Some of the most interesting people you meet in life are often complete strangers. I have just come back to the US from a trip to London and had great conversations with people just sitting having lunch or on a bus. Everyone has a story! It’s easy to strike up a conversation with perfect strangers, in my humble opinion, if you are interested in other people. As an actor I am always seeing the possibilities in people as characters. Real human beings are the basis for all the characters that we play. I store quite a few references in my head for future use, people that I might chat to wherever I find myself. It always comes back to research about a character, you are about to play ….why are they happy, unhappy, is it nuture or nature?
I happened to be in a store today checking out and the sales assistant and I started to talk about England and blow me, she informed me that her Uncle is the Highland Piper who plays the bag-pipes every morning for the Queen when she wakes up. This is one of her all important routines in life, like us Brits like an early morning cup of tea!
Some of my earliest experiences in the business was as a BBC actor. I had the opportunity to perform in some terrific productions there in my early years, I played Lorna Doone in “Lorna Doone”, a wonderful romantic story, “1984” the George Orwell book and many others. Check me out if you like, on IMDB. Of course I did become known as a Horror movie actress, having done a few of the those too…”The Hands of the Ripper” (playing the blind victim of Jack the Ripper’s daughter…get your head around that one). In horror, it’s fairly black or white, you are either the victim or the villain. Villains are more fun on the whole, in what I would term, lighter weight scripts. Interesting question though, could you spot a villain in real life? I doubt it. They are usually more complex than those who appear in the usual kind of horror films! I was a bad girl in a horror film, think it was called “Island of the Burning Damned” in the US…”The Night of the Big Heat” in the UK…about group of people caught up in an overheating world…this, we shot mid winter, light costumes and covered in glycerine (pretend sweat)! As you can see below….
