The 1970s Project

GJ: Good directors always know what they don't want. They don't know what they do want until they see it. So the good directors are the ones who create the climate where you can make a contribution which is over and above knowing your lines, hitting your mark, all that kind of stuff. So people like (Ken) Russell, John Schlesinger, (Robert) Altman - they are very open to suggestion, but they make the final decision, if you see what I mean. For someone like Ken, for instance, who knows nothing at all about acting… (laughs)…he doesn't. I mean he knows everything about how he wants to tell the story in a sense, and it's as though he's got a third eye you know, and he always has a most unique approach to human nature and human behaviour. He'd say things like it's a bit too…urgh! It needs to be a bit more… ahh! And you knew what he meant. Because, at least in the films that I worked with him on, you knew these were not people who were having to endure a wet Wednesday in Wigan – there was something more going on in their lives. But the real feed, in a sense always, pretty much is the script. If the script is good then you're half way to getting there. But bad directors always know what they want, and they're just like a terrible burden on you. But the good ones wait to see.

GJ: I loathed him. I absolutely loathed him. I did the film because of his reputation and I thought he would be someone interesting to work with. And of course he wasn't interesting to work with at all. Because the persona of being this outsider who despised Hollywood, who loathed the star system, was all crap. I mean he loved the star system. His problem was, he wasn't a star! And so when I did Romantic Englishwoman (1975), the last thing he wanted really was people like me and Michael Caine, who knew our lines, hit our marks, did all that kind of stuff. He was much more interested in Helmut Berger, who was – I mean I liked him very much and found him very interesting to work with – but who was the classic neurotic, European star. He was found trying to drown himself in the river outside the hotel, but the river was precisely one and a half inches deep. And another morning was late on the set because he'd been found asleep under one of the electrician's beds – nobody knew how he got there…All this kind of stuff which Losey absolutely loved, he loved it. So no, it wasn't a happy experience for me.

GJ: Well it wasn't so much that I was constrained. I didn't think it was a particularly good script. As I said, I did it because I wanted to work for Losey, so that was a big disappointment. But also, it just never took off, it never had a life of its own. And that was partly because of Losey's approach to everything – a lot of theory, but no space. Liv Ullman crystallised what I'm talking about absolutely perfectly. She was talking about a film that she did with Bergman – I can't remember which one it was – and she also made the same remark that I did, that he created a climate which was conducive to actors being able to do what they do. And she gave this perfect example. She was playing a vain woman in this film and the shot was she simply had to walk down a corridor. That was all she had to do, she didn't have any lines to say, she just had to walk down the corridor. She's playing a vain woman and she quite naturally, playing a vain woman, checked her appearance in every reflective surface in the corridor. And he set up a camera to catch that if she did it. Now he hadn't said to her 'do it', he hadn't set it up like that. But that's what I mean, that's what good directors do.

GJ: That wasn't what informed my performance style. The difficulty I had when I first worked in America was actually to try to get people to drop their, in my mind, totally artificial view of me. As though I was somebody who knew everything, had come from a different planet, and that everything they were doing was something I would find totally ludicrous, and all that kind of stuff. So once you got through that and people actually began to talk to you it was okay. I mean talk to you like a human being, not as though you were something other. But the difference in production was just astonishing. I mean admittedly I was working for Universal the first time I went over. And most of the shooting was done either on a sound stage or on their back lot which is enormous. Or on location in and around Los Angeles where film companies are like, you know, the postman coming – nobody takes any notice. I remember once driving up a street and I saw this guy standing on the top of a very, very tall car park and their were police cars around and I thought 'Oh, they're shooting a film. It wasn't, actually, it was a guy who was contemplating throwing himself off the bloody roof! [laughs] But, for example, I was saying about working on the back lot. We drove out – and the back lot was enormous then, it was like you were in the middle of nowhere. And they'd brought the jenny (generator) along with us and this guy just walked up to this place, lifted a sod of earth and plugged in the generator! The whole of the back lot was on a grid system and everybody knew where the powerpoints were, if that's where you had to be. There was never anything about what time you had to finish. I mean, you finished when they'd got the day's work done. In my day, if you were on location in England, you were given a caravan which you were lucky if you had a heater in it, which was invariably bottled gas, so you were lucky if you got out alive, and they were minute. When I worked in America, they gave me this caravan/dressing room on the set which was bigger than my house! I couldn't believe it. You could have lived in it quite easily. So those kinds of things are there. Immensely professional. For all those kinds of things. But it was at a time when the in-house delivery centres, if you like, like make-up, hair, wardrobe, all had gone. And so there were very few people left who had actually been trained in the film industry from the beginning. I mean, I remember I brought wigs over with me from England for the film I was doing, which I'd had made here. And the ladies in the hairdressing department just couldn't get over the fact that these were wigs that were still made with real hair and on a proper mesh base, because their wigs are plastic, you know, nylon. And you can see it! Mostly in television more than films now. So those kinds of things were beginning to go, but there were still incredible warehouses on that studio lot. I remember going round one and it was full of nothing but mirrors! And another one that was full of nothing but chairs.

