In the TV thriller Half Broken Things, house-sitter Jean, played by Penelope Wilton, says, "Living in other people's houses doesn't suit everyone ... but it suited me." As Half Broken Things is on ITV1, Jean's penchant for other people's houses is naturally a precursor to all manner of manor-based murkiness, up to and including murder. But, murder aside, it's too tempting not to apply to Wilton herself Jean's sentiment and the ease with which Jean slides herself into the space other people otherwise occupy. For this is what Wilton does: she immerses herself in characters and disappears into their lives. She has built a reputation as one of Britain's best actors by erasing herself. And she's been in Doctor Who. Twice.
Whether it's in Doctor Who or Chekhov, Penelope Wilton has an uncanny ability to climb effortlessly into character. Next up is Jesus's mum, she tells Gareth McLean.
In the TV thriller Half Broken Things, house-sitter Jean, played by Penelope Wilton, says, "Living in other people's houses doesn't suit everyone ... but it suited me." As Half Broken Things is on ITV1, Jean's penchant for other people's houses is naturally a precursor to all manner of manor-based murkiness, up to and including murder. But, murder aside, it's too tempting not to apply to Wilton herself Jean's sentiment and the ease with which Jean slides herself into the space other people otherwise occupy. For this is what Wilton does: she immerses herself in characters and disappears into their lives. She has built a reputation as one of Britain's best actors by erasing herself. And she's been in Doctor Who. Twice.
"In my life, I've had estates in Russia, houses in Spain, in Norway, in the deep south of America. I've lived in all sorts of worlds, been all sorts of characters," she says. "The thing about being an actor is that you turn into other people. You have to hide yourself a bit in order to let that other person come out."
Wilton has hidden herself remarkably over the years, with stunning stage performances in European masterpieces by Chekhov, Lorca and Ibsen, as well as seminal roles in the original production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1978 (with Michael Gambon and her then husband, Daniel Massey), Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea in 1990, and Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes in 2001, in which she played Regina, an avaricious American monster. Her performance was electrifying.
On television, her roles have been varied, from Doctor Who's Harriet Jones - first MP for Flydale North and then PM - to Rosemary, a woman who falls in love with a murderess, in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads; from pint-sized Homily in The Borrowers to put-upon Ann in Ever Decreasing Circles. Her film work ranges from Iris and Calendar Girls to Shaun of the Dead. "It's lovely to do comedy, and I seemed not to be doing an awful lot of it. Such clever boys, Simon [Pegg] and Edgar [Wright]," she says warmly.
Howard Davies, who directed Wilton in The House of Bernarda Alba in 2005 and David Hare's The Secret Rapture in 1988, both at the National, says Wilton has a phenomenal ability to plumb the paradoxes of a character.
"One of her gifts is being able to describe people's strengths and weaknesses," he says. "She can always see two sides of the situation. In The Secret Rapture, she played this Thatcherite woman who behaved appallingly, but Penelope managed to make you feel for her, to sympathise with her."
Certainly, in The House of Bernarda Alba, Wilton brilliantly brought forth the tragedy of Bernarda's life - her potential curdled, her promise thwarted. "That's not on the page. She thought about the back story of that woman and what had made her," Davies says. "The play is a parable about Spain, but Penelope made Bernarda three-dimensional."
Russell T Davies, who cast Wilton in Doctor Who and, before that, in Bob and Rose (as Bob's mum), puts it another way. "I bloody love Penelope Wilton! I'm quite stuck for what to say because I genuinely love her. She makes dialogue sound effortless and almost thrown away because she knows that the words are just the chatter on top with whole worlds going unspoken underneath."
This is, perhaps, what people mean when they say Wilton possesses a "quintessential Englishness". What's not said is more important than what is said. (When I ask Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner what she thought of Wilton, Gardner said: "She can create silences that you can fall into and drown.") Still, as I've never really understood what quintessentially English means, I ask Wilton, who is very well-spoken.
"Isn't it boring? I don't understand what it means. It's because I speak as I speak, I think. It's lazy journalism. I would say I was a bit more European. Maybe it's because I don't shout a lot."
Do you get angry about things?
"Oooh, furious."
