» Interview: Brenda Blethyn
Brenda Blethyn talks to Andrew Kay about her role in Edna O’Brien’s Haunted
If you were to believe the media you had a late flowering career but in truth you have been a very busy working actress for a long time…
Yes for about 30, 35 years now.
And it’s redundant asking what roles you would like because you have covered the ground really.
Yes I’ve been very lucky, I never hanker after things or go out looking for work. I don’t have much of an ego about what sort of part I have to play, it doesn’t have to be a lead – the part in Haunted is not the lead.
Edna O’Brien gave you Haunted?
I was in a play on Broadway, she came and we hit it off straight away. She mentioned she had a play and could she send it. I said yes of course and four years later it turned up. It took me ages to read it but when I did I fell in love. She couldn’t get it produced and I said leave it to me. I took it to director Braham Murray and forced him to read it and he fell in love with it too and put it in the schedule at Manchester Corn Exchange.
Did the role come easy?
You have to work at all of them. What I find exciting is working out what a character is like on an ordinary day. What was she like yesterday, before the play starts? Exploring her history so I can bring a bit of colour, more of a nuance. There are so many clues; Haunted is a memory play. You’re never sure who is alive and who is dead.
Is Edna O’Brien’s writing for the stage as luscious as her novels?
This is why I fell in love with it. We live in an age of texting, ‘LOL’, eloquence seems to be going out of the window. It’s an age of brevity, but to open the pages of Haunted and see this feast of language, it reaches parts other beers can’t.
Is your character strong? You play a lot of downtrodden women.
Other people say that but I don’t see it. What do you mean by
downtrodden?
Well, worried or care-worn…
Well, most women are. Most people are. The most vivacious person in public might be very different behind closed doors, that’s what I mean about finding the history. My character is a bread-winner, wears designer clothes, cares about how she looks, is a bit of a romantic, cares about her marriage. It’s a play about many things: desire, regret, betrayal, love, unrequited love.
Do you enjoy live theatre?
I love it. I never dreamed I would be in television or films. I thought film stars were from Mars. I started in an amateur group, but that was by default, someone dropped out and they asked me to step in. I love the camaraderie. The more I did, the better I got, and people started to say I could be a professional. And I said, what? Give up my good job? because I was working as a secretary, which I enjoyed.
How old were you – was being a mature student rather strange?
I was 27. And I know what you mean, a few chances have gone by and you understand the value of the education more. I was good at the woodwork. I would help make the sets.
“What I find exciting is working out what a character is like on an ordinary day”
Edna O’Brien has said that she sees you as a mother figure. But you are much younger.
How sweet. Maybe I’m mother to her baby, the play. She trusts me.
Have you ever taken a role and regretted it?
There must have been along the way, because I felt a flutter in my stomach as you said it but I can’t remember what. Maybe it wasn’t the material but the experience.
There is a notion that there are too few roles for women of a certain age – but you find them.
I have been very lucky, but I don’t go looking for them. I had a cameo in Dead Man Running which didn’t do very well but I loved doing it.
Do you ever turn anything down?
I do. I value family and friends; I have a 92-year-old aunt I like to spend time with – she is going to be in one of my films. She’s such fun the director has written a part for her.
Have you any new films or TV?
Yes, London River, set at the time of the July 7 bombings. I’ve also done a TV pilot for a crime series called Vera in which I’m a detective working for the police, great fun.
Haunted, Theatre Royal Brighton, 1-6 March, 08448 717650.