GJ: Nothing like that left, nothing at all. Hadn't been for a very long time.

GJ: No, not really. The extraordinary thing about a film is that there's a lot of waiting around and then you have a bit of rehearsal if you're lucky. But it's essentially the same, because you're in a lit area, and there are a lot of people standing around you in the dark. And they're all looking at you. Now, they're not looking at you acting. They're looking to see if your hair's okay, if your make-up's okay, if your frock's okay if they're costume. The set people are looking to see if all the right props are there. The cameraman is looking to see if the lighting's okay. But they are all concentrating. So there's this palpable amount of energy just concentrated on you. And that's one of the great thrills of working for camera. You never have to work for its attention or its concentration. And there is this external wall, almost, of energy that's all looking in one place. And that's the same whether you are shooting in America, or here or anywhere. Because it's that little lit place that's the centre of the world when you are working.

GJ: What changes? There haven't been any.

GJ: I wasn't until I read the papers. I was just doing, you know, what I was being asked to do. So no, I wasn't aware of that. I mean the difference, for me, had started in a sense much earlier than that. I mean if I go all the way back to when I left drama school I was told – and it was an absolutely accurate reflection of British theatre at the time – not to expect to work much before I was 40 because I was essentially a character actress. And at the time the British theatre – well certainly the remaining structures of reps that existed – were dependent upon really three years' past West End successes. And West End successes had a male and female lead, a male and female juv (juvenile) lead, a male and female character lead, male and female juv character lead, and that was it. And then of course John Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger and the whole of British theatre changed. And there was a kind of knock-on from that. So that people like me, and parts of the UK other than the Home Counties, were deemed to be suitable to put onto a stage or screen. So you had the whole kind of Kitchen Sink thing, which came from television initially. And so there was that kind of movement and then I'd been working with the RSC with Peter Brooke who brought a completely different approach to what he wanted theatre to be. So I'd never had that sense of…it was just what we did.

GJ: I don't know. I was just grateful to get the parts. You know. It was always a surprise what came through the door or what the agent said 'somebody wants you to look at this and see if you like it'. But the interesting thing about that film was that it was probably one of the first films that dealt with homosexuality as though (a) it was a perfectly normal thing to be and (b) that it was actually more about love than about sex. And that was the big thing in that film I think, rather more than my character, although I thought she was quite interesting. That was the best film script I've ever read.

GJ: I'd always laboured under the illusion that the only people afraid on film sets were the actors. Until I worked with Schlesinger. And he went through this routine every single morning that we shot. He'd come onto the set and he said, 'I've seen the rushes. And this is a piece of shit that we're making – absolute shit! And he got Annie, his script girl, and she'd got very long blonde hair. And he used her hair like worry beads. And he'd go through this thing every single morning. And he'd say it's crap, I don't know what I'm doing…and then in about five minutes he'd turn from saying it's absolute shit to it's rather good – 'come on, let's get to work'! [laughs] But that was his thing, that he had to go through every day.

GJ: None. I mean it was entirely dependent upon what was sent to me. Having said that, the first thing I did that brought me to any kind of attention, which I suppose was Women in Love – you then get Women in Love parts one, two and three. Do you know what I mean? Producers are very unimaginative. So I was constantly being sent scripts of the same thing. Then I did, The Music Lovers, Sunday Bloody Sunday, and I was in that kind of category of love star, probably neurotic, all that highly dramatic kind of thing. So those were the kind of scripts that you got sent. But I must also add a rider to this. 99% of scripts that were sent were immediately discardable, because they were rubbish, so you're only looking at a very small proportion of stuff that is even vaguely worth thinking about, quite apart from actually saying 'Yes, I'll do it'. And then I did a comedy, and then all I got were comedies. Again, because it's this kind of repetition. So that's how it works.

GJ: No, every one I turned down I was right!

