Digger: You have a number of fans in Europe and
America by virtue of your TV appearances being broadcast far and
wide these days. Do you have any plans to tour overseas?
Harriet: Not at the moment
but things can change any time.
Digger: In your book (Other People's Shoes) you give us a great
insight into the mechanics of being an actor, preparing for a role
and executing what you have learnt. Which would you say is most
satisfying for you, the sound of audience laughter at a comedic
portrayal or an audience being saddened/shocked/scared by a
dramatic one?
Harriet: It is obviously
easier to detect the former, but the latter is probably a greater
sign that you have taken the audience with you.
Digger: If you had to choose a favourite, which medium would you
choose. Stage, TV or film? If you find this choice impossible
still, what are the main merits and demerits of each medium for
you?
Harriet: If someone forced
me to choose, I would choose the stage because what we need more
of is direct human communication as opposed to the proliferation
of mechanised edited entertainment and there is much more
satisfying and immediate feedback from a live event. However, I
thrive on the variety of media. They each have a virtue which none
of the others can provide and so a diet of only one would be a
limitation.
Digger: How do you go about learning your lines and do you ever
take your characters home with you?
Harriet: I try to learn the lines in conjunction with learning
what makes the character tick so that you can learn their thought
patterns and emotional needs all at the same time. If you get to
know what your character wants and needs to say, it becomes easier
to learn the words she uses. Also you have to bounce off what the
other characters say to you. There are a whole lot of clues and
memory aids in that. It also makes you listen hard to what other
people say to you. I don’t take a character home with me once I
am playing them. It is only during rehearsals when I haven’t
quite secured the character and am still wondering about them all
the time, that I can get a bit lost in ‘their’ world.
Digger: Can you tell us some of the best tricks of the trade you
have utilised to deal with mishaps on stage, such as forgetting
lines (!), failing props or unexpected audience participation!
Harriet: I have quite often got my lines in
a twist or forgotten the exact word in a Shakespeare speech, and I
find that as long as I stick to the rhythm of the original, the
audience don’t seem to notice that I have gone wrong. Either
that or they literally can’t believe their ears. e.g. Once,
instead of Portia saying ‘The crow doth sing as sweetly as the
lark when neither is attended.’ (I think the speech is something
like that,..) I said ‘The clerk doth swing as sweetly as the
lark when neither is offended’ !!? The only problem is keeping
oneself and the rest of the cast on stage with you from breaking
up into fits.
Digger: I interviewed Janet Leigh some time ago and asked her
about some of the Hollywood greats she had worked with (which
included some Brits working over there like Elizabeth Taylor,
Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey). Who would you say were the
British film, TV and stage acting greats, living or dead and why?
Harriet: That is really too long a question. I have different
tastes for different moods. I usually cite Spencer Tracy and
Richard Burton as two of my all time favourites, and Vanessa
Redgrave and Glenda Jackson were great inspirations when I was
starting out. Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Alan Bates, Jonathon
Pryce, Michel Piccoli and Espen Skjonberg are among the actors who
I have been most inspired by while working with them. But often it
is those unknown, unsung actors who create a complete truth that I
most admire.
Digger: Which roles would you have liked to have played that
haven't come your way, at least so far? And following on from
this, what are your biggest ambitions within your profession and
do you have any professional disappointments?
Harriet: I would like to have tackled Isabella in ‘Measure for
Measure’ and Rosalind in ’As you Like It’ I was offered both
of these three times each but always when I was unable to do them.
That’s life. I don’t dwell on the ones I haven’t done and I
also don’t tend to think in terms of ambitions and
disappointments. It has never worked when I have wished for a
certain part at a certain time, and likewise I have had some
wonderful parts I could not possibly have foreseen or wished for.
They have come from left field and been the most rewarding in the
end. I hope that continues for a bit at least.
Digger: What roles have you most enjoyed?
Harriet: Different roles
feel right at different times. A bit like friends or partners.
