Receives Rave Reviews for Every Character She Plays
by Megan Conner| Red Women | September, 2019
SHE WEARS SEQUINS TO THE SCHOOL GATES, HAS A HUSBAND WHO PULLS HIS WEIGHT AND RECEIVES RAVE REVIEWS FOR EVERY CHARACTER SHE PLAYS. ONE MIGHT SAY
HELEN McCRORY IS ACING IT. BUT, AS SHE TELLS MEGAN CONNER, SHE’S NOT ONE TO REST ON HER LAURELS…
Oh yes…’ frowns Helen McCrory, settling her tiny 5ft 2in frame on to a wide couch on the mezzanine level of a photographic studio in north London. ‘For some reason, I said I’d do the interview before the hair and make-up.’ She runs a hand through her crop of wet curls. ‘Now, tell me,’ she instructs, with all the authority of someone who is used to projecting her voice across the country’s greatest theatres, ‘Do I look like a small boy?’
She deadpans, but laughter follows. It’s the morning after one of the biggest annual summer shindigs in London – the Serpentine Summer Party – and McCrory is feeling fragile. ‘Oh, I did get a little lie-in,’ she says, flapping a hand. ‘Damian [Lewis, her husband of 12 years] got the kids to school while I had a shower.’ (So recent is the shower, her hair is still damp.) ‘But I’m thankful for this,’ she says, holding up her takeaway cappuccino. ‘I’ve been waiting for this.’
In truth, McCrory looks marvelous. Today, she’s dressed monochromatically in a pair of wide-leg checked trousers, worn with a hoodie and trainers. Her hair, the shortest I’ve seen on her, makes her look gorgeously gamine.
‘My daughter was a little confused when I picked her up from school yesterday in a pink and white sequinned jumpsuit,’ she says, chuckling. ‘I got her on the way to the party and she said, “Oh, of course.”’ She mimics her 12-year-old rolling her eyes. ‘But they’re used to it by now,’ she explains. ‘I’ll often come down the stairs and Damian will say, “Of course you are. Right let’s go. Your mother’s dressed for the walk in her ball gown again.”’
‘And why not?’ she laughs. ‘I love dressing up. I’ve been known to wear a tiara to the pub.’ Does she love dressing up for the red carpet? ‘Oh yes. In fact, I’m always amazed when people say they don’t like it. You’re sent these beautiful dresses, someone comes to your house to do your hair and make-up, and you get to go out on a date night. It’s a lot nicer than having to do it all by your bloody self, I can tell you that,’ she adds drily. ‘Because we all know about that… by the end, you don’t want to go to the party at all!’
In photographs from the previous balmy evening in London, McCrory can be seen snuggling up to Lewis. As Hollywood power couples go, they look incredibly relaxed (he’s wearing casual shoes; her flat sandals) and so at ease in their surroundings, I wouldn’t be surprised if McCrory said they knew the entire guest list (everyone from Zadie Smith to Lena Dunham). So I’m intrigued when she says her greatest thrill is not being recognised at all. ‘I just think that’s the biggest compliment to an actor,’ she says, quickly recalling a story from years ago, when she attended the wrap party for the Martin Scorsese film Hugo. ‘I got chatting to the film’s editor and she asked me what I did, and I had to tell her she’d just spent the last four months editing me in her movie,’ she laughs. ‘But that’s everything,’ she says, clutching a hand to her heart. ‘That’s what you strive for.’
Thespy by nature, there’s no questioning that McCrory is a serious actor. In person, she’s deliciously sweary, brazenly funny, often embellishing stories with profound or amusing quotes from poets and playwrights. But there’s an insecure side, too; the hallmarks of a perfectionist who still doubts herself. In a career that’s lasted for more than 25 years, she’s won equal plaudits for her work on stage and screen, most recently in BBC drama MotherFatherSon, in which she starred opposite Richard Gere. She described his first major TV role as ‘perfect for him’: ‘When he walked into the room, everyone [went] “Wow!”.’ She adds that her personal highlights have been the acclaimed BBC drama Peaky Blinders (back for a fifth series in August) and a phenomenal run of the Greek tragedy Medea at the National Theatre. But with that success comes an actor who works ridiculously hard. ‘I’m the opposite of lazy,’ says McCrory. ‘But I know I have to guard against that. I suppose, what I’ve learned is that my work mustn’t completely take over.’
As part of a rigorous research process, she still makes handmade scrapbooks for every character she plays. ‘They’re basically notebooks with passages from novels that I photocopy and art I stick in with Pritt Stick. I’m pretty Girl Guide about it – I even laminate the covers,’ she grins. ‘For me, it helps to think a character out. Because you’re very arrogant if you think people aren’t different,’ she adds matter-of-factly. ‘You’re very arrogant as an actor if you think you can just turn it on and off.’
Because of the work that goes in, she’s happy when people come up to her in the street. ‘I always get that with Polly, actually,’ she says of the ballsy matriarch she’s played in Peaky Blinders for the past six years. ‘When I’ve had scenes where she’s talked about losing a child, I’ve been amazed at the number of women who have approached me to tell me their story. People come up to me on trains,’ she says, wide-eyed, suddenly sounding very posh. ‘And I’m quite taken aback, because you think to yourself, “Shit, I’m just an actress.” But that’s also the joy of it,’ she nods. ‘Your empathy is what’s important.’
