Claire Goose was born in 1975 in Edinburgh. She is best known for her role in the long running television series “Waking the Dead”. She was recently in the series “Exiles”.
“Metro” article:
I don’t think I could have done this role if I wasn’t a mother,’ says Claire Goose.
‘It really made me feel the pain of the woman I’m playing. I think being a mother has made me a better actress.’
Goose, a former star of Casualty and Waking The Dead, and a lads’ mag favourite back in the day, is talking about Jane, the troubled woman she plays in ITV thriller Undeniable. The plot hinges on the grown-up Jane believing she’s spotted the man who killed her mother – 23 years after the event.
It’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it, to believe a five-year-old could recognise a killer so long after it happened? Goose disagrees. ‘It was a horrible killing, a brutal moment,’ she says. ‘Something so horrible, I don’t think you’d ever forget it.
‘I felt a very strong emotional connection with Jane because she tapped into the utter terror a parent has about anything happening to her children. This is the other way round but it’s the same feeling. I don’t think I knew that pain before I had my own kids [she has two daughters under five]. Being a parent has totally opened me up as a person.’
The canny game Undeniable writer Chris Lang plays is that we’re not quite sure whether Jane has spotted the right man or not. The accused, a respected oncologist (played by Peter Firth) seems an unlikely killer and Jane, we learn, has a history of mental instability and pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
‘That sense of doubt to the story is one of the things that really appealed to me,’ says Goose. ‘There were fantastic scenes in this that I was looking forward to playing from the moment I got the script. Jane is off her meds and we had long discussions about what had happened in her life up to that point. If it keeps you guessing, it’s succeeded.’
It’s a meaty, heavy-duty role for an actress who first rose to fame as nurse Tina Seabrook in Casualty when she was just 22 – and won her an army of admirers courtesy of a racy photoshoot in FHM.
She figured in the magazine’s 100 Sexiest Women In The World poll in the late 1990s. Does she think that might have stopped her being taken seriously as an actress? She gives a carefree shrug.
‘I don’t think it stopped me getting any parts – at least not that I’m aware of,’ Goose answers breezily. ‘I don’t regret that or mind talking about it at all. A friend talked me into it because I’m in the habit of trying to avoid risk, so it pushed me out of my comfort zone. I don’t think I was ever overexposed.’
Claire Goose as Tina Seabrook in Casualty (Picture: BBC)
These days, though, she shuns anything with the tag of celebrity attached. ‘I wouldn’t be interested in doing things like I’m A Celebrity in the jungle, those things where you don’t do anything, it would drive me mad,’ says Goose.
‘I was asked to do MasterChef and I was tempted because I’m not a bad cook. But I just don’t want that pressure, I hate being judged.’
Does that mean she takes badly to poor reviews? ‘That’s different, because you’re a different person when you’re acting,’ she says. ‘And it’s something I know I can do.’
Goose credits Waking The Dead for pushing her career in a weightier direction and she had a part in acclaimed thriller Exile, playing John Simm’s lover. Undeniable, though, gives her a chance to stretch her acting skills and show her in a new light. She’d taken a career break to have her children but was itching to get back in the acting saddle.
‘Undeniable came along at just the right time,’ she says. ‘I’d had time with the kids and I had the energy to take on something like this. It was a month’s filming, pretty intense, but I found it stimulating and challenging.’
Goose married producer Craig Woodrow in 2007 and they make a strong team. ‘He’s a strong critic, which is great for me, I can take it,’ she says. ‘He’s a producer now but trained in drama and he thought the pace of Undeniable was fantastic. He’d have told me if he didn’t think it was any good.’
To her credit, the elfin Goose is convincingly playing ten years younger than her age – Jane is 28, she’s recently turned 39 – without the need for make-up or tricks.
‘I did ask: “Do you think we should push Jane’s age up?”’ she points out. ‘But they didn’t want to make the gap between the murder and her spotting the man she thinks is the killer any wider. And everybody thought I could pass for 30, so I was pretty pleased with that.’
Then, all of a sudden, she’s dashing off to appear onstage that night opposite Les Dennis in a touring production of A Perfect Murder, just a tad ironic given Undeniable’s subject matter. ‘Oh it’s not the same at all, it’s a black comedy,’ she says. ‘It’s fun to play.’
I’m kicking myself because I’ve missed my chance to pitch her my big idea for her next drama. Given she peaked at No.29 in 2000’s FHM Sexiest Woman poll, how about a serial thriller called FHM (Female Homicidal Maniac) in which each week she bumps off numbers 28 to one, so she can finally take the crown? Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it…
The above “Metro” article can also be accessed online here.
John Justin was born in 1917 in London the son of a wealthy Argentine family. He made an enormous impact with hi first film, the classic “Thief of Bagdad” in 1940. The firm was starred in the UK but with the outbreak of World War Two, the filming was continued in Hollywood. Justin starred with June Duprez and Sabu and they all received critical praise for their roles. Other films included “The Gentle Sex” in 1943 with Joan Greenwood and Lilli Palmer and “The Man Who Loved Redheads” opposite Moira Shearer in 1955. Two years later he starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge in the star filled “Island in the Sun”. He died in 2002 leaving three daughters from his marriage to actress Barbara Murray.
