It’s 8.30am in London and the temperature is already in the low 20s headed for the mid-30s. Dame Imelda Staunton has been out for a walk in her leafy West Hampstead neighbourhood in the relative cool of 5.30am, she says, before the day’s heatwave kicks in.
She and husband
Jim Carter – the actor also known as butler Mr Carson of Downton Abbey – have been doing their best to keep their garden alive, despite a hose ban. They’ve already changed part of it so it requires less hydration, she says via Zoom. “We’ve done a bit more of a dry garden. Because let’s face it, it’s the way things are going.”
They like their gardening. Search for event photos of the pair together, and there’s as many of them at openings of the Chelsea Flower Show as there are of them on premiere red carpets.
It’s slightly disarming to see Imelda Staunton in her natural environment, her impish face under a head of untamed curls that must have challenged the make-up department of The Crown when she played Queen Elizabeth of the 1990s and early 2000s. This year marks not only Staunton’s 70th birthday but the 50th anniversary of her professional acting career, one which has seen her continue to tread the boards even as her screen profile grew. Her best-known movie roles have included her 2004 Oscar-nominated, Bafta-winning role in Vera Drake and her scene-stealing turn as Dolores Umbridge, one of the most memorable villains in the Harry Potter films.
The reason for our chat is Staunton’s latest movie, & Sons. She plays the former wife of Bill Nighy’s character, AN Dyer, a self-centred, reclusive alcoholic writer who has maintained a JD Salinger-like literary stardom care of his one great book. Readers of David Gilbert’s 2013 novel upon which the movie is based will know there’s a twist involving Andy, the youngest of Dyer’s three sons – the one who wasn’t born to Staunton’s Isabel and who lives with his father.
Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy in & Sons. Photo / Supplied.
Staunton doesn’t have a lot of screen time in the movie, which shifts the book’s New York setting to Britain. But it wouldn’t be quite the same film without her. Her performance drives two of the film’s most emotional, pivotal scenes. One is opposite Nighy’s Dyer as he pleads for forgiveness for his failings, the other is with young Andy (Noah Jupe from Hamnet), in which Isabel sees something in the young man that disturbs her in an inexplicable way.
It’s definitely among the stranger films of Staunton’s career.
“I think I loved it because it was weird and that’s why I wanted to do it.”
What was her reaction when she read the twist in the script?
“It was, ‘Oh my god! Really? Okay, That’s a new one on me. We’ll have to go down that rabbit hole then.’ Because with those things, of course, you have to make it totally believable and if it’s ridiculous, if it’s absurd, if it’s weird, your character has to take it for what it is. So I, the actor, can’t comment on that. The character’s got to react in a way that I think any of us would react.
“But like any of those things – even doing Harry Potter when you’re acting with a tennis ball on a pole – you are reacting in a totally real way. So that’s what the gig is. You have to make the audience believe that you believe this.”
Staunton has known Nighy for decades and has worked with him before.
“He’s just the bee’s knees, isn’t he? So, any opportunity to work with him … and we get on. We’re both fairly easy-going people, and we do the homework, and you just sort of get on with it and have a nice time in between the takes.”
Not counting being the voice of Aunt Lucy in Paddington in Peru, & Sons is one of her first films since The Crown. She was in the role when the Queen died in 2022. What was her overriding memory of her time on the series?
“I was surprised by how much I loved being her because of her qualities … her steadfastness, her constancy, her clarity, her loyalty, and all these things which I think have sort of completely disappeared in society. People don’t stay in jobs for long. People go, ‘I’m a bit tired. I can’t do it.’ She didn’t miss a day and, in a way, in my tiny, tiny way, if I say I’m going to do a show, I do a show. And I think the younger generation, unfortunately, they haven’t had the time that I had, and Bill had, doing theatre when you were young and building up the muscle. Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, we were all doing all this theatre year after year in repertory all over the country, rehearsing one play in the day, doing another one at night, year after year. Now it’s unheard of.
“I think the Queen had great resilience, and goodness knows she had to have.”
Imelda Staunton poses with her husband Jim Carter and daughter Bessie Carter after being made a Dame Commander of the British Empire following an Investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle in Windsor in 2024. Photo / Getty Images
When Staunton was made a dame in 2024, she went to Windsor Castle to receive the honour from Prince William. Though she got her OBE (in 2006) and her CBE (in 2016) at Buckingham Palace from the woman she was to play.
Did her daily rate go up when she became a dame?
“Man, I wish.”
What’s it good for then?
“My point exactly. Has my life changed? No. Are people treating me differently? No. I suppose it’s very nice recognition for my work and also the charity stuff that I do with Jim, my husband. It’s a very nice pat on the back, and I’m very grateful for that.”
There’s been another Imelda Staunton that only UK theatre goers have been able to see: the West End star of many musicals and plays. Last year, she played the title role in George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession in a three-month production also starring her daughter, Bessie Carter (recently seen playing Nancy Mitford in the television series Outrageous).
The year before, Staunton led a 10-week revival of Hello Dolly, the production having been delayed due to the pandemic. It won her an Olivier award for Best Actress in a Musical.
“I thought it was just a bit of a sugary musical, but I’ve never enjoyed doing something more … the feeling of joy in the audience. I have never experienced anything like it. So that was a pretty good vitamin B12 shot that I got for a few months. It was like a release for the audience. I felt like I was part of the medical profession, providing vitamin L and vitamin J for love and joy.”
But this year, she has had her first summer off in 15 years and she’s enjoying the break of “not having to live like a nun” when she’s on an extended theatre season. She did a small film in Ireland – her parents’ birthplace – in June, playing a character called Bridie, which was her mother’s name. Other than that, there’s a garden to tend.
“I do think about what I want to do and, more importantly, what I don’t want to do.
“So, I’m doing that more and more. I’m just doing smaller things at the moment because I’ve given it a lot of welly for quite a long time.”
& Sons is in cinemas now.
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