Dare I say it, there are boyfriends who are right for you when you
are young, who would no longer interest you when you get older ,
and vice versa. It is like that with roles. I loved playing Nina
in ‘The Seagull’ because at the time she was close to my
aspirations and my life. More recently I have enjoyed playing
Beatrice in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ because it was a chance
to show a strong but generous spirit falling in love in middle
age. Not a saint nor a wicked bitch, which parts too often divide
into.
Digger: Do you use the Internet much and what do you think of it?
Harriet: No I don’t use it much, mostly
because I would tend to waste a lot of time on it. I prefer to
read books or communicate directly by means of conversation.
However I think like all inventions it is a force of great
potential good and also of bad, and it is up to individuals as to
how it is used and for what.
Digger: Who did you vote for in the Great Britons top ten contest?
Harriet: No prizes for guessing that I voted
for a certain Warwickshire gentleman born in the 16th century.
Digger: How do you relax?
Harriet: I get out of town and go for long
walks.
Digger: What do you think of modern adaptations and settings of
Shakespearian plays? Are they more relevant to modern audiences or
should we celebrate his original works as intended as we would a
classical composer?
Harriet: I would not make a rule never to
update or always to update. There are plays that are elucidated by
obvious contemporary visual statements and others (e.g. the
history plays) which I feel have to be understood in the context
of their times. Your analogy with a composer is interesting,
because the essential thing about Shakespeare is not the set and
costumes but the language. In a way the language is the
composer’s score and I absolutely believe in keeping that how it
was written and in actors working on their skills in putting those
words over so that they are understood by an audience. The
audience have to do a bit of work themselves, obviously, in order
to get the most out of it.
Digger: Can you describe yourself in less than fifty words?
Harriet: No. I think describing myself is
quite a useless exercise. Although I believe that to strive to
know oneself and be honest with oneself is the work of a lifetime
and a very essential one. That is for me and my closest friends
family and colleagues and not for a public presentation. I might
change tomorrow, after all. One should be true to oneself, sure,
but not inflexible. One should leave a lot of room for improvement
and growth however old one gets.
Digger: Where do you think the natural home for the RSC should be
in London (i.e. outside Stratford) - The Barbican, the National
Theatre, the Vic or maybe a new venue? And why?
Harriet: I think it would be great to find a
new venue, not a new building but convert an unusual premises
preferably in the south bank area near the Globe. Certainly NOT
the Barbican which I found to be a very un-theatre -friendly
building. Of the existing choices, I think The Old and Young Vics
are a good idea. With the right promotional work they could become
popular venues with access to all the necessary workshop and
rehearsal spaces, together with all the atmosphere and history of
the Old Vic and its connection with the great eras of Lilian
Bayliss, Laurence Olivier etc. It needs a lot of work but it could
be done.
Digger: What is the most difficult thing about being an actor and
what is the most satisfying?
Harriet: One of the most difficult things is
the passivity. In general an actor has to wait to be asked to
work, and cannot plan far ahead in case jobs come up. Very few
actors, if any, can say ‘Hang on till September because I am
going on holiday/ in another play.’ If you aren’t free when a
job comes up, it goes to someone else. The most satisfying thing
is to be the medium of a beautiful message. To lose yourself in
Shakespeare’s genius and have that privilege of connecting an
audience to his work. In modern work, the satisfaction is in
taking an audience on a journey which they have no idea of
beforehand (if the critics haven’t given away the plot!)
Digger: Who, if any, were your idols/icons which prompted you into
an acting career?
Harriet: My all time idol was Rudolf
Nureyev. Something about seeing him perform when I was very young
sent me on the course of being an actress.
Digger: How would you describe the state of British theatre?
