Many Lives (6 page)

Sometimes the matinee will be on a Wednesday, which means you haven't yet had time to take a breath. I love matinee audiences. They're usually old and, I always say, a standing ovation from an older audience is when they clap with their hands higher than their hearts. They've seen all the touring plays and are the most theatrically educated audience of the week. I really appreciate the effort made to get the bus, struggle through town and turn up.

On Thursday you might get to the cathedral or to the local art gallery. Chances are, though, you've got to do some repair work on yourself or buy new tights, get your nails done, get your hair washed or whatever it is that needs doing.

By Friday night it feels like you've been living in your digs for a year. I call Fridays ‘Reluctant Husbands' Night'. It takes a lot of energy to keep those poor men interested, or even awake, after a long week at the office.

Saturday morning you have to pack up and get straight to your next digs by lunchtime to get to the theatre for the matinee – putting your suitcase, to carry on to the next venue, wherever the company manager tells you to. The two shows on a Saturday fly by and are generally fabulous fun. You know the theatre, you know the backstage crew and you know where the microwave is for a snack between shows. By Saturday you own the space. The dressing room you've taken over, which looks as if you've been living there for a year, has to be packed up during the show. By Saturday night when you leave the theatre, giving in your tenner to say ‘thanks' to the man on the stage door for being nice, you're very tired. Depending on whether you have a long way to go, and if it involves travelling from Edinburgh
down to Brighton, you might not get Sunday at home. You might have to go straight in and do digs, or you might just manage to get home and push your front door against a pile of mail.

It's hard and lonely work. A famous drummer friend of mine used to say he got paid to tour and did the drumming for free. I feel the same about my work – it's got enormous highs but, along with those, corresponding troughs. My life's been like that, too, and I feel blessed.

I love rehearsals. They're an opportunity for a special kind of playing. It's when everything's a possibility. Ritual and theatre go hand in hand. Playing is the ritual of the imagination.

When I come into the theatre before a performance I have a ritual for settling myself in and leaving the energy of the day behind me. I wander around in ever-decreasing circles; greeting people, doing what needs doing, sorting what needs sorting, round and round until I'm by myself in my dressing room. Just like a dog does before it can lie down. It takes me time to shake off the day. I can only get into character if I get rid of my day and get rid of me.

The sacred moment of opening a new script is a ritual, too. A new script really shouldn't be flicked through for the first time on a bus or the Tube. Of course, later it's going to be in my handbag and constantly rustled with, but the first reading is very important. That is, until you get to episode 147. At that point you just flick through the pages, saying ‘bullshit, bullshit, bullshit – oh, my bit…'

Some jobs you take for one reason and then you suddenly get involved with the whole thing on a different level and another reason emerges. I've made a few pretty dire films, but I got to
go to Budapest, I got to live in Paris, I got to work with some fabulous people and I got to play.

The ritual of cleansing after a performance is very important. Some actors think it's only possible in the pub. The thing is, the body can't tell the difference between acting and reality. Whatever you've gone through on stage in the theatre is as real to your body as if you'd gone through it at home in your front room. You have to be very careful what you do with yourself after you've finished a performance. The trouble is it's late at night so the swimming pool and the sauna are probably closed, and you can't get a massage, so what do you do? Go and eat or drink; not a good idea late at night. It can be hard coming down after a performance – very hard. It's easy to have a dark night of the soul after a performance, and on a daily basis. It's when the drinking to oblivion often starts. I don't drink – I never have. If I'm in the UK I usually phone America because they're still up. In the past I've gone roller skating and dancing – lots of dancing. You don't want to talk, chances are you don't really want to think, you just want to come down. Sometimes I spend an inordinate amount of time in the ritual of taking off my make-up.

I love theatre when it's alive – when I can feel a synergy between the actors and the audience. Pantomime is perfect for that. When Jude, my grandson, was six years old I played the Wicked Queen in
Snow White
. I wanted him to be able to see me in something he'd enjoy. It was the first time I'd done pantomime and I loved it. Unfortunately we forgot to explain the rules to Jude and he got really upset when everyone booed me. The first time it happened
he stood up and shouted ‘No!' After the show I explained that booing for baddies was their clapping. When he came to see the show again he was the most enthusiastic boo-er in the audience. He's going to look after his ‘Glamma', that boy. He's never forgotten my Wicked Witch. I asked him what he thought after he came to see me play Maria Callas in
Master Class
. ‘Hmmm,' he pondered, ‘I think that was better than
Snow White
.' My Maria Callas did look a bit like a wicked queen.

Panto is hard graft, two shows a day, but it's a lot of fun. You're free to acknowledge the audience and play with them. A baby starts crying: ‘Bring it here and I'll wring its neck.' You can come forwards and talk to your audience. Restoration comedy's like that, too. There's no imaginary fourth wall that you pretend the audience aren't behind.

If you're doing a Harold Pinter play, the audience isn't there. They have to exist for laughs and timing, but beyond that they're not there. They're not part of your experience on stage. You're just talking to other characters in a living room; there's nobody watching you.

