That's Another Story: The Autobiography Read online

  Just as we were about to leave, I heard a scream from her bathroom. It turned out that after much coaxing, the zip in her dress had given up, spitting out a couple of teeth as it went. We stood there for several seconds, staring at it, Sara pink with panic and perspiration, and Dan pulling the two sides of the overstretched zip together as if they might get the message and mend themselves. Eventually he remembered the sewing kit in the bathroom and did a sterling job of lashing the two bits together with some big loopy stitches in a contrasting but not altogether inharmonious colour, with back-up from a couple of safety pins. We were off.

  When we arrived at the theatre, we were met by something that I had never experienced before. There were huge crowds of overexcited people, gawping and screaming, many of whom had camped for several days previously on the grass outside, and of course there was the red carpet. Then it was a rarity, reserved for enormous premières, but even so, this was in a league of its own. It must have taken us a good hour and a half to get up it, as we were waylaid by endless television crews and journalists who had travelled not only from all over America but from all over the world. After the ceremony, which may not have been quite as long as Shirley MacLaine’s career but was probably longer than mine, there was a do with dinner and dancing. I was paraded round by a Columbia Pictures executive to meet various famous folk, three of whom stick out in my memory. The first was Michael Jackson, who was dressed in his then normal military gear and had a very little voice; the second was Mel Gibson, who was just very little. The third was Liza Minnelli, whom I had in fact met before.

  Just before we were to start filming Educating Rita, Michael Caine threw a party at his restaurant, Langan’s Brasserie in London. In the small hours, as the party was drawing to an end, a lot of us went on to a club called Tramp where after a couple of hours I found that I could not stand a minute longer the blistering agony of my new cowboy boots, which I had purchased only that day from R. Soles on the King’s Road, so I decided to go to the Ladies’ to take them off. Because I was wearing no hosiery whatsoever and my feet, after at least a couple of hours of frenzied dancing, had probably swollen to twice their size, their removal proved nigh-on impossible. As I sat on a chair, veins popping in my forehead and face crimson with effort, the door opened and in came Liza.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Need a hand?’

  ‘Oh . . . yes please.’ Whereupon she bent down and pulled my boot off.

  ‘Oh, my . . . you’re bleeding. Do you want the other one off?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Liza and then fix me an ice-cold Martini, call me a cab and you may take the rest of the night off.’

  No, that’s right, I didn’t say that; just, ‘Oh . . .’

  She whipped it off and said, ‘Wait here, I’ll be right back.’

  I sat there, staring at my feet. They looked unsavoury and gross, and I thought: Liza Minnelli has just heaved my sweaty, blood-soaked boots off these. Within minutes she was back brandishing plasters, antiseptic and cotton wool; lifting the aforementioned plates on to her lap, she gently bathed and dressed them.

  ‘Oh, you should throw these boots away. Nothing should give you that much pain.’

  I was just wondering whether we were about to embark on a discussion about something more than blisters when she jumped up and lifted her skirt. I laughed nervously. I had read The News of the World, I knew what these Hollywood stars were capable of. She began to remove her tights. Oh my God! Liza, I’m not that way inclined, even when I had a bit of a crush on Mrs Banbrook in year seven; my fantasy never went past friendship, couldn’t we just—

  ‘Here, put these on. It’ll make getting the boots on and off easier. And trust me, throw ’em away.’

  So when I met her at the Oscar bash some eighteen months later, I felt as if we were old friends.

  ‘Julie, hi! Congratulations!’ I noticed then and since that Americans congratulate you after an awards ceremony, even if you haven’t won, simply for being nominated. In Britain that doesn’t happen; you’ve simply lost and people look sorry for you, avoiding all eye contact.

  ‘Hi, Liza.’

  She hugged me and whispered conspiratorially in my ear, ‘Don’t tell Shirley, but I voted for you.’

  ‘Oh thanks, that’s nice. No, I won’t tell her.’

