That's Another Story: The Autobiography (36 page)

‘No, darling, don’t worry about all that. We can shoot around all that, darling.’

Thank God I got Phil Collins’ sister Carole to teach me a few steps and even then I found it virtually impossible to get the ins and outs of it into my forty-year-old brain, almost wearing out the kitchen floor and kicking several dents into my own shins and ankles in the process. Then once we got to Toronto to start a three-week rehearsal period prior to filming, I found that, apart from Andrea Martin, I was the only person in the cast who had never tapped before and in the course of the first day’s rehearsal I was placed bottom of the class. The ancient Hollywood-style choreographer, who had the look of a scrotum in glasses, made us rehearse in a line-up that placed the most proficient dancer, which was, of course, Liza Minnelli, on the far right, with the dancers decreasing in skill as you moved left until you ended up with me at the other end. It was hell.

This was what was in my head as I went to my first rehearsal of
Billy Elliot
. No, Peter assured me, I wouldn’t have to do anything that was out of my ability range.

‘So . . . what? A bit of walking to the beat and perhaps a bit of skipping or something?’

‘No.’

He was a man of frighteningly few words and again I found it headachingly difficult to learn the steps. There was something terrifying in the fact that the music waited for no man and it wasn’t exactly music that had a nice sedate tempo. Unlike a play, where a momentary lapse of concentration could be covered by a dramatic pause whereby a girl could recover her equilibrium and then carry on, with dancing the music and the beat were relentless, and it was a lot harder and required a lot more skill than I possessed to cover any lapse of memory or clumsy slip of the foot. After weeks of rehearsal I had sort of got it but had never really managed to get through it without some sort of slip-up. When the day came to film the dance sequence with Jamie Bell with whom I had yet to dance, I saw him in the corner doing some amazing-looking steps and asked him what scene they were from. He stared at me for slightly longer than is comfortable and then said, ‘It’s our dance sequence to “I Love to Boogie”.’

I was dumbfounded; I didn’t even recognise them as they were being so brilliantly executed and they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the clumsy tangle of steps I’d been trying to get into the right order over the previous weeks.

It was a long morning, and that is all we had in which to film a sequence that should have taken several days. I was in the early stages of the menopause and it was a very fuzzy-headed day, where I felt heavy and bloated, starting the morning unable to get the steps right and then, embarrassingly, unable to prevent myself from crying, something I am not in the habit of doing in public, unless it’s whilst acting a part. I went to a far corner of the room for a little privacy and to hide my emotions, and then wished that I hadn’t as all it served to do was draw unwanted attention to my state, make me feel more isolated than I already did. It also meant that, at some point, I would have to turn around and face the assembled crew, who were all waiting for me, pawing the ground and kicking at bits of equipment, keen to get on with an impossible schedule.

Of course, when I did turn around, I was met with nothing but sympathy, friendly, understanding pats on the back and a cup of tea, which could have given rise to another blubbing session. Indeed, my lip did begin to tremble, but with a massive intake of breath and a feeling of it’s now or never, I knocked back the tea, turned on my heel, the camera rolled and I went through the dance for the first time ever without a hitch. We had it. I noticed that very recently when I shot
Mamma Mia!
I was less afraid of the old dance and I think, along with that film’s patient and understanding choreography team led by Anthony Van Last, that the conquering of that little sequence in
Billy Elliot
had a lot to do with it.

After the hoohah of the 1984 Oscars was over, I stayed around in Hollywood for a short time on the advice of a couple of executives from Columbia Pictures. I was introduced to a hotshot agent at Creative Artists Agency and was duly taken on. I did the usual rounds of casting folk and the movers and shakers of the film industry, and was even given a few scripts to peruse, but they simply didn’t know what to do with me; the scripts were all a bit Rita-esque, with old-fashioned, cheeky, chirpy, ‘cor luvva duck’ characters, some American screenwriter’s romantic and ill-informed idea of what a working-class English girl was like. How could I summon up the enthusiasm to work on things like these when I had had the privilege of the likes of Alan Bennett’s, Willy Russell’s, Alan Bleasdale’s and Victoria Wood’s characters to perform?

At a loss, they then sent me bland, generally written characters in romantic comedies of the sort that had been popular in the 1970s, where every line was predictable and cliche’d, and could be said by a hundred characters in a hundred different ways, instead of the taut, precise and brilliantly observed stuff I had had the good luck to have grown up with and grown used to. So in my heart of hearts, much as I loved the idea of Hollywood, I knew where I wanted to be. I felt that the roles that I wanted to play, and the projects that I wanted to be a part of and that would fulfil me, were tied to my roots, and that there was a cultural divide that I could not comfortably cross without living in America and soaking it up for some time. I wasn’t prepared to do that when my real interest lay deep down in my own history and people. I also felt that the talent of British writers, technicians and directors was unrivalled.

So back home I came, travelling straight up to the Lake District on arrival, Eskdale to be precise, to start shooting a film titled
She’ll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas
.

This was a piece about a group of women on an outward-bound course, with an interesting script written by Eva Hardy that didn’t quite live up to its potential when completed, but with a fabulous bunch of women, Pauline Yates, Paula Jacobs, Maureen O’Brien, Janet Henfrey, Alyson Spiro, Jane Evers and Penelope Nice amongst them. The film looms large in my memory because of an incident that occurred after we’d been marooned up there for two or three weeks.

One evening after filming we were all in the bar of the hotel, bemoaning the fact that in a day or so’s time we would have to remove our clothes for a particular scene that was set in a shower. Being naked in public is not something that I seek out in life, or in work for that matter. I had done it once before in Alan Bennett’s
Intensive Care
, where his embarrassment was so extreme that it made me feel positively Gypsy Rose Lee, and I was to do it once again on stage in the West End in
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune
in 1989, but that was in a very dim light. And then finally - and when I say finally, I’m pretty positive that I mean finally - I was to strip off in 2003 for the film
Calendar Girls
, but this was a very brief shot, after a pep talk from Helen Mirren and the rest of the girls, plus a glass of champagne, plus a seniority that gave us women total dominance of the set on that day.