"It may be because I'm slightly guarded that people say that [she is quintessentially English]," she continues. "I don't tell everyone my life history because if everyone knows your inside-leg measurement, how can you surprise them? It seems to me, the less I know about someone, the more likely I am to take them as someone else"
It's not that there isn't a lot to tell. She was born in 1946 in Scarborough to parents from Newcastle. The family moved to London when she was young and she attended the Drama Centre. As a young actor, she worked with the likes of Christopher Hampton, David Hare and Harold Pinter, with whom she's friends. She married her first husband, Massey, in 1974 after meeting in a play. They had a daughter in 1977 and then divorced in 1984. He began seeing her sister, a relationship that lasted until his death in 1998. Her second husband was Borrowers co-star Ian Holm. They divorced in 2001, after 10 years of marriage and, so the cuttings report, after she coached him through a long and tortured spell of actor's block.
To probe all of this seems prurient, especially after her declaration of guardedness. And anyway, it's not really any of my business, she's so sweet that I don't want to upset her, and what's she going to say?
There are two things that are most striking about Wilton. One is her modesty. She's among the most self- effacing people - and is definitely the most self-effacing actor - I've met. Davies says: "She doesn't belong to the received version of how people see leading actors, as having egos the size of god-knows-what."
Wilton is definitely diffident, worrying that she'll run out of interesting things to say before we're out of time. You should make things up, I suggest.
"I know people who do. Michael Gambon does, I think. It's the constantly talking about yourself that's really boring."
Wilton is hardly boring, though. The other striking thing about her, entwined with the first, is her generosity, of which Davies says, "When you're with her socially, she makes you feel very important and witty. You come away thinking you've been funny, incredible company. It's only after you realise that she's made you that way and actually, she's been the witty one."
Her diffidence may be an elaborate act - a way to stay hidden - but I doubt it. She possesses decorum, and is absolutely bereft of a desire to show off. Isn't that unusual in an actor?
"Acting attracts shy people and show-offs. There's a certain sort that requires one and then there's the other kind. If you talk to Jim Broadbent or Ian McDiarmid, they're not show-offs. They're quite the other way, in fact."
Though the parts that Wilton picks aren't, in the main, what you'd call unassuming characters. They're usually strong, formidable, rounded women. She says she tries to avoid stereotypes. "When you get older, people are dying to stereotype you. You play the mummy or the auntie figure or you have to be batty. And actually, all of that's bollocks. People are who they are, but they're just a bit older. I think any woman encounters that stereotyping."
Wilton says it's often young male writers who don't write properly for women, though she has little truck with the argument that women write female characters best and men male ones.
Wilton has just returned from Morocco where she's been playing Mary, Jesus's mum, in Frank Deasy's much-anticipated take on the Passion, which will be screened on BBC1 next Easter. Evidently, she likes a challenge.
"It's only high-status roles for me," she laughs. "If you're going to play an iconic figure, you're going to disappoint 99.9% of the world, but Frank Deasy has written it very well. He's written her as a woman with a son who she knows will be killed if he continues what he's doing. It's very real."
Beneath Wilton's diffidence is steely determination. "I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life. You've got to look for them though you don't always find them.
"To play 'nice' school teachers or whatever just isn't that interesting".
"In my life, I've had estates in Russia, houses in Spain, in Norway, in the deep south of America. I've lived in all sorts of worlds, been all sorts of characters," she says. "The thing about being an actor is that you turn into other people. You have to hide yourself a bit in order to let that other person come out."
Wilton has hidden herself remarkably over the years, with stunning stage performances in European masterpieces by Chekhov, Lorca and Ibsen, as well as seminal roles in the original production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1978 (with Michael Gambon and her then husband, Daniel Massey), Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea in 1990, and Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes in 2001, in which she played Regina, an avaricious American monster. Her performance was electrifying.
On television, her roles have been varied, from Doctor Who's Harriet Jones - first MP for Flydale North and then PM - to Rosemary, a woman who falls in love with a murderess, in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads; from pint-sized Homily in The Borrowers to put-upon Ann in Ever Decreasing Circles. Her film work ranges from Iris and Calendar Girls to Shaun of the Dead. "It's lovely to do comedy, and I seemed not to be doing an awful lot of it. Such clever boys, Simon [Pegg] and Edgar [Wright]," she says warmly.
Howard Davies, who directed Wilton in The House of Bernarda Alba in 2005 and David Hare's The Secret Rapture in 1988, both at the National, says Wilton has a phenomenal ability to plumb the paradoxes of a character.
"One of her gifts is being able to describe people's strengths and weaknesses," he says. "She can always see two sides of the situation. In The Secret Rapture, she played this Thatcherite woman who behaved appallingly, but Penelope managed to make you feel for her, to sympathise with her."
