What was the most Australian thing that you experienced while you were in the country filming Dustfall?<\/p>\n
Working with a python? We don\u2019t tend to work with snakes in the UK. I\u2019m absolutely snake phobic but the python was very professional. Behaved better than I did.<\/p>\n
Also, the phenomenal openness which I associate with Australian people \u2013 the lack of class pretension, the glass half-full approach. That seems to me a very Australian quality. It\u2019s like the landscape: big, open and generous.<\/p>\n
In Dustfall you play the mother of Anna Torv\u2019s character. I understand you seek roles specifically that pull you out of your comfort zone \u2013 was Olivia one of them?<\/p>\n
I do, because it\u2019s very boring playing characters who are close to myself. I didn\u2019t become an actor because I wanted to play me! On the contrary \u2013 as a kid I was always dreaming of being a very different person. Unfortunately our industry is pushing back on that. You\u2019re supposed to be playing nearer and nearer your own lived experience and you\u2019re not allowed to play other people\u2019s lived experience. Well \u2013 what\u2019s the word \u201cact\u201d mean, then?<\/p>\n
As you get older, if you\u2019re not careful, you get worse as an actor. Because you get too comfortable, too safe. You know how to do things, you\u2019ve got a lot of technique. So you need to be pushed out of your comfort zone.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m certainly not like Olivia. There are overlaps. She\u2019s a feminist and she\u2019s my age, so we were brought up in the same culture in terms of attitudes to sexuality. But I\u2019m a very hands-on mum, and Olivia handed over a lot of parenting to her own mother. She comes breezing back in, flirts a lot, gets drunk and stoned. She\u2019s pretty insensitive. But it\u2019s fun to play all that. I hope my kids would say that wasn\u2019t like me.<\/p>\n
Drunk and stoned acting is quite hard to do convincingly, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Yes. I think I\u2019ve only ever been stoned once in my life. It just didn\u2019t appeal to me. That was probably 40 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
How often do millennial women want to talk to you about Bend It Like Beckham?<\/p>\n
A lot, and it thrills me! I was filming a big film in Australia when that script arrived, and I thought, \u201cOh my god, I have not got time to read this, and what a rubbish title!\u201d Then I opened it late one night and by page three I was roaring with laughter.<\/p>\n
It was brilliant not just because it\u2019s very funny but because it was touching on two really important things: women\u2019s football, obviously, but also what it means to be a British Asian girl. There\u2019s one reality inside your family home, shaped by your mum and dad\u2019s values and codes of conduct and so on. And then they step out the front door and they\u2019re in the street or they\u2019re at school and they have to cope with a completely different set of values and a completely different culture.<\/p>\n
These young kids are negotiating all that and I hadn\u2019t ever given that enough thought. It was a really beautiful film. Lots of young Asian girls still come up to me to talk about it. Which is great, because most of our work dies away.<\/p>\n
Which role has been most personally fulfilling for you and why?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never felt so free as I do on stage. Nobody can stop you. Nobody can edit you. There\u2019s a freedom in that which, on a good night, is incomparable. It\u2019s intoxicating. There\u2019s also nights when you\u2019re out there and you think, \u201cShit, I\u2019m so bad.\u201d But when it\u2019s good, it\u2019s so intoxicating. You have this power over 1,000 people and you\u2019re just holding them. It is hard to pin just one down, but perhaps The Doctor, the Robert Icke play we brought to the Adelaide festival in 2020, just before Covid lockdowns.<\/p>\n