‘I was just glad I could get into the costumes’
'Women are turning into men,’ says Jacqueline Bisset challengingly. She widens her catlike eyes and I find myself drawn in to what must have attracted her lovers, including the ballet dancer Alexander Godunov and actor Michael Sarrazin.
Bisset has an alluring presence, that all the great actresses have, as if the room goes dark around us while she is talking. She has, after all, been called the most beautiful film actress of all time. Her face seems to occupy the whole of my vision and my always shaky shorthand rapidly becomes an indecipherable scrawl.
‘What do you mean by that?’ I ask.
‘They’re becoming harder than they need to be,’ she continues. ‘You see, men and women see things in different ways.’
So, what does she look for in a man? ‘I like men who talk well and who listen well and who are curious.’
The actress is in London to promote Dancing On The Edge, a drama that began this week, and one that the BBC hopes will attract the Downton Abbey audience after the failure of its Upstairs Downstairs revival. The series follows a black American jazz band in 1930s cafe society London, whose band leader (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds himself on the run, accused of murder. It marks the first time writer and director Stephen Poliakoff has made a series.
The five-part BBC Two show allows Poliakoff to go deeper into the themes of racism and neo-Nazism that ran through his last work, the psychological thriller, Glorious 39. Bisset, in her first British project for more than a decade, plays a society grande dame and patron of the arts in the Peggy Guggenheim mould.
The actress, who lives in a sprawling French-style farmhouse in Beverly Hills, had wanted to do more British drama and increase her range of roles for a long time. Her agent sent over the scripts with hardly any warning and Bisset settled down on her couch to read them. She had never read scripts like it, she says, because they were so complex. Things moved quickly after that.
Like the character she plays, Bisset has been a little reclusive of late. She was, after all, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s, starring in movies such as Bullitt, Under The Volcano and The Deep, in which she became famous for her clinging wet T-shirt.
Critical buzz around the show is good. Critics – whom the film director Tony Richardson once compared to ‘a group of acidulated intellectual eunuchs hugging their prejudices like feather boas’ – are normally a closed-mouthed bunch at advance screenings. The lights go up and they turn to each other asking cautiously, ‘What did you think?’ This time there were smiles and nods when the lights came on.
If nothing else, the viewers will swoon over the period costumes. French and Saunders used to wander over and admire the costumes of another BBC period drama, The House Of Eliott, when they were taking a break from filming their own show. But it is a fascination that Bisset does not share.
‘I didn’t drool over the costumes. To be honest, I was just thrilled to get into them at all,’ she laughs. She confesses that she was rigid with nerves on the first day of shooting. ‘I got so fearful on this one, I was terrified,’ she says. ‘My memory was shot and I got terrible stage fright… or perhaps “set fright”. I just couldn’t control it.’
Poliakoff, who she says was a calming influence on set, talked her through it and her fear then disappeared after two days. ‘I liked Stephen a lot. I am very fond of him. He was demanding but he also has a trusting aspect to him, combined with a fierce intelligence.’
Like many actresses of a certain age, Bisset, who is now 68, says she felt invisible once she turned 40. The biggest male stars, George Clooney and Tom Cruise, are in their 50s while their most recent screen love interests were played by actresses in their early 30s. Actresses complain that sexism is rampant in Hollywood and that you go from playing the love interest to somebody’s mother.
‘I still feel this burning desire to live life,’ Bisset says. ‘If I really want to do something, I throw my heart and soul into it because life accelerates as you get older.’
‘People keep telling me I would find more interesting work in Europe. Theatre doesn’t attract me as much as it should, though. I like the intimacy of film.’
Then suddenly our time is up. ‘It was delightful to meet you,’ Bisset says graciously, extending a hand. She is going off in search of Scotch eggs, a delicacy strangely unavailable in health-conscious California. The pleasure was all mine, I mumble, as I realise that my mouth has gone completely dry.
Dancing On The Edge is on BBC Two on Mondays at 9pm.
Bisset has an alluring presence, that all the great actresses have, as if the room goes dark around us while she is talking. She has, after all, been called the most beautiful film actress of all time. Her face seems to occupy the whole of my vision and my always shaky shorthand rapidly becomes an indecipherable scrawl.