The stage and film actor John Justin, who has died aged 85, first came to prominence with his appearance in the 1939 blockbuster, The Thief Of Baghdad. A lighter-hearted actor than producers expected in heroic roles, he mischievously mocked the audition for his part as Prince Achmad with the young Indian actor Sabu. “We never supposed that we should be cast,” he recalled -but Prince Achmad was one of his better screen roles.What brought Justin British stardom was the character of test pilot Philip Peel in David Lean’s The Sound Barrier (1952), especially his affecting scenes with Dinah Sheridan; and as Terence Rattigan’s romantic hero in the Harold French film, The Man Who Loved Redheads (1954). That year, too, he was the lead in the thriller, The Teckman Mystery. In 1957, he featured in Robert Rossen’s Island In The Sun.
But Justin was an actor who used the screen to subsidise his stage acting. He was tall, slim, golden-voiced, and had a rarely exploited instinct for comedy. Often appearing in children’s classics, he first played Captain Hook, and Mr Darling in Peter Pan, at the old Scala Theatre in Charlotte Street, London, at Christmas 1949, and made a charming, headmasterly Badger in Toad Of Toad Hall 15 years later at the Queen’s. When he once erroneously intoned, “It’s only half past December,” as he picked up an hour-glass, the line was deemed worthy of AA Milne, and incorporated into the script.
Born in London, Justin was a farmer’s son, educated at Bryanston school, Dorset. He resolved to make a life in theatre – although dyslexia proved a setback at rehearsals – and began his career in his teens at Plymouth Repertory. At Liverpool Rep, his name was shortened from Justinian de Ledesma to Justin; and, when he sought training at Rada in 1937, he reckoned it “no more than a finishing school for girls” – and soon left to join John Gielgud’s repertory company. There, he felt so inferior that he asked Dodie Smith, the author of Dear Octopus – in which he appeared in 1938 – if he should give up. “Carry on,” she said. “I would.”
With The Thief Of Baghdad, Justin had signed a seven-year contract with Alexander Korda but, in 1940, he joined the RAF. While serving as a pilot instructor, he acted in two semi-documentary propaganda films, The Gentle Sex (1943), with Leslie Howard, and the Boulting Brothers’ Journey Together (1944), with Edward G Robinson.
In 1948, he did a stint at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, where he played the Dauphin in King John, Lorenzo in the Merchant Of Venice, Florizel in The Winter’s Tale, Cassio to Godfrey Tearle’s Othello and Horatio to Paul Scofield’s Hamlet, when he was dubbed “honesty’s core”. As Paris, in Troilus and Cressida, he was “lovely to hear throughout”.
In the West End, Justin was a rudely outspoken young man in Benn Levy’s Return To Tyassi (1950, Duke of York’s), Chekhov’s beautifully-mannered doctor in Uncle Vanya (1952, Arts) and an elegant Frenchman in Jean Anouilh’s Dinner With The Family (Oxford Playhouse and New, now Albery, 1957).
Two seasons later, he joined the Old Vic, where his parts included Mellefont, in Wycherley’s The Double Dealer, Orlando in As You Like It, and John Worthing in The Importance Of Being Earnest. In 1963, he played Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing, in Regent’s Park, and, at the same theatre in 1965, he was the banished duke in As You Like It.
Between 1963 and 1970, he made no film appearances, and only a further nine until his last in 1983 – they included Ken Russell’s Liztomania and Savage Messiah, and Michael Winner’s ill-starred Big Sleep remake.
Dismissing his film career as “a mistake,” Justin continued to relish stage work, which included Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman (Northampton, 1965) and Prince Escerny and Puntschu in Lulu (Royal Court and Apollo, 1971). He was in Old Fruit (King’s Head, Islington, 1974). He toured South Africa in Who Killed Santa Claus? (1971), the regions as Winston Churchill in A Man And His Wife (1974), and West Germany in recitals of Blake and Shakespeare. The first of several television appearances was in a 1949 BBC staging of Antigone.
In 1952, Justin married Barbara Murray; they divorced in 1964. He is survived by his wife Alison, whom he married in 1970, and three daughters from his first marriage.
·John Justin, (John Justinian de Ledesma) actor, born November 24 1917; died November 29 2002
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Theo James was born in 1984 in Oxford. He made his television debut opposite Billie Piper in “A Passionate Woman” in 2010. He was featured in “Downton Abbey” as Turkish diplomat Kemal Parnuk. He will be seen shortly in the televsion verion of John Braine’s “Room at the Top”. His films include “Red Tails” and “Underworld Awakening”.
TCM overview:
Theo James was part of the new wave of talented British actors storming American shores, snapping up sitcoms and starring roles in their wake. From clean cut Oxford boy to New York City cop, James proved his versatility on the procedural crime drama, “Golden Boy” (CBS, 2013-). Still a fresh face on the small screen, James made quite the impression on American audiences with a small but memorable role on the hugely popular period drama, “Downton Abbey.” (PBS, 2010-) James played the dashing young Turkish diplomat Kemal Pamuk, who deflowers the female lead and then promptly dies, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase, “la petite mort.” With his exotic features, it’s no surprise James passed for a foreign diplomat, although his heritage lies in Greece rather than Istanbul.
