A GAME OF TRUE OR FALSE
Director Peter Hall once said of Vanessa Redgrave: ‘In life, which is true, she is false. In art, which is false, she is true.’ In my opinion, this quote is also true.
My first glimpse of Vanessa Redgrave was on the set of her new film, Song For Marion, as she was crossing a courtyard. This should not have been unusual – her height, after all, was undeniably Redgrave (she once stood at 5ft 11in) and her piercing blue eyes were Redgrave, too. But the person walking towards me wasn’t Vanessa as we know her. It was Marion, the cancer patient. Marion’s face was grey, her movements agonisingly slow. The cameras weren’t rolling, but Vanessa was in character. She was ‘in art’ and therefore, she was true.
When I went to speak to her, I was fairly relaxed. Talking to this frail, 75-year-old lady would be a breeze, I thought. She was sitting on her trailer steps, smoking lazily. ‘Hello,’ I said brightly, ‘I’m Edwina.’
‘Who’s… Edwina?’ she replied coldly.
This didn’t feel right. ‘I’m from The Lady and…’ Vanessa stubbed out her cigarette and shut her trailer door in my face.
Months later, I was invited to complete the interview and reluctantly, I accepted. I had been allocated 15 minutes – what could one possibly discover in that time?
Miss Redgrave is notoriously untrusting of journalists and often answers questions about her films with politics, and questions about her politics with comments about her acting. Born into a distinguished acting family, to father Michael Redgrave and mother Rachel Kempson, in January 1937, even Vanessa’s birth was dramatic – Laurence Olivier announced it to an audience of Hamlet at The Old Vic. As a result, it is frequently written that she was destined for stardom.
But while her enthusiasm for acting might have started when she was only four, a recent biography on the Redgraves suggests that her father doubted her acting talents, believing languages to be her forte. So she moved to London to attend Queen’s Gate, the private school in South Kensington, which is the introduction to our second interview.
I think I can say that Vanessa Redgrave is surprised when I place a copy of Queen’s Gate: An Unschooly School in front of her and announce that I too had attended the school. In my head, it is the perfect ice-breaker. Unfortunately, not. Instead, I had handed her the best question-evader imaginable. If she doesn’t like the question, she refers to the book. So I draw her attention to an anonymous review of Toad Of Toad Hall, in which she had played Mole, expecting her face to light up nostalgically. But… ‘There ought to be a review of me playing all the other parts, slightly more important characters than Mole. But I did love playing [it].’
I ask her if the school had inspired her to act. ‘The school?’ she questions. ‘No, the school didn’t inspire me to act. I started acting when I was four. I had done quite a lot of plays before, some of which I wrote.’
So it didn’t inspire her acting, but what about her politics? I select the page where it relays how Vanessa had been head of the school’s first Communist Party. She warms to this a little. ‘They had a great tradition, which was when a general election took place, there would also be a general election in the school. I thought it was very interesting to have this exercise in democracy. We senior ladies portioned out who would represent whom. And my best friend and I were either chosen, or put ourselves forward, because it was the most unlikely and therefore the most interesting.’
She breaks into a throaty laugh and her face brightens. Perhaps she is envisaging herself as a young revolutionary. I laugh, too. ‘How bold of you!’ I exclaim.
But she replies, ‘There was nothing very bold about it. It was the school that was bold, in having the parties represented. You didn’t have to agree with it. It was very informative and educational. But the big thing was not that. The big thing was the school productions and the lacrosse.’
Was she good at lacrosse? ‘Very good,’ she says confidently, ‘I became Captain. I’d have liked to play a lot more. I loved lacrosse. Absolutely loved it.’
I try to steer the conversation back to acting. She looks up from the book, shuts it, and says, ‘That was very interesting, thank you.’ Seizing the opportunity, I fire off a question about Song For Marion, but she stays with the book. ‘The other thing about the school was that it did have productions and very good language tuition. So did you take Advanced?’
I look at her blankly. ‘Oh, A levels? Yes…’
‘Because it was my generation, my three best friends; we initiated it,’ she says. ‘There was no Advanced-level education at Queen’s Gate whatsoever until we pushed for it – and got it.’