Harriet: I think the British theatre is
thriving in the sense that it has no let-up in the stream of
talented writers and performers and directors and designers that
have made it the envy of the world. I should like to see managers
working towards really reducing the price of seats so that people
can form a habit of going to theatre, and not wanting their money
back if the play isn’t everything they wanted it to be, which is
what happens when you have forked out a lot to see one play maybe
twice a year. The government could help if it recognised the
connection between a nation’s theatre and that society’s
well-being as a whole. A lot is written about the economics of the
theatre and of how highly priced the tickets are, how rude front
of house staff can be, how awful the West End is etc. well,
considering that, people still keep coming, so the British theatre
must be doing something right on the stages themselves to make
that journey worth the struggle.
Digger: And how about British film?
Harriet: Again our talent is acknowledged
worldwide. However, we do not seem to dare write our own stories
rather than pandering to what we think the US want to see us as.
The cinema is a unique tool for telling other societies around the
world about our own way of life, preoccupations etc. It is also
invaluable as a social history document for future generations. We
waste that opportunity too often by sticking to the period
repertoire, or by misleading portraits in the ‘Lock, Stock’
vein, which glamourise or romanticise some criminal underworld
which bears no relation to reality. I am of course biased but I
would like to see more what I call ‘grown-up’ films, more like
the French cinema or Almodovar produce. Stories which provide
interesting portraits of older female characters. I say I am
biased, but I hear this from so many people. While we pander to
Hollywood, (and its mostly male, mostly middle-aged and therefore
obsessed with youth, producers) there is little chance of this
happening.
Digger: How many pages of a script do you normally have to read
before you know you are onto a winner? How often are you surprised
by the box-office popularity of a play or screen role compared to
how it looked to you on paper and in production?
Harriet: I am bad at reading scripts on the
whole, and have often been surprised at how much something can be
improved in production. However, I have usually known pretty
quickly if something is exceptionally good or exceptionally bad.
(Bad scripts pretty well never become great in production, but
sadly, good ones can be ruined.) It is the middling stuff that is
harder to predict.
Digger: How do you deal with the critics and what advice would you
give a theatregoer, filmgoer or TV viewer when reading a critic's
reviews.
Harriet: Critics are here to stay. I find
them often disappointing. Not that they are unkind (I have mostly
been well treated by them) but that they seem to understand very
little of the work that goes into something. Perhaps it is not
their concern. They are writing for the public and not for us, but
it is galling when they completely miss the point, or misdiagnose
a problem. (e.g. ‘well directed but a terrible play’ when we
on the inside might be sure that is a good play ruined by bad
direction. Or vice versa)
Digger: What makes you laugh, what makes you angry and what makes
you cry?
Harriet: Either really physical slapstick
stuff or very witty subtle verbal stuff. Prejudice makes me angry.
People who judge and don’t dare use their eyes and ears to think
for themselves. War makes me angry because we have been on the
planet a long time and created such wonderful things that to
resort to primitive combat and destroy all that civilisation has
built up is unbearable. Tied up with this, I hate ignorance of
other cultures. We should make it our business to find out about
one another and about our own history so as to prevent repeating
the same stupid mistakes. That is what the arts could do. That is
what communication and the media should do. That is what the
internet could do. But greed and short-sightedness and the desire
to control are so strong that they get the upper hand time and
time again. What makes me cry? Losing loved ones of course. Waste.
Wasted lives. A child’s bewilderment when he/she is born into a
terrible situation-a war, poverty, illness. Cruelty to helpless
creatures but then we get to anger again. Anger and tears are very
close.
Digger: Please provide a Harriet quote for all your fans who visit
the site.
Harriet: I am not good at sound bites but
here is a quote which sums up something of how I feel about the
business of acting and the flexibility of attitude required, both
on stage and off. It is from ‘Charlotte Gray’ by Sebastian
Faulks:
‘Levade had told her one day that there was no such thing as a
coherent human personality. When you are forty you have no cell in
your body that you had at eighteen. It was the same, he said, with
your character. Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier
selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every
decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving
on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.’
Many thanks again to Harriet for
her kind and gracious cooperation with this interview, and to
Genevieve Shawe for her kindness & assistance
