After weeks preparing for my role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie a reviewer called me an ‘overweight little girl’. What about my acting?
As an actor, your body is a gift. I can use mine to play neurotic Clare Devlin in Channel 4’s Derry Girls, or a tough-edged courtesan in 18th-century London in Harlots, or the tragic, misunderstood Joyce Emily Hammond, who I’m currently playing every night at the Donmar. I’m very lucky to get to use my body to become all these fascinating women. But the prism through which my body is viewed is inescapable.
I remember watching an episode of 30 Rock while I was at drama school. One of the characters had gained weight over the summer break while starring in a pizza-themed musical. When she came back on set, Alec Baldwin’s studio exec, Jack Donaghy, said: “She needs to lose 30 pounds or gain 60. Anything in between has no place in television.” I laughed, I loved it. But I also accepted it as fact: actresses have to be a certain size to be legitimate – those are the rules. I had read autobiographies by brilliant actors who I idolised; how a film director had told Judi Dench she had “every single thing wrong with her face”; watched the infamous 1975 Helen Mirren interview, when Michael Parkinson asked if her figure undermined her credibility as “a serious actress” (to which she brilliantly retorted: “Serious actresses can’t have big bosoms, is that what you mean?”). These women were goddesses – I could not believe anyone would dare to criticise their bodies when it was so irrelevant to their talent. Now I know how it feels.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2tLfHQB
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