Harold Pinter's meant to be quite highbrow so there's no playing allowed, but the naughtiest actors always find a way. In 1970 I did two Pinters in the West End, at The Duchess Theatre:
The Basement
and
The Tea Party
, both with Donald Pleasance and Barry Foster. Donald was always trying to make me laugh on stage. His character wore glasses and he played one of our scenes with his back to the audience. On one occasion, as the lights came up on stage, there were two grapes where Donald's eyes should have been. I tried to get him back but it was very hard – he was utterly concentrated. Then, during one of our performances when I was
doing a staged leap, the crotch in my trousers ripped. Donald was shaking with laughter.

In the Sixties everybody had to take their clothes off at some point or other, even for Harold Pinter. There was a low-lit scene in which I had to undress and get into bed with Barry Foster. Then the set revolved and the next scene was me building a sandcastle in a bikini. While we were in the bed, looking like we were doing other things, Barry was helping me on with my bikini – only one night the bikini wasn't in the bed. I had to do a quick change in the wings, get back onto the revolving bed and straight onto the beach, lights up. I remember sitting on that beach building a sandcastle wondering whether my bikini was on straight. Without the fourth wall I could have played that completely differently.

When Ken Cranham's wig fell off during a performance of
The London Cuckolds
, I started laughing. It took away any discomfort or embarrassment the audience might have felt and they started laughing, too. That made Ken behave very badly. He started putting his wig back on upside-down and back-to-front until we were all in hysterics.

When I did
The Rover
with Jeremy Irons for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988, we had a similar moment. Jeremy did something that made me giggle. I can't remember what: a naughty wink, or a funny look or something. I told him to stop and the audience started laughing. Once they started, I couldn't stop. I was laughing so much I had to go and wipe my eyes on the curtains upstage. The audience adored seeing a film star and a television star enjoying being on stage together, and really cracking up. They felt that they were a part of something completely original, and they were.

If you laugh and the audience sees what you're laughing at, your laughter will make them laugh, then their laughter will make you laugh even more; you can go on forever. It is great fun, but you've got to be very careful because you have to be able to pull the play back. It's
real
laughter, and it's a
real
moment. One moment the audience is just watching a play, then suddenly they're a part of the play, and everyone's wide awake.

Like Pinter, Noel Coward's plays happen behind the fourth wall. In 1991 I played Rupert Everett's mother Florence in Coward's
The Vortex
at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.

After the production finished I took a trip to Sedona, Arizona. I wanted to spend some time in a terrestrial vortex. Sedona is known as a sacred site and also as the location of vortices of spiritual energy. It's set in quite an unusual and stunning red
rocky landscape, in the highland of the Arizona desert. The red sandstone is totally unique to that area. One morning while I was meditating, sitting on one of the red rocks, the sun suddenly disappeared and I felt cold flecks on my skin. I opened my eyes. It was snowing, but only on the rock that my friend and I were sitting on. After a minute or two it stopped as suddenly as it had started. Then the sun came back out again.

All through my life I've been tantalized with reminders of what happened on that rooftop at RADA. Very occasionally, when I'm on stage acting there is a perfect moment. If you stop and think, ‘This is a good moment,' you'll dry up on the next. You can only acknowledge it after it's happened. There's an experience of energy and communication; something happens. It's about the synergy between the actors and the audience in the theatre.

RADA prepared me in so many ways for my career as an actress, including the experience on the rooftop. At the time it was another amazing new experience in a life that had been fuelled by new experiences. I put it in my medieval suede bag and it's always been there, casting a glow over my life.

Theatre is its own kind of magic. Hamri, a wise Moroccan expert on magic, told my anthropologist boyfriend Bernie:

In the early human times there was magic everywhere, then over the millennia as mankind became civilized, magic declined and became ritual. Now in the modern world all that is left of true ritual is the theatre.

There's nothing fantastical about make-believe; fantastic, yes – because believing is three-quarters of the way to achieving. I don't have fantasies, I just make plans. I think of something fantastical and then I plan how I can make it happen. Everything begins as an idea, as a thought that bubbles up from the imagination. And being able to play, allowing yourself to play, exercises the imagination. The creative self is the God-self, born from the imagination. To create is to conjure an idea into existence; it's magic. Being a creator is not playing at being God; it really is drawing on that God-self we all carry within.

I'm exceptionally lucky – I'm paid to play.

When I was in
The Colbys
I remember Charlton Heston and me injecting magic into some very dull scenes. Never mind the fact that the peripherals of the show were all about gloss, we still cared that its content should have a spark of magic. That great star Charlton Heston was a grafter, and he had real integrity. I'd go up to him, and he'd say, ‘Oh dear, I see the fingers are going,' because my fingers wiggle around when I've got ideas. And I'd say, ‘Chuck, I've got this idea, because this looks rather bland the way it's been written,' and he always listened. We'd add subtext and superimpose meaning onto dull scenes, for the fun of it and because it made it a richer experience to do and to watch. As a rule, technicians – the chippies and sparks – don't bother to hang around the set during filming. They do their job, and then clear off. But when Chuck and I had a scene and the First Director called, ‘Quiet on the set, we're ready for a run-through,' we'd gather an audience. They knew they'd get to see a little bit of theatre because we cared enough to want to create some magic.