LESLEY MANVILLE
Years of playing very different characters convincingly have have paid off for Lesley Manville, and now Hollywood is calling. Emma Higginbotham meets her.
When Lesley Manville was rehearsing a scene as a brash, chain-smoking, law-breaking American in the upcoming film Let Him Go, she had co-star Kevin Costner ducking in fright.
‘I’d never held a gun in my life, and I’ve got this fabulous peroxide blonde wig on, and I’m going like that,’ she says, pretending to shoot, ‘and he went “Woah! You don’t look like you’ve never held a gun before to me, lady!” So that was a big tick.’
Costner’s reaction won’t surprise anyone familiar with her work, as Lesley is legendary for playing diverse characters with astonishing precision. One minute she’s a gentle suburban widow in the BBC sitcom Mum, next minute she’s the acerbically posh Cyril Woodcock in the 2017 film Phantom Thread, a role that bagged her an Oscar nomination.
‘Nobody pigeonholes me,’ says the 63-year-old. ‘I’m a chameleon: I can jump across classes, types, rough, smooth, kind, nasty. And long may that last.’
Sure enough, Lesley was playing a morphine addict on stage in New York when she met up with her latest co-star, Liam Neeson, to discuss Ordinary Love – a quiet, gut-punching film about how married couple Joan and Tom cope when Joan is diagnosed with breast cancer.
Based on the personal experiences of playwright Owen McCafferty, who also wrote the screenplay, the script immediately won her over. ‘I liked that they were a middle-aged couple who laughed, who still found each other attractive,’ she says. ‘But however close a couple is, you realise how lonely it is to be that ill. However much he’s there for her, she’s the one who’s got to go through it. It’s a different lonely for him; he’s lost too.’
There’s tangible on-screen chemistry between her and Neeson, but if you’re expecting soaring violins and sentimentality, forget it: this is cancer in its pared-back brutality, cold sores, vomiting and all.
For Lesley, it meant a series of bald wigs and prosthetic scars, but she welcomed it. ‘I really don’t care how bad I have to look as a character, and I wouldn’t have insulted the women who go through chemo by trying to look glamorous,’ she says.
Women including her eldest sister, Brenda, who also had breast cancer. ‘She recovered, but then developed a brain tumour which she died of last year. But who hasn’t had somebody in their lives with some form of cancer?
‘What’s good about the film is that it demystifies it, but in a good way. If Joan and Tom were a gloomy couple it wouldn’t be the right way to tell the story, but they’ve never lost that sparkle. It’s a middle-age love story, and you don’t often see that.’
Which leads neatly on to Mum, the bittersweet BBC sitcom about kindly widow Carol finding love again, which catapulted Lesley to household-name status. She puts its success down to writer Stefan Golaszewski, calling him ‘a genius’.
‘He knows how to make that wonderful cocktail of hilarious but moving. Mum makes you laugh and cry, and his characters are so brilliant,’ she says. ‘Also there is an audience that wants to watch middle-aged people falling in love. The 20-year-olds need to know that if you’re over 50, you still have sexual feelings! We’re not all tucked up in bed with woolly socks, we’re out there having adventures.’
It’s certainly been an adventurous life for youngest-of-three Lesley, a taxi driver’s daughter from Hove. A gifted soprano, she was performing in music festivals from the age of 9 and an opera career beckoned. ‘Then roundabout 15 the little rebel anarchist in me thought right, I won’t do opera, I’ll go to stage school.’
She duly abandoned her O-levels to study at London’s Italia Conti Academy, and within six months was in paid work, first in a West End musical, then presenting a kids’ TV show, then a two-year stint on lunchtime soap Emmerdale Farm (‘a steep learning curve’).
Meeting film director Mike Leigh, whose famously improvisational methods struck a chord with the young actress, changed everything. ‘Up until then I had played myself: I was a pretty sweet thing and I played pretty sweet things. It never occurred to me to play a character who was absolutely not like me. I loved it, and the rest is history.’
The dizzyingly varied film, TV and theatre roles rolled in, from supermarket cashier Penny in Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing to the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher, in Channel 4’s The Queen. But her career-defining moment was undoubtedly playing steely Cyril, sister of highly-strung dress designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) in Phantom Thread, a role that won her both international acclaim and gay icon status.
‘It was 14 of the best weeks of my life,’ she recalls. ‘Going to work every day with Daniel Day Lewis? I mean really! Just wonderful.’ Nor, she adds, was she too disappointed to miss out on Hollywood’s most famous gong. ‘Hell no. Listen, I got an Oscar nomination! It was just a buzz.
‘I could never have imagined what Phantom Thread would do for me. I’ve got the career to die for in this country, but what that film has done is open up America, which is a very nice thing at my time.’
Hence gunslinging with Kevin Costner in the aforementioned Let Him Go, released next year. ‘That was great fun. I did all my own stunts and threw myself around. They had a stunt woman there and didn’t use her.’
Is that OK at, um, her time of life? Lesley laughs. ‘My sister says “Come on, don’t you want to slow down?”, and I don’t, really, because I love my job. I thrive on it. It’s getting tough for a lot of actresses of my age, but I’m having a field day.’
:: Ordinary Love is at cinemas from Friday
Mad about Manville
London-based Lesley, who’d ‘rather not say’ if she’s in a relationship, was briefly married to actor Gary Oldman – they have a son, Alfie – and a four-year marriage to actor Joe Dixon ended in 2004. She has two ‘absolutely lovely’ grandchildren, Matilda and Ozzy.
After her performance in Ghosts at the Almeida Theatre, Lesley was up against Judi Dench for the 2014 Best Actress Olivier. ‘When I got to the Oliviers, Judi said “My bets are on you”, and I thought she was joking, but [director] Richard Eyre said no, she really has put a bet on you to win!’ The dame was quids-in: Lesley won.
When she first met Ordinary Love co-star Liam Neeson, he gave her an enormous hug and took her out for dinner. ‘Liam’s a major movie star, but there’s no ego with him. He’s a very warm, generous, caring person, so the whole thing was just lovely.’
An edited version of this article was published in Waitrose Weekend on December 5th 2019. (c) Waitrose