing on the stage doesn’t frighten me to death, it frightens me to life!
But Mummy understood. She had studied singing and dancing and had wanted to be an actress. She almost had been — she was one of twelve finalists in the Golden Voice Competition of 1936, which then was the equivalent of Britain’s Got Talent. But a ‘nice Jewish girl’ didn’t go on the stage — certainly not in the twenties and thirties — so her passion became a hobby. She used to entertain around Oxford for charity, and for me in our front room. When I decided on a career in acting, she was delighted that I had chosen the path she longed to take and that she could perform vicariously through me.
What makes a good actor? I think it’s a talent, or should I say a personality disposition, that you’re born with. However, I think you can improve and refine your gift through attention to detail, careful observation, a love of people and a desire to communicate. How much of it is training, how much of it is innate? A mixture of both. I have no formal training: I didn’t go to drama school, mainly because I was already twenty-two when I left Cambridge and I didn’t want to remain a student for another three years. I read quite a bit about theatrical technique but mainly I have learnt on the job and through observing others.
That’s why I admire Eileen Atkins so much, because her flawless technique doesn’t get in the way of truth. She performs economically according to that old dictum ‘Less is more’, which infuriates me because although I know it is right, I always want to do more. I am an over-actress. And technique must be the spark that ignites the performance; truth is inside, but technique is the match that you strike to allow that truth to glow. I avoid analysing my own technique because I’m frightened that it’s a small, weak thing and that if it hits the light and the sun shines on it, it might completely fragment and disappear, so I tend to let my instinct guide me and hope for the best.
When I read a text, I use the bricks of my own personality to fashion a character. It’s the text that gives you the mortar, the other elements of what you’re creating and what you have at the back of your mind’s eye. When I get a play script, I want to see if the character has changed at all during the course of the piece. Is there an arc to the character? Or, if not, does she move in any way from beginning to end? If there is no movement, I have to try to put it there, because it’s boring to know everything about a character from the minute they step onto the stage. The actor or actress must surprise the audience in order to engage them and to entertain them. That’s what I look for in the writing. But the surprise must be organic, from within. Imposing it won’t work.
The great actress Edith Evans used to say, ‘Before I go on stage, I say to myself, «I am beautiful. And I have a secret.» ’ That was her method, but that’s not for me. First of all, I certainly don’t think I’m beautiful. As for ‘I have a secret’… well, I don’t have any secrets — that’s my strength. But it certainly seemed to work for Dame Edith.
I try rather to discover what it is that opens the door to a character for me, and it’s always different things — maybe a single line of my script, or something that another character in the play says. I see every rehearsal as an opportunity both to offer and to glean something new from my fellow actors — as long as you are receptive to that dialogue and you open yourself to the moment, the process of finding your way into a character becomes a continual foreplay. Every inch of your skin has got to be sensitive to the moment, and if you’re lucky, the moment comes — but it can go again just as quickly. It is a flash, and you can’t control it and you can’t compel it — you just have to be available. That’s the most important thing: you make yourself available for the moment. When it happens, it happens and it is exciting when, suddenly, you can forget yourself. That’s what occurs in the best moments when you’re on stage — you’re not you any more: you’re the person you’re playing.
I’ve worked with some fine actors in my time and one of the greatest is Vanessa Redgrave. What I particularly admire is how she is able to combine extraordinary technical ability with complete truth. She doesn’t act; she just is. That’s rare. And she startles you. When I was working with her in 1988 in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending, we rehearsed in a church in Chelsea. One day she was magicaclass="underline" everything seemed to gel and even the light around her danced. It was an extraordinary experience and we all felt blessed to have observed truly great acting — but there was only us, there was no audience. She was always good after that, but I don’t think she ever quite caught that light, that sparkle, that was in the rehearsal room at that parish church again. It was pure blinding magic.