Born Theodore Peter J. K. Taptiklis, he goes by one of his many middle names, James. Son of Jane and Phillip Taptiklis, James was born on December 16, 1984 in Oxford, England. As a child he attended Aylesbury Grammar School and as a young adult, he pursued and earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Nottingham. After completing his undergraduate studies, he trained for the stage at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and from there, pursued acting outside of the stage. James made his television debut on the mini-series “A Passionate Woman” (BBC, 2010), starring opposite Billie Piper, of “Dr.Who” fame. In his final year of school, James was offered a small part in Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” (2010), alongside Hollywood heavyweights Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin. Not a bad start for a drama kid still in school.
After graduating, James appeared in six episodes of the horror series “Bedlam” (Sky Living, 2011), and earned a part as an insufferable nightclub representative in “The Inbetweeners Movie” (2011), a British film adaptation of the popular coming-of-age raunchy TV series akin to “Superbad” (2007). The actor then built up quite the resume, despite his relatively short tenure in the industry. His second Hollywood feature had him don his best leather to star opposite Kate Beckinsale in the vampire sequel, “Underworld: Awakening” (2012). As a fresh import to the States, James did his homework for his next role as a hotheaded, young detective rising up the ranks of the NYPD for the cop drama, “Golden Boy.” After logging some time in plenty of squad cars, the U.K. expat got a feel for how the boys in blue really operate.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
James Purefoy was born in 1964 in Taunton, Somerset. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. He has had an extensive stage career and in 2011 was one of the leads in “Flare Path” by Terence Rattigan at the London’s Theatre Royal, Haymarket. His movies include “Vanity Fair” and in 1999, “Mansfield Park”.
TCM overview:
A dashingly handsome, dark-haired actor hailing from Somerset, England, James Purefoy did extensive stage and television work in his native country beginning in the mid-1980s before breaking out with significant film roles at the close of the 90s. The performer made his professional acting debut as Alan Strang in a 1986 stage production of “Equus” and subsequently joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was featured in productions including “The Tempest” and “Macbeth”. Looking to make the move to screen work, but finding little in the way of film roles, Purefoy began a successful television run with a co-starring role on the Granada-CV series “Coasting”, chronicling a theme park owned by two brothers in Blackpool. In 1991, he made his debut on American television when PBS broadcast “The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes” as a presentation of “Mystery!” His supporting role in the British miniseries “The Cloning of Joanna May” landed him back on the small screens of USA when it was aired on A&E in 1992, and the following year he was featured in the three-part miniseries “Calling the Shots” on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre.”
Purefoy made his feature acting debut in “Feast of July,” a period drama produced by Merchant Ivory. This debut didn’t immediately jump-start a film career, and Purefoy instead spent his time performing with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and acting in television productions including the popular British period action series “Sharpe” and the British TV adaptation of “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (1996). He returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company to act in Simon Callow’s 1996 staging of “Les Enfants du Paradis.” The following year, he reappeared on British small screens with a co-starring role in the critically lauded miniseries “A Dance to the Music of Time.”
1998 saw the actor return to features with a pivotal supporting role as an appealingly rugged but sensitive heterosexual upon whom a gay acquaintance (Kevin McKidd) develops a crush in Rose Troche’s winning and fresh “Bedrooms & Hallways”. Becoming something of a crush object himself thanks to the charming role, Purefoy went against type and bulked up to play the downwardly spiraling drunk Tom Bertram in Patricia Rozema’s somewhat revisionist take on Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park” (1999). The actor returned to the stage with “Four Knights in Knaresboro,” a dark comedy produced at Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre the same year he was featured in the independents “The Lighthouse” and “Women Talking Dirty” (all 1999).
Purefoy kicked off 2000 with an appearance in the British miniseries “Metropolis” and made the most of a supporting turn as a seductive actor who strikes the fancy of the hormonal J ly Richardson in Ben Elton’s less-than-impressive feature directorial debut “Maybe Baby.” He again appeared on American television, portraying Carrasco in the TNT original “Don Quixote”, while his delightfully sincere supporting turn as the Black Prince of Wales suitably impressed with the skills of the lowly squire (Heath Ledger) in “A Knight’s Tale” (2001) introduced him to an even larger USA audience. A co-starring role in the eagerly-awaited action thriller “Resident Evil” (2002) would prove the actor’s breakthrough with the American audience. Later that year, he starred in the small screen remake of Thomas Hardy’s novel “The Mayor of Casterbridge” (A&E, 2003).
Purefoy next appeared in the European films “Photo Finish” (2003), “George and the Dragon” (2004) and “Blessed” (2004) before garnering much attention from Hollywood in his next role, playing Reese Witherspoon’s high-born lover Rawdon Crawley in director Mira Nair’s stylish 2004 adaptation of the classic William Thackery novel “Vanity Fair.” Purefoy was then cast as a regular in his first television series, portraying Marc Antony in HBO’s sprawling historical epic, “Rome” (2005- ). The role of the loyal foot soldier to Julius Caesar (Ciarán Hinds) gave Purefoy romantic notions of playing a noble character. But the truth, as always, was stranger than fiction. The real Marc Antony, however, was a wild man-a drunken party animal who enjoyed his women as much as battle-making the character “great fun to play.”