Certainly, in The House of Bernarda Alba, Wilton brilliantly brought forth the tragedy of Bernarda's life - her potential curdled, her promise thwarted. "That's not on the page. She thought about the back story of that woman and what had made her," Davies says. "The play is a parable about Spain, but Penelope made Bernarda three-dimensional."
Russell T Davies, who cast Wilton in Doctor Who and, before that, in Bob and Rose (as Bob's mum), puts it another way. "I bloody love Penelope Wilton! I'm quite stuck for what to say because I genuinely love her. She makes dialogue sound effortless and almost thrown away because she knows that the words are just the chatter on top with whole worlds going unspoken underneath."
This is, perhaps, what people mean when they say Wilton possesses a "quintessential Englishness". What's not said is more important than what is said. (When I ask Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner what she thought of Wilton, Gardner said: "She can create silences that you can fall into and drown.") Still, as I've never really understood what quintessentially English means, I ask Wilton, who is very well-spoken.
"Isn't it boring? I don't understand what it means. It's because I speak as I speak, I think. It's lazy journalism. I would say I was a bit more European. Maybe it's because I don't shout a lot."
Do you get angry about things?
"Oooh, furious."
"It may be because I'm slightly guarded that people say that [she is quintessentially English]," she continues. "I don't tell everyone my life history because if everyone knows your inside-leg measurement, how can you surprise them? It seems to me, the less I know about someone, the more likely I am to take them as someone else"
It's not that there isn't a lot to tell. She was born in 1946 in Scarborough to parents from Newcastle. The family moved to London when she was young and she attended the Drama Centre. As a young actor, she worked with the likes of Christopher Hampton, David Hare and Harold Pinter, with whom she's friends. She married her first husband, Massey, in 1974 after meeting in a play. They had a daughter in 1977 and then divorced in 1984. He began seeing her sister, a relationship that lasted until his death in 1998. Her second husband was Borrowers co-star Ian Holm. They divorced in 2001, after 10 years of marriage and, so the cuttings report, after she coached him through a long and tortured spell of actor's block.
To probe all of this seems prurient, especially after her declaration of guardedness. And anyway, it's not really any of my business, she's so sweet that I don't want to upset her, and what's she going to say?
There are two things that are most striking about Wilton. One is her modesty. She's among the most self- effacing people - and is definitely the most self-effacing actor - I've met. Davies says: "She doesn't belong to the received version of how people see leading actors, as having egos the size of god-knows-what."
Wilton is definitely diffident, worrying that she'll run out of interesting things to say before we're out of time. You should make things up, I suggest.
"I know people who do. Michael Gambon does, I think. It's the constantly talking about yourself that's really boring."
Wilton is hardly boring, though. The other striking thing about her, entwined with the first, is her generosity, of which Davies says, "When you're with her socially, she makes you feel very important and witty. You come away thinking you've been funny, incredible company. It's only after you realise that she's made you that way and actually, she's been the witty one."
Her diffidence may be an elaborate act - a way to stay hidden - but I doubt it. She possesses decorum, and is absolutely bereft of a desire to show off. Isn't that unusual in an actor?
"Acting attracts shy people and show-offs. There's a certain sort that requires one and then there's the other kind. If you talk to Jim Broadbent or Ian McDiarmid, they're not show-offs. They're quite the other way, in fact."
Though the parts that Wilton picks aren't, in the main, what you'd call unassuming characters. They're usually strong, formidable, rounded women. She says she tries to avoid stereotypes. "When you get older, people are dying to stereotype you. You play the mummy or the auntie figure or you have to be batty. And actually, all of that's bollocks. People are who they are, but they're just a bit older. I think any woman encounters that stereotyping."
Wilton says it's often young male writers who don't write properly for women, though she has little truck with the argument that women write female characters best and men male ones.
Wilton has just returned from Morocco where she's been playing Mary, Jesus's mum, in Frank Deasy's much-anticipated take on the Passion, which will be screened on BBC1 next Easter. Evidently, she likes a challenge.
"It's only high-status roles for me," she laughs. "If you're going to play an iconic figure, you're going to disappoint 99.9% of the world, but Frank Deasy has written it very well. He's written her as a woman with a son who she knows will be killed if he continues what he's doing. It's very real."
Beneath Wilton's diffidence is steely determination. "I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life. You've got to look for them though you don't always find them.
"To play 'nice' school teachers or whatever just isn't that interesting".
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