Lesley Manville: ‘I went hopping and skipping and giggling to the Oscars’
Lesley Manville is, at 63, at the top of her game. Nominated for an Oscar for her part in Phantom Thread and now doted on by Hollywood, she returns to the National Theatre to star in Tony Kushner’s new version of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s tragicomedy The Visit.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt said the leading lady in The Visit was a “wicked creature, and for precisely that reason must not be played wicked”. Do you agree? How are you approaching the role?
Claire Zachanassian was damaged as a teenager and never got over it. She comes back to her home town, which Tony Kushner has relocated to upstate New York – a fictitious town called Slurry based on north-west New York state, around the shores of Lake Erie. She left home as a 16-year-old orphan. Now, she is back as the world’s richest woman. The townsfolk think she has an open heart and will improve the town’s fortunes, but she has returned for revenge. The question of her wickedness is a delicate one. It is vital to understand her. She is highly intelligent, dark and witty and during the course of the evening her soul is laid bare.
What does being in your 60s mean – is there new licence to be a wicked old lady yourself?
I don’t think of myself as old. I feel at the top of my form as an actor and a woman: free, liberated, energised. I want this feeling to stay – I’d quite like to lock it – because I know I’m not what you’d call young but don’t feel I’m what you would call old. I don’t conform to the stereotype of a 63-year-old. I still dress young – although not inappropriately. I know that, in the next decade, all sorts of things I can’t quite imagine will probably kick in. I’m still incredibly physically agile and energetic, but don’t know if that is going to get crushed the older I get.
Is your stamina in your genes?
There’s an inherent thing in my brain that makes me work hard. I don’t take any job for granted. I learn my lines. I know what I’m doing. I come in good spirit, good faith and with humour. I don’t ever want to slow up. I work with people much younger than me who sometimes don’t turn up prepared and I find that aggravating and inexcusable. And then in the next sentence, they’ll say: “I hope when I’m your age, I have your career,” and I feel like saying: “Well, buck up and get your act together a bit more.”
What was it like being discovered by Hollywood after half a century?
Extraordinary… I’m glad it happened when it did, because to be really successful in your 20s or 30s is hard to sustain. I knew who I was and what I was capable of as an actor and so it is a gorgeous cherry on the cake. Also, because I was working with Paul Thomas Anderson, I was not in a fake glitzy world of Hollywood, the work was a segue from Mike Leigh. Phantom Thread came left of field. I did not have to compromise to do it – or get Botoxed [laughs]. But I did go hopping and skipping and giggling to the Oscars because… why wouldn’t you?
Which of your roles is closest to your own character?
I’m a good mum like Cathy [in BBC sitcom Mum] although not as patient and more judgmental. I can be dark and witty like Claire Zachanassian. And there’s Mary, in Another Year – the sad, lonely alcoholic. Not that I’m a sad, lonely alcoholic, but I can tap into that wistfulness. And there have been times when I’ve felt the depths of loneliness and probably drunk too much of a bottle of red wine on my own in the evening. So I’ve been Mary but – thankfully – that has been transitory.
Making the film Ordinary Love must have brought you very close to the experience of having cancer…
My eldest sister went through breast cancer and had the five-year all-clear. I knew something of the experience from her. What also helped is that the staff – the chemo and biopsy nurses and technicians in the film – were, with the exception of the oncologist, real. That was incredibly valuable. And the script lent itself to being treated in a realistic way. You cannot make a film like that and sentimentalise or sensationalise it – you owe it to all those women who go through this awful thing to do it properly. My elder sister died last year of a different cancer. It is all around us, isn’t it?
People say health is the most important thing in life. What is most important after that?
Humour. It’s hugely important. I live on my own and that’s fine, I enjoy it, I’ve fine-tuned it, but I’m grateful to come to work with 20 or 30 people with whom I can have nice conversations and a laugh.
Does success change you?
My poor sisters – both older than me – said that from age four on, I was bossing them around. Has success changed me? Well, no is the truth. I live a very average, normal life. I don’t travel around in cars unless I’m being picked up to go filming at five in the morning.
What do you like doing when not working?
It’s because I live on my own that home is my sanctuary. It’s simple: I like to go home and have something nice to eat and am currently obsessed with watching Succession – my fix in the evenings. No big secrets really. I’m very happy in my own head and space.
What future roles are lined up for you?
I’ve a cameo in the film Misbehaviour, about the 1970 Miss World competition, and I’m in Let Him Go with Kevin Costner, playing a North Dakota, peroxide-blond chain-smoking mama. And Ordinary Love is about to open in the States. In one of my little breaks from the play in February I’m popping over to give Liam Neeson a hug and take him on the circuit.
The Visit runs in repertory at the National Theatre until 13 May