GJ: Well, it would depend. As I said, I thought Sunday Bloody Sunday was probably the best film script I'd ever read and I can't remember ever wanting to change that, but there were scenes – for example, there was a scene when Murray and I were in the friends' house, baby-minding the kids, and John didn't like the dialogue for that scene in the kitchen. And I remember we sort of improvised stuff about that because there are Oxfam posters on the wall and I can remember improvising dialogue for that. Certainly, Women in Love, there was far too much dialogue and so all of us, I think, just constantly said 'Look, can't we cut this out?' Cos I remember saying to Ken, 'Listen, there's this endless scene which is endless in the book, describing the internal emotions of the characters, but what they actually say to eachother is Yes or No'! So in a way these American scriptwriters had tried to put that interior life into dialogue. We were all saying, 'Cut it, cut it! We don't need it. We can do it another way.' And he was very open to that.

GJ: Well, he was very respectful of that script. And I think it came as a bit of a shock to him when all the actors were saying, 'Look, there are too many words'. And that, he was quite happy with.

GJ: Well, it's only this list that reminds me of how much I've done! I mean, obviously, I remember doing the Elizabeth R series. Because that was almost like being a little secret society in the bowels of the BBC. You know, there was this great organisation up above and we used to sneak in and do our bit. But a television camera is just as happy shooting a football match as you, so there's no excitement in working for it.

GJ: None whatever. I mean, it's the worst of both worlds really. Because they shoot out of sequence in exactly the same way as a film is shot out of sequence. But they shoot much longer chunks. So you don't have the kind of continuity of doing a play from beginning to end. You don't have the heightened perceptions that come from trying to capture thirty-seconds of life for a film camera. It's a boring machine to work for.

GJ: No, not at all. I mean, the Elizabeth series, that was a one-off which I'm very very grateful I had the chance to do because we were virtually the same group of people, even the technicians stayed together, for virtually seven months. And that's unusual in any of the kind of areas that you work. And that did bring a different feel to that. But one-off television dramas…I mean, looking at this list, I was lucky, I mean I worked with some good scripts. But no, it's not the same, for me.

GJ: Well, I don't think I ever did one that was today's politics, I'm looking at this list.

GJ: Well, I don't know whether one would have been conscious of those politics coming through because of the play. I mean, I was conscious of them because they were what I believed in in my own life. I mean, those political changes that were taking place…I think it's a mistake to say they were political, I think they were social changes. Some barriers were being broken down, but not solely or exclusively from the creative world – it was happening in a lot of ways. So that kind of thing was obviously something that I believed in. But I believed in that before I read the script, if you see what I mean!

GJ: Well, I never thought of myself as being a star. I mean, a star for me is someone who can fill a theatre or a cinema by virtue of them being who they are and their personality. And I've never been that. I mean I was always dependent on a part to play. I honestly don't know. I can't answer that question. The first really serious thing you learn is that you can't believe what you read about yourself. That's death. But I find it very interesting actually, because I find myself being guilty of it even though I know it from the inside. I'll read a story about someone and I'll think, 'Oh, my God, really?!' And I know they're liars! I mean I've read those same kind of stories about myself and I know they are lies. So, you just don't read it.

GJ: Well it was something for which I was very grateful because it certainly helped me keep my feet on the ground. But, there's the work you do, and the work you do in film. And the people you work most closely with are the camera operator, the sound man, probably the make-up and hair, and the people who are on that set with you all the time. And in my experience, the ones I worked with, they have more bloody technical expertise and experience in their little fingers than I could ever hope to have in a lifetime. So, they know their business. And they're the people you work with most closely. And that's how the work is done. Then there comes the point when the film is actually being sold. And then you have another whole raft of obligations that you have to fulfil. And that, essentially, is being interviewed. And it came as a big shock the first time I had to do one of those, to realise that the story's already written as far as the interviewer is concerned. And what they found curious was that I wasn't fitting in any of those boxes. Somebody once did a bit about me and called it 'Stonewall Jackson' and I think that was pretty much my attitude.