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Joanna David was born in 1947 in Lancaster. Made her film debut in 1969 in “The Smashing Bird I Used to Know”. Has had a very profilic career on the stage and on television. Other films include “Sleepwalker” in 1985 and “Secret Friends” in 1991. She is the mother of actors Emilia Fox and Freddie Fox.
2006 interview by Sophie Lam in “The Independent”:
First holiday memoryGoing to Nevin in North Wales when I was about four. On the way, we all got out of the car to have a pee in a field and when we went back the car wasn’t there because the handbrake wasn’t on!
Joanna David
Best holiday?
Staying with my friends the Mortimers at their old farmhouse in Chianti, Tuscany. It’s in a beautiful location surrounded by the most incredible hills, and a complete rest because it’s so hot in the summer you can’t do anything.
Favourite place in the British Isles?
Little Gruinard in Wester Ross on the north-west coast of Scotland. It’s unspoilt, with miles of beautiful sandy coast. We go walking along the marvellous cliffs looking out to the Summer Isles; it’s as if you’re on top of the world.
What have you learnt from your travels?
Take less!
Ideal travelling companion?
I have a continual laugh with Phyllida Law, my great friend. She’s an intrepid traveller and we have been away together before.
Beach bum, culture vulture or adrenalin junkie?
I’m more of a culture vulture. Luckily every summer seems to produce a job, but that makes it hard to travel. However, this year I’ve had four weeks off between jobs so I’ve been able to go up to Scotland and down to Dorset. I have done some wonderful travelling through work too.
Greatest travel luxury?
I went on a trek in Nepal and my luxury was an electric toothbrush. My second luxury is a portable CD player and some Bach.
Holiday reading?
This summer I read Lord Curzon’s biography by David Gilmour. I’m also part of a book club so we read a different book every month.
Where has seduced you?
India and Nepal. I worked in Cochin, Kerala, and it was such a wonderfully mixed culture. Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Christians all live together; it was an education.
Worst travel experience?
In the 1980s, I was stopped at customs at the airport in Moscow and kept back because I was bringing things back from the Stanislavsky Museum. Nobody could speak English and I couldn’t speak Russian. I could hear the last call for the plane and I was hysterical.
Worst holiday?
When I was about eight, I went on a caravan holiday in Abersoch, Wales, with a friend. I was so homesick that I couldn’t eat until the day I knew I was going home.
Best hotel?
The Summit Hotel in Kathmandu was just amazing and it was such a relief to arrive there after trekking. The staff were lovely and so welcoming. From a luxurious point of view I stayed at the Hotel Lancaster in Paris with my husband, which was pretty special.
Favourite walk/swim/ride/drive?
I love swimming and walking along the cliffs at Kimmeridge in Dorset.
Best meal abroad?
Fresh crayfish in the countryside just outside Stockholm.
Dream trip?
I’d like to go to Tibet and see Mount Everest from the opposite side. I’d also like to visit different parts of India.
Favourite city?
Venice knocked me sideways. I’d love to go back. I also fell in love with Cochin.
Where next?
I’d love to go to Peru. I’m thinking of going on a trek to Machu Picchu for the Unicorn Theatre for Children.
The above “Independent” interview can also be accessed online here.
Emilia Fox is the daughter of Joanna David and Edward Fox. Her younger brother is the actor Freddie Fox. She was born in 1974 in London. In 2004 she replaced Amanda Burton as the female lead in the long running television series on BBC, “Silent Witness”. Her other roles include “The Round Tower” and “Things To Do Before You’re 30”.
“Gloucestershire Echo” feature:
Coming from a theatrical dynasty can be a huge pressure, but Silent Witness star Emilia Fox has carved her own niche. The mum-of-one tells Keeley Bolger about parenthood, her inspirational mother Joanna David and her views on women ‘having it all’
With Fox as a surname, the odd pun is somewhat of a given.
But ‘cunning as a fox’ and ‘sly old fox’ were too bland for the Silent Witness crew when it came to marking the vixen’s upcoming 10th year as Dr Nikki Alexander in the long-running BBC drama.
“Very kindly, [my colleagues] Richard, David and Liz and the whole crew put together a very funny music video of Ylvis’s What Does The Fox Say? and dressed up as animals,” the actress reveals, laughing.
“They played it at the wrap party. It was the sweetest, most touching thing. I couldn’t quite work out where I had been when they’d done it, because they filmed in the mortuary and the offices and I’d been on set all day.”
Fox is just as fond of the “great team” as they are of her, especially given how accommodating they’ve been since she became a mother to daughter Rose three years ago from a previous relationship with fellow actor Jeremy Gilley.
“I’m incredibly grateful to Silent Witness, [who’ve] been there pre-Rose, being pregnant with Rose and having Rose,” notes Fox who lives in London. “The studio filming’s done five minutes away from my house, so I’ve always been able to have her at work or go home and see her.