‘What do you mean by that?’ I ask.
‘They’re becoming harder than they need to be,’ she continues. ‘You see, men and women see things in different ways.’
So, what does she look for in a man? ‘I like men who talk well and who listen well and who are curious.’
The actress is in London to promote Dancing On The Edge, a drama that began this week, and one that the BBC hopes will attract the Downton Abbey audience after the failure of its Upstairs Downstairs revival. The series follows a black American jazz band in 1930s cafe society London, whose band leader (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds himself on the run, accused of murder. It marks the first time writer and director Stephen Poliakoff has made a series.
The five-part BBC Two show allows Poliakoff to go deeper into the themes of racism and neo-Nazism that ran through his last work, the psychological thriller, Glorious 39. Bisset, in her first British project for more than a decade, plays a society grande dame and patron of the arts in the Peggy Guggenheim mould.
The actress, who lives in a sprawling French-style farmhouse in Beverly Hills, had wanted to do more British drama and increase her range of roles for a long time. Her agent sent over the scripts with hardly any warning and Bisset settled down on her couch to read them. She had never read scripts like it, she says, because they were so complex. Things moved quickly after that.
Like the character she plays, Bisset has been a little reclusive of late. She was, after all, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s, starring in movies such as Bullitt, Under The Volcano and The Deep, in which she became famous for her clinging wet T-shirt.
A LOT TO GIVE
Does she see any similarities between herself and her character, the reclusive Lady Cremone? ‘There is always a resemblance because the role is coming through your body,’ she says carefully. ‘Lady Cremone starts out grand but she wants to do something with her life and feels that she still has something to contribute. Being around younger people kind of re-energises her.’Critical buzz around the show is good. Critics – whom the film director Tony Richardson once compared to ‘a group of acidulated intellectual eunuchs hugging their prejudices like feather boas’ – are normally a closed-mouthed bunch at advance screenings. The lights go up and they turn to each other asking cautiously, ‘What did you think?’ This time there were smiles and nods when the lights came on.
If nothing else, the viewers will swoon over the period costumes. French and Saunders used to wander over and admire the costumes of another BBC period drama, The House Of Eliott, when they were taking a break from filming their own show. But it is a fascination that Bisset does not share.
‘I didn’t drool over the costumes. To be honest, I was just thrilled to get into them at all,’ she laughs. She confesses that she was rigid with nerves on the first day of shooting. ‘I got so fearful on this one, I was terrified,’ she says. ‘My memory was shot and I got terrible stage fright… or perhaps “set fright”. I just couldn’t control it.’
Poliakoff, who she says was a calming influence on set, talked her through it and her fear then disappeared after two days. ‘I liked Stephen a lot. I am very fond of him. He was demanding but he also has a trusting aspect to him, combined with a fierce intelligence.’
Like many actresses of a certain age, Bisset, who is now 68, says she felt invisible once she turned 40. The biggest male stars, George Clooney and Tom Cruise, are in their 50s while their most recent screen love interests were played by actresses in their early 30s. Actresses complain that sexism is rampant in Hollywood and that you go from playing the love interest to somebody’s mother.
‘I still feel this burning desire to live life,’ Bisset says. ‘If I really want to do something, I throw my heart and soul into it because life accelerates as you get older.’
INDEPENDENT WOMAN
Bisset’s chance to get in on the blockbuster market, playing Angelina Jolie’s mother in Mr And Mrs Smith, ended up on the cutting-room floor. (She is Jolie’s godmother in real life.) So she has concentrated on smaller, independent films such as The Sleepy Time Gal, which, she says, was the biggest acting challenge she has ever faced. She never went to acting school and instead just learnt on set. So, given Hollywood’s antipathy to casting older women, has she considered moving back to England – or appearing in a play?‘People keep telling me I would find more interesting work in Europe. Theatre doesn’t attract me as much as it should, though. I like the intimacy of film.’
Then suddenly our time is up. ‘It was delightful to meet you,’ Bisset says graciously, extending a hand. She is going off in search of Scotch eggs, a delicacy strangely unavailable in health-conscious California. The pleasure was all mine, I mumble, as I realise that my mouth has gone completely dry.
Dancing On The Edge is on BBC Two on Mondays at 9pm.