| Radio Times |
|
Andrew Duncan meets
Anita Dobson She's a respected theatre actress who never set out to be in a soap, so why is this real-life East Ender still viewed as the queen of the Queen Vic? Radio Times 18 - 24 November 2000 The Stretch Sunday Sky 1 There's often a "don't mention-the-war" proviso with actors deemed to be touchy, and with this 52-year-old spinster who's been engaged four times, it is her tempestuous 14-year relationship with Queen guitarist Brian May I'm told it would be wise to avoid. However, as happens so often, personal and professional image proves to be far from the reality and she'll discuss it, later, with brutal honesty and twinkling self-awareness. Although she has performed in many high praised "serious" roles, she is still bedevilled by a "soap" label, even though she left her three-year stint as unhappily married EastEnders publican Angie Watts in 1988. "I'd have thought people would have let Angie go by now, but they won't. That's hard." Thirty million watched back then when "Dirty Den", played by Leslie Grantham, served divorce papers on Angie, and The Stretch is the first time the two actors have worked together since EasEnders. He plays a criminal sentenced to life for a murder he claims he didn't commit, and she's the wife who unwillingly agrees to mastermind his two last deals - a drugs shipment and a counterfeiting syndicate. It's tough, over the top, and swearing fills many holes in the script. "I suppose we've become anaethetised. I'm in no position to judge if there's too much swearing on television because I don't watch it, mainly because I don't think a lot of it's very good. I enjoy movies, and sometimes sit up all night watching them." Not that she regrets EastEnders. "I was 36 when I was offered the part, a jack of all trades and master of none. I needed something in order to break through, but I knew it owuld be the end of my career if I stayed in the soap 'box', which is why I left so quickly. For some actors it's fantastic - a steady income and a good lifestyle - but I wanted to do other things." Presumably she enjoyed the fame. "No. I joined this business to be an actress, not a celebrity. I became one reluctantly. I could have been like everyone else, making money, talking to the press, but I didn't. The most hurtful part was that people I thought were trustworthy, and that I had been kind to, actually went for the quick buck by selling stories about me. It goes on all the time. I still find it dishonourable and unthinkable. I couldn't sell a story on someone else. I couldn't sell a story on myself, come to that. It's particularly bad in tis country, because of jealousy. After Angie and Den took off, there was an undercurrent of resentment from some actors in the cast. When I bought my first smart car - a Mercedes sports convertible - I kept driving my beat-up Vauxhall Cavalier in case others thought I was a flashy, jumped-up actress." She created such a strong image with Angie, it was difficult to find other work after she left.. "Whether I did would have been wrong. If I'd been in a classical play where I spoke nicely, they's day I was betraying my cockney roots. So I did Budgie on stage, which I thought was in the same vein, and critics said, "Don't bother to see it. She's only playing Angie Watts." "Also, it's harder to get work when you're older. Viewers don't want to see us writhing around in bed. Actually I don't want to see anyone writhing around in bed. I worry about age only in the sense that the business worries about it. I eats up and spits out young blood and the turnover is frightening. I was depressed until a director friend suggested I did good work while I waited for the next fantastic role, so I went to Stratford East [the east London home of the Theatre Royal], the Edinburgh Festival - all for no money. I didn't care because I was so happy to be working." She had brilliant reviews in Kvetch, by Steven Berkhoff: "A gift of a part. He's a genius, and they're difficult people. I know. I live with one. They have every right to be difficult because they're artists, always coming up with phenomenal things. They're not quite beamed into the real world." Growing up in London's Mile End Road, the older of two daughters of a dress-cutter and seamstress, she was always ambitious. "I had a very happy childhood, but the grit in my oyster was that I wanted to get out of the East End and into the big wide world. Acting was an insane ambition. You were supposed to be a secretary, civil servant, shop assistant, to marry and have 2.4 children, but my dad introduced me to Shakespeare at an early age and he and my mum encouraged me to be anything I wanted." She disliked her all-girl secondary school - "When you're growing into a woman, you should be around men to figure out how you feel about them" - and left at 16 to work for the Prudential insurance company. "I have to tell you that I had a ball. I was a young girl who discovered I could look good in a suit and, hallelujah, there were men." She became engaged to her first boyfriend, Alan Bailey, but called it off six weeks before the wedding. "The reality hit me when I saw the wedding dress, the church, and thought, 'I'm not ready for this.' I knew there'd be no hope because I'd get pregnant and stay where I was. It was upsetting for both of us and hurtful to our parents. I caused such havoc, which I'm very sorry about. Alan was lovely, and I'm sure he still is. He sold his story, bless him, but it wasn't malicious. Interestingly, be married a lady who ran a pub, so there, but for the grace of God, I'd have been the real Angie Watts. A close escape." Two years later she was accepted at London's Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, but nearly turned down the place after visiting a nearby pub to check out the other students. "I had a really awful cockney accent and everyone there was terribly 'naice', saying things like 'Darling, it's jut not true. I mean Mummy wouldn't say that.' I