GJ: That's it. No drugs, no sex, no rock 'n' roll! [laughs]

GJ: Well at the time it seemed to be something that was really burgeoning. And it seemed that we were breaking out of that overtly narrow view of Britain which had been before – you know, the black and white stuff, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner, Billy Liar, all that kind of stuff. And it was beginning to be less parochial, to actually want to look at a wider canvas. Or look at intimate, small things, but really expand them so there was a kind of spreading view. We were still beset by the finances. The money was still in the main coming from America, it still was very small, but there did seem to be that movement beginning to happen. Even though the studios were beginning to be broken up or just sold off. But also at that time, had come in the excitement really of shooting films more and more on location, in real sites. So it seemed to be a big deal and that British cinema was going to expand. But on the issue of whether there were better parts for women, I must be entirely honest with you, I've never seen any improvement in that, since I first walked onto a stage which is, God, I don't know, fifty years ago now probably. And if anything, it seems to me, there has been a downturn. There was a kind of brief blip when you suddenly began to think 'Oh my God, they're actually going to find stories that have women as the central dramatic engine.' That's gone entirely. Even though there were more parts for women during the time that I was working most in film, the women was always there as the adjunct to the male hero. She was either there to show that he wasn't homosexual...or, you know, the man was always the central dramatic engine. And women were only there either as spurs or…you know? And I don't see that that has in any way, shape or form, changed, at all. Even in the indie film industry. It still hasn't shifted. It still hasn't changed. And a woman to be acceptable on the screen…I mean, when I was working I used to say, you know, 'You're over the hill now if you're 19'. Which was a slightly extreme point. But actually, I'm not far out. That age barrier for women is still there. You are not deemed to be acceptable as a woman unless you fit into certain boxes, and they are all, all, externals. All of them. They are all to do with external appearance. And of course, that's as much a fashion as anything.

GJ: I wish I knew, I wish I knew! I mean you've seen this huge change, certainly in western, developed societies, of women actually struggling for more independence, the beginning of breaking down of barriers, and all that kind of thing, but you can't dictate to a creative writer what they find interesting, and if they don't find women interesting, then they don't find women interesting, and that seems to me to be still the bottom line.

GJ: Well, there are two things here. I mean there's the creative writers – and I'm thinking about the ones that I was fortunate to work for in a contemporary sense. But then there's the other big machine behind that which is just the money-making aspect of getting films onto a screen so you can make money out of them, and that's quite separate I think. I think that's quite separate from the kind of cinema I'm thinking about where you perhaps could see a different kind of woman on the screen or where people did find women interesting as I know women to be and not as I see them. But the big blockbusters, they're not looking at things like that. Their audiences are very different. You see them, the films that are deliberately targeted at the teeny market or the family market, and that's quite separate.

GJ: Well, I can only look at the ones I did. And they all came about because the director wanted to make them. And why the director wanted to make them, you know you'd have to ask them. And also, we were cheap!

GJ: Well, the most marked example of that is Touch of Class (1972), where, I mean I read that because, as I said, I wanted to do a comedy. But I can remember having these arguments with Mel Frank who was the director as well as the scriptwriter. And I remember there was one scene where my character had taken her children to the cinema so that she could meet up with George Segal, and I said, 'This is ludicrous! No woman's going to dump her children at this age in a cinema, what are you talking about?!' So some of those kinds of changes came about. And some of the dialogue in that changed.

GJ: Yes. I thought it was a good script and for me what I liked about it was she was a character, how can I put this? – a kind of loopy, liberal left! Not heart on her sleeve, I don't mean she went that far. But it was that kind of …you know, they're very nice but they don't get anything done and nothing changes. And I thought that was quite an interesting thing to do. And I did think it was funny. But I think some of things that I found funny, I don't think necessarily translated to the screen. I thought Oliver was marvellous. Absolutely marvellous.

GJ: I don't think it did anything at all!

GJ: Well, I don't know if it was that or whether we just didn't do it particularly well. But I think what it was about didn't seem to get across to people. They were probably expecting different things, seeing me and Oliver together again in a film. And of course they weren't getting that at all! And I just thought he was absolutely marvellous. You know, he had a great gift for comedy which he never really believed he had. But he didn't really believe he was an actor anyway, so…

GJ: …and sandals!

