“There’s a certain amount of pressure that comes from playing real people. It’s a pressure to deliver something fair and right to the real person and any living relatives. But generally, it’s a joy, as you get to target your interest on a particular era.”
“People ask me if I think Anne Boleyn was a feminist… but she wasn’t striking out on behalf of women, and she wasn’t particularly keen on them.”
“I was born in Paris, and my mother was a French teacher, but then I rebelled against my upbringing and studied Spanish in school. So now I just speak bad French and bad Spanish.”
“You have to accept that when you don’t get the part, it’s to do with all sorts of reasons completely beyond your control, unless you know it’s because you weren’t prepared.”
“As actors, you always have that moment thinking you’ve been absolutely terrible or a fraud.”
“Anne Boleyn is certainly the most exciting character I have played on stage.”
“When I was a child, I wanted to be a jockey. I love horses, but it’s not practical to have one in London. I also wanted to be an accountant, which isn’t glamorous at all, but my dad was one, and I quite liked maths.”
“I’ve never done a musical, and I don’t think I could do one, but I would love to play Sally Bowles in ‘Cabaret.’”
“Anne Boleyn isn’t a sympathetic character, but I like that she isn’t a people pleaser. She’s ambitious and manipulative, but she’s honest. I’m biased, but I don’t think a woman who has said ‘no’ to the King of England for six years would jump into bed with four of his best friends. She was a slick political mind.”
“Greek tragedy was pre-Freudian, so every emotion has to be so raw; there are no psychological undertones.”
“I used to love ‘Jeeves And Wooster.’ That theme tune was great. I remember writing to them when I was little to get the music so I could learn it on the piano, and they sent me the sheet music.”
“I’d always wanted to be an actor, ever since I was very little. I don’t know why.”
“Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won the BBC Carlton Hobbs Award, so I did some BBC Radio drama work, which is a lovely way to start out because you work with lots of great people, and you’re working all the time, so you’re learning rather than sitting around and waitressing.”
“I knew who Jackie Kennedy was in terms of being the wife of JFK and being a clothes horse, and I knew that she later married Onassis, but I had a very, very vague idea of who he was.”
“Television’s so quick, and there’s so many other fun elements to it, but you don’t get such good scripts and the time to really make much more three dimensional characters.”
“I’ve met more than one person in their early 20s who has never heard of Jackie Onassis, though most girls have because she exists as a fashion icon.”
“What you think is going to be a big break or opportunity can sometimes turn into the opposite, and vice versa.”
“Anne Boleyn was a warrior forced to use the only tools available to a woman in her position at that time. She was bold and ambitious, and had she had a son, history would have been very different.”
“Broadway is the actor’s Mt. Everest – but with more flattering frocks.”
“’Broadway’ is one of the big American words. It’s exciting to be given the chance to rattle around in one of the big words.”
“I don’t think I’m intense.”
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