I ask if, in those days, such a qualification was respected, giving women confidence in what was effectively still a man’s world. ‘Well it wasn’t to do with confidence. It’s something you’re supposed to put some thinking into of your own. It tends to be learn by rote these days.’
I counter by saying that my school days had become increasingly more to do with independent thinking. Without looking up, she says in a clipped, rather cold tone ‘You’re not quite up to date – education is my passion. I have been an international ambassador for Unicef since ’95. I still support the nursery school that I financed and gave to ILEA (Inner London Education Authority), which Mrs Thatcher closed down.’
Speaking of the Iron Lady, I ask what her thoughts are on the film about Margaret Thatcher. ‘I’m not going to talk about The Iron Lady because I haven’t seen it, and it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.’
Back to the book, then. But Vanessa has other ideas and switches the subject to her film. So I ask her how hard it was to play a character with cancer when both her brother (Corin) and sister (Lynn) had suffered from the illness and recently died from it.
‘Umm,’ she says, seeming to shake suddenly. ‘It was both very difficult but also very creative. I first thought “I can’t do this, I can’t even undertake it.” But it was a very, very good script – is a very, very good script. It’s about much more than cancer.’
She fumbles with the pages and I suddenly realise that I have tears in my eyes. Desperately trying not to blink, I ask why she had put herself through it (she had also played a grieving mother on Broadway, just months after her eldest daughter, Natasha Richardson, had died in a skiing accident). ‘Well, why be an actress is the question?’ she says, looking up suddenly and laughing loudly.
The spell is instantly broken and I feel rather foolish at having become so emotional. What just happened? Had she been Marion – in ‘art’ – and all the fumbling and the shaking had been ‘true?’ Or had she, ‘in life’, seen the affect it was having on me, played on it, and been ‘false’?
As I walk away, I am still unsure what to make of Vanessa Redgrave. Is she stern or endearing? Astute or eccentric? But one thing I do know is that she certainly loves her art, and I’m satisfied that even she would agree with that.
Song For Marion is on general release from 22 February
My first glimpse of Vanessa Redgrave was on the set of her new film, Song For Marion, as she was crossing a courtyard. This should not have been unusual – her height, after all, was undeniably Redgrave (she once stood at 5ft 11in) and her piercing blue eyes were Redgrave, too. But the person walking towards me wasn’t Vanessa as we know her. It was Marion, the cancer patient. Marion’s face was grey, her movements agonisingly slow. The cameras weren’t rolling, but Vanessa was in character. She was ‘in art’ and therefore, she was true.
When I went to speak to her, I was fairly relaxed. Talking to this frail, 75-year-old lady would be a breeze, I thought. She was sitting on her trailer steps, smoking lazily. ‘Hello,’ I said brightly, ‘I’m Edwina.’
‘Who’s… Edwina?’ she replied coldly.
This didn’t feel right. ‘I’m from The Lady and…’ Vanessa stubbed out her cigarette and shut her trailer door in my face.
Months later, I was invited to complete the interview and reluctantly, I accepted. I had been allocated 15 minutes – what could one possibly discover in that time?
Miss Redgrave is notoriously untrusting of journalists and often answers questions about her films with politics, and questions about her politics with comments about her acting. Born into a distinguished acting family, to father Michael Redgrave and mother Rachel Kempson, in January 1937, even Vanessa’s birth was dramatic – Laurence Olivier announced it to an audience of Hamlet at The Old Vic. As a result, it is frequently written that she was destined for stardom.
But while her enthusiasm for acting might have started when she was only four, a recent biography on the Redgraves suggests that her father doubted her acting talents, believing languages to be her forte. So she moved to London to attend Queen’s Gate, the private school in South Kensington, which is the introduction to our second interview.