GJ: Well, the problem when we came to do it, was…I mean, we'd done the play. And of course in the play her character speaks directly to the audience. So the trick was to convince people that that could work if I could speak directly to the camera without making the camera another character. And that was very hard to convince people that we could do. But we did it. We were shooting, actually, at her house, at Palmers Green, and she and the lion aunt had lived on the end house of this terrace, but for our purposes we were shooting a front door about three doors away. So this woman came up to me and she said, 'What are you doing?' So I said, 'We're making a film.' She said, 'Oh, what about?' So I said, 'Stevie Smith'. 'Oh, she said, who's he?' So I said, 'No, it wasn't a he, it was a woman, she was a poet and she used to live in this street'. She said, 'Where did she live?' I said, 'Well, she and her aunt lived in the end house'. 'You mean Peggy?' she said. And I said, 'Yes'. 'You're making a film about Peggy?!' And I just thought that was fascinating. There was this woman, who had fulfilled all the social obligations of that little street in Palmers Green, of being the maiden niece of a maiden aunt who went to work every day and didn't cause any trouble, and there was this fucking volcano inside this woman! And I just thought that was amazing. I saw her, you know. I actually met her. Because when I was with the RSC they had a period when they did jazz and poetry evenings. And I was roped in to do one. And I remember, I was standing in the wings waiting to go on and do my bit, and this woman came up to me and she said, 'Hello!' And I said, 'Hello'. And it was Stevie Smith – I didn't know who it was. And she'd got that sort of fringe and she'd got a white blouse with a rather good Victorian cameo brooch at the neck, black jumper over it, a dirndl skirt of indeterminate colour, lisle stockings, ankle socks and sandals, and she stood without a protective curve anywhere in her, and she was quite tiny. And she just stood in front of me. And she said, 'I'm Stevie Smith'. And I said, 'Oh, yes.' I didn't know who she was. She went onto the stage and did 'Not Waving But Drowning' and I thought, 'Who the fuck are you?!' So I rushed out, next day, to try and get hold of all her books of which there was only one still published which I think was Notes on Yellow Paper. And that was very helpful to me when I came to play her. That meeting. Amazing.

GJ: Oh yes. I loved doing that. To go back to the point we were making earlier about parts for women, or rather for women in film, you know there tended to be one good woman's part and if you got it, then that's it. But Nasty Habits was all female. I mean I'd never worked with so many actresses, and of that calibre, in my life before. It was amazing. But again, it didn't do any business. And I don't know why they called it Nasty Habits because it's actually Muriel Spark's The Abbess of Crewe and it's her version of Nixon. But it was great to do.

GJ: I don't think they could get over the idea, or they couldn't make the connection, or it might just have been badly sold, but the idea that it was set in a convent but it was actually about politics. There were all those strange things going on. But we shot in an actual convent and the nuns loved it!

GJ: Well, I mean, it's an opera isn't it? It's just a great big opera. It was just another opportunity to work with Ken really, which was great.

GJ: Well, it's Melvin Bragg.

GJ: It's not a good script. But again, you know, it was another of those films where most of the stuff is not what you say. I'm trying to think if I said anything! I must have said something at some point…but the big scenes are all without dialogue.

GJ: Oh yeah. I mean he would… For instance, there was one day – and I can't even remember what the bloody scene was about now, but anyway. He couldn't get a line on it at all. And everybody, from the clapperboy all the way up, was saying, 'Well, why don't you do this, or why don't you do that?' And this is all taking time. But that's the other fascinating thing about him you see. Because usually crews hate not knowing what to do, they hate that. You know, they've got up early, they've done this, they've done that. They want to hear the word 'Action'. But everybody stayed interested. So I said, 'Well, listen, why don't I just scratch the carpet with my nails?' So he said, 'Oh, all right then, go on. We'll have a go at that.' And that's what he decided to do. Other scenes, other much bigger-staged scenes, he would be absolute about. I mean there was a sequence where Tchaikovsky's having a nightmare. And all the characters in his life are coming to him. And Ken had decided that we'd all run out into the street and we had a wind machine and we'd be blown… So anyway, we do it, and he'd got the wind machine on and I was out first and I'm literally blown off my feet and I'm flat on the floor. And then everybody else is blown off their feet, so they're just piling up on top of me like this. And 'Cut!', and people are pulled off. And he's waiting. He's standing by my head, and they pull me up to my feet and I said to him 'Oh, that's the closest I've ever come to flying in my life without a plane. It was absolutely extraordinary!' So he just glowered at me and he stomped off. And he said, 'The wind machine was too fucking strong, bring it down!' If I'd got up and said, 'What are you trying to do Ken, kill me?' He'd have said, 'Get me two more wind machines!'

GJ: Oh well, you're not missing much!

GJ: Yes, it was. And I found it extremely interesting. Because I suddenly had to examine What does it mean to be an actress? And I'd not had to do that before. And I found that quite interesting. Again, it wasn't a terribly good script and I found the approach to her in a female way, not necessarily believable. But on that level it was quite interesting to do.

GJ: Oh, that's a nice film. That's a lovely film. Again, didn't do any business.