thought, my God, I've done the wrong thing, but it was perfect because I could hear this tune during the day and then at home there was the other tune. I became an amalgam of everything." She went to the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, performed in rep for years and has worked at London's Royal National Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Television must have seemed like a comedown. "Funny you should say that. I told my agent I only wanted to do mainstream theatre - Strindberg and Ibsen - and no commercials or soaps. But when I went for EastEnders, its a drama series, looking at ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It became a that a lot of the characters stayed." She hasn't watched EastEnders since she left it. She's been engaged three more times. "Different reasons, I suppose. None of them were right. When you become engaged, you have seriously to consider the possibility of marrying, and if that's not what you want, you have to say so. Now I'm glad I never married. If you don't get tied up in a ball of string, you don't have to unravel it, but I'd have made a good wife, because when I go into anything, I do it properly. I loved the men I was engaged to deeply and I'm good at keeping in touch with my old flings. The reason I didn't marry is that I wasn't sure I could commit the rest of my life to them and their happiness, not because I'm frivolous. I'm the opposite. If I'd had a child, I couldn't have continued my career, and I was very ambitious. Sitting here with you now, I'd be thrilled to say, 'Here's my 13-year-old daughter,' but there was never a moment when it would have been right, so it didn't happen. When I found the man I wanted to have my children with, he already had them." May met her at a party given by Freddie Mercury. He was married and she was involved with her EastEnders co-star Tom Watt, who played Lofty. "We were both very formed as people. I was late thirties, an actress always in the headlines, and he was early forties, a married man with three kids, a rock god. It was a recipe for disaster, looking back. How on earth can two people go through that minefield and stay together? I'm not an easy woman. Well, I'm easier now, but in those days I was difficult and had no idea about how to go about having a relationship. I'd been engaged, but hadn't really lived with anyone. I was useless. Everything hurt me, and how the hell we staggered on I'll never know. He went through a painful divorce, and then lost Fred, which was a tremendous pain in his life. We both lost parents, and had occasions when we needed to be on our own." Or with others. In March they were photographed on holiday in the Seychelles, 13 months after their latest break-up, when he had an affair with his married secretary. She, it was claimed, screamed at the secretary and rang the woman's husband to let him know. "I never screamed at anybody. Both of us, maybe once in our relationship, have been with others." Unfaithful? "No, not unfaithful. There are times when you have to go away and be with someone else. That can break a relationship, or make it!It implies being faithful. "Being unfaithful is when you're living with someone and go off soap - people's lives, day in and day out. Those first three years were the best. Now the turnover is incredible. The good thing about Coronation Street is another man at the same time. If you stop being with them, have another relationship, and then return, that's a different ball game. I'm happy to be standing on this side of the trials and tribulations, so being 50 is good from that point of view. There are calmer waters, and it's a more loving, understanding, forgiving relationship". "Whatever happens we'll always be soul mates and love each other. Although he's not here to speak for himself, I can say we couldn't not be in each other's lives. Even if either of us married someone else we'd still be close. Possibly that would be difficult for the other partner, but they'd have to live with it." Maybe they'll marry each other at last. "who knows? We've been through hell and back, and the fact we're together and still love each other is a tribute to us. We're back on the horse, if you'll pardon the expression. he's still the man for me, and I guess I must be the woman for him." He wrote music for The Stretch, including a song that she sings. "I'd love to have been a singer. I have an OK voice, but I'm not good enough." When her father died, she went to a therapist. "Until then my parents had been my therapists, but losing Dad hit my mum very hard. At times like that you feel alone and need to talk to someone else. I had a fear of therapy and becoming 'sorted', because I thought my edge would go. But I was also intrigued. There's a taboo about it, and I didn't know whether it was a lot of old codswallop or something everyone should think about. I saw this lady who was lovely and said, 'Don't you think that you'll be an even better actress if you relax?' and that's the truth. If I hadn't been an actress, I'd have been a therapist. I like observing people, and love to help them. You learn who you are from therapy, and how to use new tools. People are afraid of it, but it's no different from me talking to you. In the old days they used to do it by having discussions with neighbours over the garden fence for no charge. But we don't have time for that any more, so we pay someone to sit and listen. I love where I am now. You have to come to terms with how the ageing process treats your face. I don't particularly like it, but what can you do? Just grow old gracefully, or disgracefully, more like. I'm no longer ambitious in the sense that I want to get somewhere, because I suppose to a certain extent I'm there. I still want to do things in my career, but there's not that terrible clock ticking away, and I don't spend time looking over my shoulder. I say, on to the next job. Keep working and moving, and don't let them see the whites of your eyes." |