I think I can say that Vanessa Redgrave is surprised when I place a copy of Queen’s Gate: An Unschooly School in front of her and announce that I too had attended the school. In my head, it is the perfect ice-breaker. Unfortunately, not. Instead, I had handed her the best question-evader imaginable. If she doesn’t like the question, she refers to the book. So I draw her attention to an anonymous review of Toad Of Toad Hall, in which she had played Mole, expecting her face to light up nostalgically. But… ‘There ought to be a review of me playing all the other parts, slightly more important characters than Mole. But I did love playing [it].’
I ask her if the school had inspired her to act. ‘The school?’ she questions. ‘No, the school didn’t inspire me to act. I started acting when I was four. I had done quite a lot of plays before, some of which I wrote.’
So it didn’t inspire her acting, but what about her politics? I select the page where it relays how Vanessa had been head of the school’s first Communist Party. She warms to this a little. ‘They had a great tradition, which was when a general election took place, there would also be a general election in the school. I thought it was very interesting to have this exercise in democracy. We senior ladies portioned out who would represent whom. And my best friend and I were either chosen, or put ourselves forward, because it was the most unlikely and therefore the most interesting.’
She breaks into a throaty laugh and her face brightens. Perhaps she is envisaging herself as a young revolutionary. I laugh, too. ‘How bold of you!’ I exclaim.
But she replies, ‘There was nothing very bold about it. It was the school that was bold, in having the parties represented. You didn’t have to agree with it. It was very informative and educational. But the big thing was not that. The big thing was the school productions and the lacrosse.’
Was she good at lacrosse? ‘Very good,’ she says confidently, ‘I became Captain. I’d have liked to play a lot more. I loved lacrosse. Absolutely loved it.’
I try to steer the conversation back to acting. She looks up from the book, shuts it, and says, ‘That was very interesting, thank you.’ Seizing the opportunity, I fire off a question about Song For Marion, but she stays with the book. ‘The other thing about the school was that it did have productions and very good language tuition. So did you take Advanced?’
I look at her blankly. ‘Oh, A levels? Yes…’
‘Because it was my generation, my three best friends; we initiated it,’ she says. ‘There was no Advanced-level education at Queen’s Gate whatsoever until we pushed for it – and got it.’
I ask if, in those days, such a qualification was respected, giving women confidence in what was effectively still a man’s world. ‘Well it wasn’t to do with confidence. It’s something you’re supposed to put some thinking into of your own. It tends to be learn by rote these days.’
I counter by saying that my school days had become increasingly more to do with independent thinking. Without looking up, she says in a clipped, rather cold tone ‘You’re not quite up to date – education is my passion. I have been an international ambassador for Unicef since ’95. I still support the nursery school that I financed and gave to ILEA (Inner London Education Authority), which Mrs Thatcher closed down.’
Speaking of the Iron Lady, I ask what her thoughts are on the film about Margaret Thatcher. ‘I’m not going to talk about The Iron Lady because I haven’t seen it, and it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.’
Back to the book, then. But Vanessa has other ideas and switches the subject to her film. So I ask her how hard it was to play a character with cancer when both her brother (Corin) and sister (Lynn) had suffered from the illness and recently died from it.
‘Umm,’ she says, seeming to shake suddenly. ‘It was both very difficult but also very creative. I first thought “I can’t do this, I can’t even undertake it.” But it was a very, very good script – is a very, very good script. It’s about much more than cancer.’
She fumbles with the pages and I suddenly realise that I have tears in my eyes. Desperately trying not to blink, I ask why she had put herself through it (she had also played a grieving mother on Broadway, just months after her eldest daughter, Natasha Richardson, had died in a skiing accident). ‘Well, why be an actress is the question?’ she says, looking up suddenly and laughing loudly.
The spell is instantly broken and I feel rather foolish at having become so emotional. What just happened? Had she been Marion – in ‘art’ – and all the fumbling and the shaking had been ‘true?’ Or had she, ‘in life’, seen the affect it was having on me, played on it, and been ‘false’?
As I walk away, I am still unsure what to make of Vanessa Redgrave. Is she stern or endearing? Astute or eccentric? But one thing I do know is that she certainly loves her art, and I’m satisfied that even she would agree with that.
Song For Marion is on general release from 22 February