GJ: …And I think also you should look at distribution, because still there was a stranglehold on distribution. I mean it must have relaxed now and cinemas have changed so much now that you've got 6 screens in one building, but I think they were quite pertinent to films not being distributed. And something like Triple Echo you wouldn't want to go into the Odeon, Leicester Square, but where else would it have gone in those days?

GJ: Exactly. It wasn't exclusively art-house, but it certainly wasn't big screen stuff.

GJ: Well, it was like, how can I put it? It was like a hand-held camera film being made when everybody could be got together to shoot it. There was no formal structure to it at all. (Peter) Brooke drove us to wherever we were going in his car. And that was just how it was.

GJ: Well, there must have been other people there, I mean Peter Brooke was there, but I don't think there were costume or make-up or anything like that. I've got a feeling we probably did all that ourselves. That came out of US. Everybody in it had been in the stage show. And I don't know where the money came from to make it as a film, but he made it as a film.

GJ: No. I mean there's some sort of documentary stuff in there isn't there? Is it Malcolm X?

GJ: Well, he'd have got that off film I suppose?

GJ: But is it Malcolm X or do I mean Stokely Carmichael? Because I've a vague feeling that Stokely Carmichael was at a party or something and he shot it. So there were those kinds of things going on as well. JS: This goes right back to early in your film career, but it's a very powerful sequence I think and one that raises, at least for me, a couple of related questions. But I'll show the sequence first.

GJ: Well, you say that was radical. But the only topic of conversation in the country at that time in any kind of intellectual talk was the Vietnam war. No, there was nothing radical about that at all. What was radical was the way in which it was staged. And that was radical because we left the stage at the end, Bob released the butterflies, set fire to the butterflies. We left, and the audience sat on in the Aldwych and discussed what they'd seen. Or had fierce arguments. One night a woman – a classic middle-aged Cheltenham lady – got up out of her seat in the front row of the Aldwych theatre, climbed onto the stage, took the lighter out of Bob's hand and said, to the audience, tears streaming down her cheeks, 'I'm not mad, I just want to prove that there is something we can do'. Got back down into the auditorium. And every night there would be that kind of response. But I mean the actors had gone. We left. I mean that's one of the bizarre things about acting. I remember a girl came round one night – an absolute basket-case. Because of what the thing was about. All I could do was put her in a taxi and send her home. I was going home. You don't have anything left when you've done that. So they can't be linked in that way. But what you take out of working for someone like Brooke, and in a sense with people like Ken and Schlesinger and Altman and people like that, is they spoil you for everybody else! Because their standards and their approaches are so unique. And they make demands on you that are unique in themselves. They all expect you to do and be what you say you are. So that's where it comes from there.

GJ: Well, maybe. But I would be hard pressed to know what that was. I'm just grateful that I was given the opportunity to do that kind of work. We worked for 16 weeks on that show. Without a script. It was all improvisation, it was all doing stuff from news reports until he began, as he always does, Brooke, to put the thing together. And he had to have a second act, and he got a script. And the script was slashed and slashed, but that stayed. That speech stayed.

GJ: I couldn't offer any kind of informed opinion really, because I was only working in the films I was working in. And they all came out of the blue. And it came in the main from a director having a script he wanted to make – they were all men - and getting the money from somewhere to make it. And that's all it was.

GJ: Films like On the Buses (1971) were made because they'd been hugely successful on television. And they were cheap. Like the Carry On films. If you ask any film critic in this country to say what is the archetypal British film, it will be the Carry On series. They might nod towards the Ealing comedies, but that's the kind of thing, isn't it? It's that curious, very English thing, of according value to something which you think essentially has no seriousness. There's this whole myth that's grown up about the Carry On series, that it's marvellous because you can see the rough edges, which is so phoney and hypocritical. But it's a very English thing, I think.

GJ: Well, now you've put your finger on it. I would approach it another way. The English are terrified of professionals. They are absolutely petrified of professionalism. There's something wrong about being a professional. Amateurs, people who do it for love, not for money. There's the difference, between the British film industry – and I'm not saying the people I worked with weren't professional because they were. But that's the difference. In America – and also the difference I've found in acting with Americans. Because there was certainly that hangover still in English acting that really it was something that you didn't have to take very seriously. You could do The Times crossword first and then go on and do a speech and it would be infra dig to care about it. The first time I worked with American actors I couldn't fucking believe it! It's their whole life. When you're working, that's what it's all about. And it was just amazing to work with that kind of energy. It was great. But don't ever forget it's a business. The bottom line is money, I'm afraid.