  I don’t suppose she’ll ever read this; I mean, after all, I haven’t read her autobiography.

  Then as I was being dragged off to be introduced to yet another weary megastar, I managed to get in, ‘I’ve still got your tights! Not on me, you understand, I splashed out on a new pair for tonight. Though I might have had more luck if I’d worn yours! No, I’m glad Shirley won, we can all sleep safe in our beds now.’

  In 1984 the party to be at was Swifty Lazar’s and directly after the rather sedate dinner and dance, Willy Russell - who had also been nominated for, but not won, Best Adapted Screenplay - and I set off to find it. We couldn’t locate either of our limos, so we jumped into a cab and instructed the driver to take us to Swifty Lazar’s, thinking it was the name of a restaurant. When the befuddled-looking cabbie said he had never heard of such a restaurant, we took him for a chancer and duly got out and into another taxi. Again, the driver had never heard of the place, so in frustration we went on to another party that we had heard of, but by the time we arrived there were just three people propping up the bar and, not knowing any of them we decided to call it a night. So we never made the big post-Oscar party. We found out the next day, when quizzed as to where we had got to the night before, that Swifty Lazar was not a restaurant at all but a very famous old Hollywood agent. The whole Oscars thing was a not-to-be-missed experience but it has to be viewed for what it really is, which is first and foremost a wonderful piece of hype and marketing for the film industry; many a brilliant film and performance has gone unnoticed over the years because, for whatever reason, there hasn’t been the budget to sell it and distribute it properly.

  On every Oscar night various parties are held around Tinseltown, all with varying ‘must be seen at’ ratings.

  At my second Oscar experience in 2001, when I got the Best Supporting Actress nomination for Mrs Wilkinson in Billy Elliot, it was the Vanity Fair party that everyone wanted to get into and as a nominee you were sure of an invite. However, I chose Elton John’s party instead because he’d asked me personally at the première and he’s far too cuddly to turn down anyway, plus there’s always the chance that he might play the piano and do a turn.

  No one could have predicted the phenomenal success of Billy Elliot. We all knew that we had a really good script, a fabulous central performance from Jamie Bell, and a skilfully directed, funny and charming film from Stephen Daldry, but how were they going to sell to the general public a film about a miner’s son who became a ballet dancer? And to which bit of the public would it appeal? Apparently no one knew how to approach it and things were looking grim until two people from Universal came to a screening and said, ‘We like it.’ From that moment everything changed. Once a big studio showed an interest, everyone else did too.

  In 2001, my second film BAFTA was for Billy Elliot; this was a very different acting experience from Educating Rita as I was allowed to really create a character. Although it was already brilliantly written by Lee Hall, Stephen Daldry and I would get together and generate whole new scenes on the spot: something I have never been party to, before or since. All films, in my experience, are so schedule dominated that there is never the room for such a ‘luxury’, but somehow Stephen managed it. I had real fun with the character, taking away any maternal instinct that she might originally have had, as this would not only make her and her relationship with Billy more complex and thorny, but also steer her away from any sentimentality. Then the choreographer, the redoubtable Peter Darling, told me how his dance teacher had smoked and called out instructions to her pupils whilst perusing the Daily Mirror. Well, I couldn’t resist that, could I? I pored over documentaries about the little dance schools th
at seemed to be particular to the North-East, where the film was set, and loved the fact that the majority of the teachers couldn’t really dance themselves. This suited me perfectly as dancing - well, at least choreographed dancing - was something that scared me and I already had the ghost of my experience on Stepping Out haunting me.

  In that film, which was shot in 1990, dear Lewis Gilbert, for it was he, told me that although it was a film about a tap-dancing class, it didn’t matter a jot that I had never tap-danced and that I hadn’t a clue how to do it.

  ‘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.

  20

  ‘Something There to Offend the Whole Family’ - Personal Services

  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 r
uling 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.