“That’s made things much easier. It would have been much more difficult if I had to do all of those things away from home.”
The question of balancing parenthood with a career is one very much on the 39-year-old’s mind at the moment.
For the first time in years, she’s returning to the stage for a month, until the end of February, in a production of Rapture, Blister, Burn – a play about two women who’ve gone down very different paths in life. One’s a high-flying academic while the other’s built a happy life at home, but both envy the other’s choices.
“Where we’ve got to is quite rightly women having equal opportunities,” notes Fox, who says the play’s left her burning to discuss the issue of ‘having it all’.
“But where the problem comes with that is trying to juggle professional life, domestic life, children and relationships and how to balance it and make it possible to have that balance.
“And does everyone want to have that? Not necessarily. Some people don’t. Some people are satisfied with having one of those things and that’s absolutely right.”
At face value, it would seem that Fox, who grew up in Dorset, is a shining example of someone who has struck a good balance between work and parenthood – and retained her privacy.
She was in a relationship with celebrity chef Marco Pierre White that recently ended and is divorced from Mad Men actor Jared Harris (son of Richard Harris), but she’s not the type to kiss and tell.
“I guess that’s just how I’ve always been brought up,” says Fox, whose parents are well-known actors Joanna David and Edward Fox.
“You have a professional life and you have a private life and I think that’s all-important, and my private life is only Rose and mine’s.”
Coming from an acting dynasty, including brother Freddie, uncle James and cousin Laurence, who’s married to Billie Piper, means that the possibility of Rose acting in the future is often brought up, but Fox is clearly no stage mum.
“I think I would say what every parent says, which is I just want my child to be happy. Whatever it is, or whatever direction that takes her, I just want her to be happy with it. I don’t have grand ambitions,” she adds.
“I often get asked, ‘Do you think she’ll go into acting too?’ I don’t know. It wouldn’t make any difference to me what industry she went into, I just want her to have the best out of life that she can, and hopefully I’ll be there with her.”
If Rose does decide to go into drama, she’ll have a good role model; Fox is a strong example of how to shake off the family name and carve your own niche.
“When I started off, in a way you want to stay away from family so that you get there on your own terms and establish yourself, so you feel you’ve done it in your own right,” says the actress, who studied English literature at Oxford University and made her TV debut with a role in the much-loved 1995 TV mini-series of Pride And Prejudice, as Colin Firth’s sister.
Since then, she’s appeared in the likes of Merlin and, last year, The Wrong Mans, alongside James Corden.
Now she’s fully established, she’d be delighted to be reunited on screen with her mother, best-known for roles in War And Peace, Rebecca and more recently as the Duchess of Yeovil, an old pal of the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey.
The mum and daughter duo previously worked on Pride And Prejudice – Fox’s mother played kindly Mrs Gardiner.
“I would love to work with mum. She’s the actress I most look up to, I think she’s the most truthful actress,” says Fox.
Now she’s a mum herself, she admits she’s in awe of the way her parents raised their brood.
“I had such a lovely upbringing by my parents,” she says. “I have amazing, loving, very secure-making parents, and that’s what I’d like to pass on to Rose.”
The above “Gloucestershire Echo” article can also be accessed online here.
Honeysuckle Weeks is primarily know for her role in the television series “Foyle’s War” as Samantha Stewart. She was born in 1979 in Cardiff. Her movie roles include “Lorna Doone” in 2000 and “My Brother Tom” the following year.
“MailOnline” article:
By ANTONIA HOYLE and PETER ROBERTSON
Last updated at 22:50 08 March 2008
Honeysuckle Weeks storms in, half an hour late, straggly blonde hair billowing behind her and without a scrap of make-up. Her nails are bare and stubby and she sports a small scar on her lip where her Tibetan Mastiff puppy, Kensal, jumped up on her.
She looks every inch a bohemian beauty who couldn’t care less for the excesses of fame and has no time for designer frocks. It is only when her deep, plummy, almost old-fashioned voice reverberates around the room that you remember exactly why she has become a household name.
Famous for playing Samantha Stewart in the period drama Foyle’s War, she has spent the past seven years presenting a prim, proper and ferociously loyal persona to the seven million viewers of the hit ITV series.
Now that it is about to end, 28-year-old Honeysuckle seems keen to shrug off her serious on-screen image and show a less conventional side of herself than her work to date has suggested.
“I’ve had a wonderful time in Foyle’s War and I don’t mind being typecast,” she says. “But I’m not prim. I’m chaotic, happy and desperate to have some laughs. I’d love to do a comedy next, or something modern.”
Honeysuckle, who joined the series after graduating from Oxford University in 2001, admits: “I’ve got this voice that sounds very proper. In my last audition I tried to tone it down. But I was so concerned with toning it down that my actual acting was appalling.”