However, back in 1984, I certainly felt no such seniority and the thought of a fairly long scene with dialogue whilst you soaped your lalas in a naturalistic fashion was not on my list of things I must do before I die. Then someone - and I can’t remember who, though I’ve often been given the credit - came up with the idea that we should refuse to do it unless the crew took their clothes off as well. Everyone, including the sound crew, who were in the bar that night, thought it was a gas and in the excitement the idea developed into us telling the producers that there had been some kind of recent ruling by Equity, the actors’ union. Then Pauline Yates suggested that we get her husband, the actor Donald Churchill, to ring up pretending to be Peter Plouvier, the then general secretary of Equity, to inform our producers of the bogus ruling. The next day a message was left at the hotel reception, asking the producer to ring Peter Plouvier at Equity urgently, along with Donald Churchill’s telephone number, which, of course, he duly did.

The conversation went something like this:

‘Yes, hello, could I speak to Peter Plouvier, please?’

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘Yes, hello, Peter, you left a message for me to call you. I’m working on the film
Pink Pyjamas
.’

‘Oh yes. I’m sorry about this, but I believe you have a scene involving several actresses having to appear naked and . . . er, it’s coming up this week, isn’t it?’

‘Erm, yes, that . . . that is correct, yes. Is there a problem?’

‘Well, I’m afraid the Women’s Committee have just passed a motion stating that should any female members of a cast be required to appear naked, then the same number of crew will have to appear naked too. This was passed . . . er, just yesterday morning and I’m afraid you are the first production that it applies to. Erm, I’ve spoken to Alan Sapper, the general secretary for the crew’s union, and he is in complete agreement and will be instructing his members accordingly. I am sorry about this. I expect you could do without it but I’m afraid we are forced to comply.’

Nobody expected for a minute that the producer, whose name I have left out to spare his blushes, would believe a word of this. But, dear reader, he did.

On the day that the scene was to be shot, we arrived to find members of the crew in heavy discussion with the producers, some saying that they refused to undress.

‘I’m not taking my clothes off! I have to bend down a lot . . . it wouldn’t be right.’ This was heard coming from one little huddle. Others were trying to negotiate a fee for revealing all.

‘I’m not going to let a bunch of loony feminists ruin my film!’ This was heard being screamed tearfully from the producer’s caravan later.

By this time we were terrified, not of the impending scene but of the consequences of our prank once the truth was out. However, we felt that now we had to carry on until the bitter end. Inside the shower set the moment came for us to remove our dressing gowns in order to shoot the scene. As soon as we did so, true to their word the sound boys whipped everything off as well. Many a sound technician would have felt diminished by the size of his boom, but not our man, and may I say that he gave the boom, which was, after all, very large and hairy, a good run for its money. Next to follow was Clive Tickner, our marvellous lighting cameraman, sitting there on the dolly, looking ravishing in nothing but a set of headphones. Eventually, the entire crew, which I have to say was suddenly greatly reduced, were naked; all, that is, except the director, who refused and looked most uncomfortable into the bargain. I can’t think why, dear reader, but thereafter a lot of people went round inexplicably lifting their little fingers behind his back, especially when he said anything that could be construed as a mite pompous.

This went on until the end of the shoot and is probably still going on today, for all I know. I am not saying he was an unpopular director, but I do have to say that the caterers offered to make a giant custard pie, with the proviso that some brave person would have the chutzpah to shove it in his face on the last day of filming.

It is amazing how respectful men become when they, too, are naked and in a position to be judged. I noticed it when on a nude beach in Greece; there was absolutely no leering and no comments, lewd or otherwise. Once the scene was over we made our confession with a case of champagne placed strategically between us and them, to ease any embarrassment, and it was all taken in good heart. It is a story that still follows me around the world today; in fact a friend of the very producer of whom I speak contacted him from Australia, only a short forty-eight hours after the joke was played, and reported having read about it in a Sydney newspaper. It turned out to be a publicist’s dream but, even so, a box office disappointment, as was the film I did the following year in 1985.

This was called
Car Trouble
, in which I starred with my dear friend Ian Charleson, whom I had worked alongside in the play
Fool for Love
by Sam Shepard at the National Theatre. It was a huge success resulting in us both being nominated for Olivier Awards. We transferred to the Lyric Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue for a limited run, and I adored him. We were attracted to the child in one another and shared a huge mutual affection as well as a certain wicked, camp humour.
Car Trouble
was a comedy that revolved around an awful couple called Gerald and Jacqueline Spong. He is the overproud owner of an E-Type Jaguar and, to cut a very long story short, Jacqueline takes a fancy to the dishy mechanic played by the dishy Vincenzo Ricotta, who happens to be servicing the said E-Type and predictably ends up servicing her. The climax, for want of a better word, occurs when they are at it in the car and inadvertently slip the handbrake off in a mid-coitus frenzy, sending the car careering through woodland down a bank. The two of them end up being stuck together, Jacqueline having gone into a trauma-induced spasm. I thought Barry Norman was going to spontaneously combust when he reviewed it on
Film ’86
as he was so utterly furious.
City Limits
, which was then
Time Out
’s rival what’s-on magazine, called it ‘a sizzling turd of a movie’. The magazine has since folded but not before honouring me in the form of a garden gnome inscribed with ‘The person you would most like to spend a day on Clapham Common with’, and my awarding it with the honorific title ‘The magazine I would most like to wipe my bottom on’.