![]() ![]() ![]() I also have a proper Sussex garden, and I have green-fingered ancestors from Gloucestershire on my mother’s side, which I think have passed down to me. What is that like? I still love running up the Downs. You live in Sussex again, as you did as a child. It was very strange, but in the end it was very good and really lovely. You soon learn not to give any advice! In our relationship on screen there was friction and blame, and, of course, allegiance and cooperation, all of those things that are just typical of a mother and daughter in real life. You starred with your daughter, Leila George, in an Australian film, He Ain’t Heavy, earlier this year, playing her mother. She is constantly in my head at the moment. And I can’t recommend Monica Dolan in Carol Morley’s new film Typist Artist Pirate King enough. She’s come to that point in her career where her history, the accumulation of her powers and that role have just gone into a sort of zing. How can he become both a seemingly squeaky clean and yet completely corrupt American person? And how did Tom and his mate Greg create something that perfectly, singingly incredible together? I don’t know! Jemma Redgrave in Octopolis at Hampstead theatre recently was astonishing too. Which actors inspire you today? Matthew Macfadyen in Succession. It was another version of acting, really, of immersing myself and travelling. If acting hadn’t worked out, what were your alternative career plans? I wanted to be a tour guide in exciting places – to, say, go to the Valley of the Kings and find out about it, belong to it and share my enthusiasm. It’s annoying and rainy and cold but it’s also very interesting. I love Australia and Italy too, but I’ve always chosen to live near London. When I knew Brexit was coming, I thought I’d better do something about this before I’m kicked out. My older siblings had British passports, but just before I got to adulthood she legislated against children born to foreign fathers. Why? Even though my mother’s family is English all the way back, that didn’t count for Margaret Thatcher. Where are the glamorous – or even not glamorous – representations of today’s older women? Where are the women who went through women’s lib? Flower power? The punk chicks? Just because we’re playing people over 60, we shouldn’t be playing outdated preconceptions of what we are.ĭespite having a British mother you only got a British passport in recent years. Look at Maggie Smith in real life and she’s fashionable, youthful. In the last five years I’ve played five characters that have required me to wear grey wigs of varying levels of quality, so I’ve had one made that actually fits me and sits ready in my wardrobe at home. In what way? I call it the grey wig in the wardrobe problem. I’ve seen that change a lot, and there are so many more female directors getting attention, which is great, but the way older women get portrayed is often still very odd. I had to work very hard to punch some integrity into the idea of being a woman when I was placed inside that male gaze. How do you reflect on that time now? It was very clear to me even then that I was always being invited to play a male fantasy. I’m getting to a place where it’s great to embrace different kinds of characters which are not what people expect of me. Mrs Hardcastle was one I’d always wanted to do, so it’s incredible that it’s finally happened, now I suit the age and the size of the woman. You wouldn’t have thought of it to look at me then but I loved playing the ridiculous character parts. What drew you to her? I remembered the play from my first year at drama school when I was 18. She Stoops to Conquer ’s Mrs Hardcastle is one of theatre’s best-known older female characters – flamboyant, mercenary, funny and vulnerable. Scacchi is about to play Mrs Hardcastle in a 1930s-style update of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer at the Orange Tree theatre, Richmond. Her films include White Mischief, The Player and Emma, and she can currently be seen in the TV series Bodies and recent film Run Rabbit Run (with Succession’s Sarah Snook), both on Netflix. Born in Milan, Italy, she spent her childhood in England and two years of her teens in Australia, where she began working in theatre. Greta Scacchi, 63, is an Emmy award-winning actor. ![]()
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