The final two episodes of Foyle’s War set in Hastings, East Sussex, against the backdrop of the Second World War will be screened in May. Viewers will see Samantha, who plays the driver
of Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, played by Michael Kitchen, celebrate VE Day with her colleagues
“Samantha hasn’t really changed,” says Honeysuckle. “She remains without a husband or boyfriend. I asked the writers to keep it that way so she could still do her job. In those days, if she’d been married she’d have had to give it up. But I’ve definitely changed and grown up. When I first started playing her I didn’t have a boyfriend and now I’m married.”
Honeysuckle she was named after the fragrant climbing plant that was in bloom when she was born grew up in a Sussex farmhouse with her parents Robin, 50, the owner of an advertising company, and Susan Wade Weeks, also 50, now the Conservative candidate for York, and younger siblings Perdita, 22, and Rollo, 20, both actors.
She was educated at Roedean, the elite girls’ school in Brighton, and enjoyed the kind of privileged upbringing that would make Samantha Stewart envious.
Yet she is clearly uncomfortable with her conservative roots and exudes a rebellious streak that sits at odds with her upper-class background. St, in an age of pampered actresses and their protective publicists, Honeysuckle, who has turned up for this interview alone, is disarmingly open, attractive and, to put it bluntly, a bit bonkers.
“My parents wanted to be actors,” she says. “They tried for years but didn’t get anywhere. Then Mum got pregnant with me and they decided to make actors out of their children. You need your parents’ support if you’re going to do it. Otherwise who’s going to ferry you to castings?”
When Honeysuckle was 13, her parents’ hard work paid off when both she and Perdita landed parts in the BBC2 children’s drama Goggle Eyes. Just a few weeks later, however, their parents split up.
“It wasn’t amicable. They’re very good friends now but they weren’t then,” says Honeysuckle, before conceding: “It was better in many ways that they divorced. They pay more attention to you. They’re not a united front, so you can get away with more.”
For all her bravado, it seems she still hankered for a happy home-life as a teenager and would go to any lengths to secure it. “Every Christmas my parents would get together for the family, and every year they would have a serious argy-bargy and one of them would storm out of the house,” she recalls.
“So when I was 19 I thought I’d get them stoned so they’d just be happy and have fun together. I made mince pies and put dope in them. It seriously backfired. Dad’s a health freak and was watching his weight, but Mum ate the pies and suddenly she was losing it and laughing, and losing at Pictionary, which she normally wins. It was awful. I laughed hysterically. For once I was persona non grata and they were united in disapproval.”
She adds as an afterthought: “I did have the odd smoke, but not really anything else. Everyone smoked dope. But it’s really important that it’s clear my Mum didn’t know there was dope in the mince pies because she’s a Conservative candidate.”
By this stage Honeysuckle had begun to combine her education first at school and then reading English at Pembroke College, Oxford with making a name for herself as an actress, with parts in the TV mini-series Close Relations in 1998 and Midsomer Murders in 1999.
She had also begun to attract male attention in the form of Hugh Grant, whom she met at a millennium party in London’s Groucho Club. They shared a “snog” and dinner in the members’ club Soho House, but she didn’t call him after their first date, she says, because she didn’t think he would want to hear from her again.
A brief engagement to British poet Anno Birkin followed, before he was killed, aged just 20, in a car crash in Italy in 2001. Honeysuckle coped by throwing herself into the second series of Foyle’s War
“I wanted to reflect some of that loss on to Samantha,” she says. “Despite people dying and lives being torn apart, you must put a brave face on it because we’re still alive.
“The show has great storytelling, characters and attention to detail. In Foyle’s office, for example, you can open a drawer and, even though the camera won’t show it, there will be some Forties documents inside. I had to fight not to wear authentic underwear and suspenders.”
In 2002 she went on a first date with her future husband, Lorne Stormonth-Darling, a dealer in Tibetan antiques. She says she was blown away by his opening gambit: ‘Would you like a pickled cockle?’
She had been friends with Lorne, the son of a retired City broker and 16 years her senior, since 1999 when she was at Oxford and he was a friend of her flatmate’s parents. He was, she says with apparent sincerity, hanging around “to try to find a younger girlfriend” and even hit on her friend before he settled for her.
She claims he asked her to marry him every day after their first date. On holiday in the Himalayas in 2005, they held an impromptu Buddhist wedding ceremony in an apple orchard 8,000ft above sea level.
“We did it just for us,” says Honeysuckle. “But all the locals were watching and at our wedding feast I had to eat an enormous raw ram’s head with just the skin taken off and I’m a vegetarian.
“Afterwards the women sat round me rubbing their tummies, smiling and saying, ‘You make baby now.’ They expected us to roll around in the hay in front of them.”
On their return and under pressure from both sets of parents to tie the knot properly Lorne offered Honeysuckle what she smilingly describes as a “revolting garnet knuckle-duster ring”, which he had designed himself.
They married in Barlavington, West Sussex, last July, and she wore a medieval-style silk gown that she had bought for £280 from an antiques shop in Hastings.
“When I threw the bouquet it landed in a tree and I swore right outside the church in front of the vicar,” she recalls. “Everyone looked rather shocked, then laughed to cover up their embarrassment. Somebody fished it out of the branches and I had to throw it again.”
