We were billeted in this boy's prep school, which was beyond weird, with iron bedsteads and bare floorboards, almost Dickensian. You'd learn your lines on the beach - you have loads of brain cells at that age that you can employ learning lines after being in the pub - and then transfer to the end of the pier at Cromer."And how did you make the transition from the end of the pier to more mainstream theatre? "I suppose the first proper job was the opening season at the Royal Exchange ... Albert Finney and Eleanor Bron and Tom Courtenay, that triumvirate - this was a project they had all held dear for many years, trying to get this theatre built. We did The Rivals, The Prince of Homburg, The Skin of our Teeth, What the Butler Saw... Serious work, with very good people, in a stunning theatre with all the shared excitement of a dream coming true. It was very healthy to go from head-banging over a bit of Chekhov ... into that rough and tumble, with the sense that we were doing something quite old-fashioned Their was an air of seaside holiday about the whole thing.
People nowadays are much more sophisticated - if they want to act, they're looking at a whole range of options, they may not even consider theatre at all, they'll be looking at television and thinking 'Ah, I could get a foot in the door there, this is what I'm selling.'"And after graduation? Did you work immediately? "Yes - we went straight from three years of classical training to weekly rep: Agatha Christie, French Without Tears, all that stuff." Do you look back on that time with nostalgia? "Oh, I adored it. And after being turned down several times by the likes of Rada, I was eventually accepted by Central School [of Speech and Drama]. The doors weren't exactly flying open for me."It was little, little footsteps, I had no idea where they were leading I was very na? - it was partly the times. I staged my own production of Joe Orton's Funeral Games, and had to take lunchtimes off from my pub job to do it.
And then when Kevin, and another friend called Michael Burlington, went on to Bristol University drama department - a very hot department at the time - I followed them, doing odd jobs in pubs and as a bus conductress, but mainly just hanging around in the drama department. But in terms of what I wanted to do - and without ever discussing it - I just had their permission to be what I am. Sadly, my father died before I even left school, let alone got into drama college."Like many professional actors, she first caught the bug in school productions. "Across the drive from our all-girls school was the all-boys school, and my great friend Kevin Elyot, who's now a playwright, was a pupil there. They had a much freer approach to drama, and did contemporary writers, and somehow I sort of crossed the drive and got into the boys' school. Educationally, like a lot of Scots, they had very high standards, and they put a lot of effort into making sure that I was reasonably educated. My father was in the army for 21 years, came out just before I was born.