The newlyweds left their celebrations by hot-air balloon on the first leg of a journey to honeymoon in Zanzibar, with Honeysuckle kitted out in white corduroy pantaloons and leather flying jacket. But just three miles out, the weather took a sudden turn for the worse and the balloon crash-landed, narrowly avoiding a lake.
“I didn’t want my mother to know our plan had gone wrong, so we hid from the rest of the party in a barn nearby,” she says. “We went for a swim in the lake at six o’clock the next morning.”
The unlikely couple live in a two-bedroom cottage in Kensal Green, and Honeysuckle seems impressed, rather than exasperated, by her husband’s “alternative” lifestyle.
“He makes me laugh he’s a one off,” she says. “I think people have better experiences when they’re older. They’re more interesting and sure of themselves, although he does have a youthful side. I don’t think I’ve remotely changed him. That would be a bad idea. He still wants to travel, to go off and have adventures.
“He tells me he has five wives in the Tibetan mountains and that he sleeps with them. I don’t know if he’s pulling my leg. I don’t mind if it’s in his past, but I’d rather he didn’t do it now.
“His parents are amazed he got married at all, he was so allured by the bachelor life. He’s had loads of girlfriends before he was a bit of a bad boy.”
In reality, however, their life together sounds fairly mundane. They walk their dog, watch The Simpsons and eat Honeysuckle’s home-made stew. She likes tending their “teeny” garden and spending time with her siblings. Perdita has just finished filming the TV series The Tudors, in which she plays Mary Boleyn, and Rollo has had parts in British and European TV dramas.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her unstarry lifestyle, Honeysuckle has little time for the size-zero culture that female celebrities are increasingly expected to embrace
“I used to run ten miles every other day and eat very little,” she says. “I was living in London on my own for the first time and no one was checking on me. I wasn’t anorexic but lost three stone. I weighed around seven. It lasted six months until I ran out of willpower.
“Size zero doesn’t make you happy and I’m not sure I have the discipline for Hollywood. I’m too much of a fan of chocolate and crisps.
Currently in a theatre production of Henry James’s The Turn Of The Screw, in which she plays the governess, which she says is “quite intense because I have to go mad in every performance”, she seems more ambivalent than ambitious about her career.
“I’d like to be remembered as a national treasure, but I need to put myself out there more and not screw it up by being lazy,” she says.
“Lorne tells me I should have more meetings with my agent. He’s very ambitious for me and likes to check my outfits before I go to a meeting. I’m just happy to be working.”
She smiles sweetly not quite the dippy scatterbrain she seems keen to be seen as, but nonetheless a long way from Samantha Stewart.
The above “MailOnline” article can be accessed online here.
Jeremy Child was born in Woking, Surry in 1944. On screen he specialises in playing civil servants, military types and scheming politicans. As his best in the 1986 mini-series “First Among Equals” based on the novel by Jeffrey Archer. Jeremy Child was recently seen as again a politican in “The Iron Lady” which starred Meryl Streep.
IMDB entry:
Jeremy Child was born on September 20, 1944 in Woking, Surrey, England as 3rd Bt Sir Coles John Jeremy Child. He is an actor, known for A Fish Called Wanda (1988), Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) and The Madness of King George (1994). He has been married to Elizabeth Morgan since 1987. They have two children. He was previously married to Jan Todd and Deborah Grant.Has the distinction of portraying a British Foreign Secretary three times in his career; fictional Foreign Secretary Charles Seymour in First Among Equals, real life Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare in Bertie and Elizabeth and real life Foreign Secretary Francis Pym in The Falklands Play.
Liza Goddard was born in 1950 in the West Midlands. She moved to live in Australia with her family when she was a teenager. She became popular with the children’s TV series “Skippy”. In her early twenties she was back in the UK and starred in many television series such as Take Three Girls” in 1969, “Yes, Honestly”, “The Brothers” and “Bergerac”. She has had a busy career also on the stage. Films include “I Want What I Want” in 1972.
She was the Middle England pin-up, exuding an aroma of horses, hockey sticks and sexy wholesomeness, who refused to be parted with her clothes. But now, at 61, Liza Goddard preaches the gospel of ‘flaunt it while you’ve got it’.
‘Directors would ask me to strip off and I’d refuse. I wish I had flashed it around, as I had a lovely body, but I was prim and lacked confidence. Now I tell all the lovely young girls I work with, “You’re gorgeous. Show it off.”’
Her only other regret? Marrying three times, first to a future Doctor Who,Colin Baker, followed by glam rock’s Alvin Stardust, before finally finding happiness with her husband of 16 years, former TV director David Cobham.
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Wisdom: At 61, Liza Goddard preaches the gospel of ‘flaunt it while you’ve got it’
‘If I could change things, I probably wouldn’t have leapt in and had relationships so readily. Or maybe I should just have lived with them, then at least you don’t have to get divorced.’ She admits it was babies she wanted, not husbands. ‘It’s my hormones that have let me down.’
Liza was a teen star who became famous around the world playing the blonde pig-tailed Clancy in Australian TV’s Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. Then she became an emblem of Swinging London at 19 as the cello-playing Victoria in the female flat-sharing drama, Take Three Girls, before appearing in TV series like The Brothers, Bergerac and Doctor Who, and theatre and game shows.
She has just written her autobiography and when asked why now, she replies, ‘Having had breast cancer, I thought maybe I should do it, because otherwise you keep putting it off.’ If this sounds like someone sorting out their affairs, far from it. The cancer returned in 1997, three years after the original diagnosis, necessitating a masectomy – which led to an infection that nearly killed her – but since then she’s hardly had a cold.
Liza’s feeling very perky and she sounds it too; the familiar cut-glass accent rippling with laughter, quite often directed against herself. I haven’t seen her for years and at first I wonder if the blonde sizzling in sunglasses, a shocking pink top and jeans showcasing slender legs can be her. She is one of the least vain women, let alone actresses, I have encountered, although she acknowledges, ‘When I look in the mirror, I see a 61-year-old woman. But acting keeps you young.’
She had this horrid, evil side… She herself said she had vitriol in her veins rather than blood
She always uses her senior rail card ‘and they never say, “You can’t be old enough”,’ she guffaws. What she reveals in her book, Working With Children And Animals, is a new version of her childhood, previously told as a rural commuter belt idyll, with geese, ducks and chickens flapping around the rose-framed door, out of which wafted the inviting smell of home baking. Now she says that her mother, Clare, was emotionally and physically abusive.
‘She spent her whole time screaming at us.’ Liza felt nothing she did was ever good enough for her mother, to whom the concept of praising children was alien. Pictures of the teenage Liza and her sister Maria, two years younger, show a pair of blonde stunners, but both lacked confidence in their looks. Maria became anorexic, while Liza ‘hated the way I looked when I was young’. She hasn’t talked about this before ‘to spare my mother’s feelings’ but now, at almost 86, Clare has dementia.
‘She had this horrid, evil side. She herself said she had vitriol in her veins rather than blood. She used to whack me with anything that came to hand. She was a full-time mother and I don’t think she enjoyed it.’ Then, one day, a girl several years older than Liza arrived at their home. ‘My mother said, “This is your half-sister Gail.” I was astounded. She had tracked us down and was welcomed with open arms.’ Gail, the product of Clare’s first marriage, had been abandoned by her at the age of three and was brought up by her father.
‘I never felt I could ask my mother why she had left her child. Recently, Gail and I went to see Mum and she said, “Gail, I’m so terribly sorry”, and we all burst into tears. It was very healing for Gail. So now, with her dementia, we’ve got this sweet old woman for a mother, the mother I’ve always wanted.’ Then there was another shock for the teenager. ‘Mother began dropping hints that my father was not really my father, although earlier she had said I was premature.’
We moved to the country and I wore tweeds, but it was just a role I was playing… I leapt into the marriage and then I leapt out
She has, of late, tried to tap her mother for information. ‘All I get from her is nonsense.’ Her parents finally divorced and Liza admits she felt bereft. She believes this led to a relationship with a man who was violent towards her. ‘It was nothing that showed, no broken bones, but it was abusive and I think it came down to my low selfesteem.’ She became pregnant, felt suicidal and had an abortion, although this incident is omitted from the book.
‘I think I just forgot it,’ she says curiously. But she does relate how she became pregnant again by the same man, left him and gave birth to her son Thom in 1976. She now says she was desperate for a baby, even with the wrong man. While pregnant, she joined the hit TV show The Brothers, and fell in love with one of its stars, Colin Baker. They married within months and somehow the story got out that he was Thom’s father.
‘It was easy for Colin to go along with the pretence. I think I was desperate for a father for Thom and Colin fitted the bill, but I think my mind was unbalanced, having just given birth. We were great friends but should never have married. We moved to the country and I wore tweeds, but it was just a role I was playing. I leapt into the marriage and then I leapt out.’
After a few years of single motherhood, she was chatted up by Alvin Stardust at a showbusiness event. ‘I wasn’t especially a fan of his music but I was bowled over by his charm and within a few weeks he moved in. At home he didn’t wear the quiff, he brushed his hair normally: he was going through a mellow phase. I think what I really wanted was a baby. I wanted my girl.’ She gave birth to their daughter, Sophie, in 1981 and soon afterwards she and Alvin married, only to divorce eight years later.
‘I thought, “Another one down the drain.” That was a long marriage by my standards.’ Liza had been working harder and felt Alvin wasn’t pulling his weight domestically. The last straw was his famous conversion to Christianity on a 40-minute train journey. ‘He was converted by a group of people in his carriage. At Waterloo, the cleaner found them on their knees praying. Alvin came home and said “I’ve found God”.’
She then married David, and has forgotten her differences with Alvin. They are friends again, and she admires him, she says, ‘because at 68, Alvin is still touring in his wig and platform boots’. In the last few years, she has even been able to empathise with his feelings about faith. ‘Our daughter Sophie introduced me to Shamanism. I’m learning to harness the body’s power to heal itself – I treated someone with an eye infection recently and it cleared up in 24 hours.
‘David was a bit alarmed at first. His father was a vicar. He thoughtSophie was trying to get me into a cult. But at last I understand how marvellous it was for Alvin to find his spirituality, now that I’ve found mine.’