The daughter of a Glaswegian diplomat father and Welsh physiotherapist mother, McCrory spent her early childhood in Africa, and credits some of that empathy to a peripatetic existence. ‘We were always moving from country to country, so I met a lot of different people in different situations,’ she remembers. Eventually, her parents settled her at a boarding school in Hertfordshire. ‘I was becoming something of an exaggerator, telling little fibs to other children because I was always trying to fit in with new friends,’ she laughs. ‘So they put me there.’ It was at Queenswood that she first caught the acting bug, although she says it wasn’t until an audition for the Drama Centre in London in her late teens, encouraged by her then teacher, Thane Bettany (father of the actor Paul), that she ‘really got what acting was all about’.
‘I’ll tell you the audition story,’ smiles McCrory, ‘because I got rejected in the most brutal way! I was reading from Romeo And Juliet, the scene where Juliet’s about to lose her virginity… You know, “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed whatever” and afterwards, the panel pulled me aside to ask questions. They asked me what it was like to be in love, to lose my virginity, and, of course, I hadn’t done any of those things. So the guy said, “Why on earth did you choose this speech? You’re standing in front of an audience that has had the most amazing affairs, the most amazing marriages and the most beautiful nights of sex, and you don’t know anything about this character.”’
She pulls a face of mock-horror: ‘I just looked at them and went, “You’re totally fucking right. This is where I want to study.” And so the advice was to go away and live a bit, and bring some experience to my acting.’ And did she? ‘Yes! I went away to Italy that summer, had the most marvellous love affair, and came back and auditioned the next year.’ And did she get in? ‘Yes. I got places at other drama schools but rejected them, then sent my reply letters on to the Drama Centre. And they sent a letter back saying, “See you in September.”’
After graduating, McCrory went straight to the stage, appearing in plays at the National and the Donmar. Then in 2003, she starred in a production of Five Gold Rings at the Almeida opposite Lewis, then best-known for TV’s Band Of Brothers. After the run, the play’s director, Michael Attenborough, spoke of a sizzling chemistry between the pair. ‘It was like directing a fire. I could have warmed my hands on it!’ he said. Now, looking back, McCrory recalls that it was Lewis’s humour that she fell in love with: ‘He had, and still has, this ability to really tell a story.’ Over the years, she’s also come to the conclusion that it’s ‘an advantage’ being in the same business. When McCrory appeared in Medea (‘quite possibly the hardest play I’ve done – the character literally kills her children’), Lewis would try to ease her exhaustion by allowing her lie-ins each morning. ‘So we understand,’ she says. ‘And that’s important, especially when you’re both working and you have kids.’
When I ask how they make their careers work around their children (daughter, Manon, 12, and son, Gulliver, 11), McCrory delights in telling me that family life is chaotic. ‘People talk about chaos, but I think we’re next-level chaos,’ she says. ‘With kids, it’s never going to be perfect, so we try to embrace that.’ When it comes to splitting childcare, she admits there’s no grand plan: ‘Sometimes one of us will take the kids with us – for instance, Damian took them to New York for term while I filmed Fearless [ITV] and he filmed Billions [Sky]. But at other times, we’ve had nannies.’
‘We’re so lucky being freelance,’ she adds, ‘because if I had to choose between motherhood and my job, I’d be broken-hearted. So many women are broken-hearted. And I sort of feel like that won’t change until men have properly paid paternity leave and take it. We’ll never see a parity in pay until men get equal paternity leave because it’s impossible to take the idea of women being the primary caregivers out of the psyche.’
Right now, though, she says, she has other parenting challenges, such as raising tweenagers. ‘Oh God, it’s so hard,’ she sighs. ‘Firstly, teenagers can be so rude, and then we have this whole problem with helicopter parents, you know, protecting kids all the time from failure. To the point where the first time a kid fails, they have a complete breakdown,’ she grimaces. ‘And that’s because so many parents these days are so eager to say, “Oh, you look lovely in that, darling.” Or “Oh, she’s just stupid if she doesn’t like you.” When really what we should be saying is, “Oh, well, you were bloody selfish, and that’s why no one’s going to play with you.” Or “Well, darling, I’m afraid she is better than you.” Someone once said, “No heart is any use to anyone until it’s been shattered into a thousand pieces.” We all know that’s true. The most interesting people – all of us – have hurt, or suffered.’
Read the rest of the article at Red Women
All photography by Kate Davis-Macleod
[hide] But anyway, McCrory says, she realises she’s being dark. Last year, she turned 50, and the milestone got her thinking that she’d really like to do some comedy. ‘It’s funny how your tastes change,’ she muses. ‘I feel like I’ve passed that stage where I’m young and so full of angst that my idea is to listen to Nick Cave and walk on to the stage shuddering with intensity. God, I used to be such a hedonist. Now all I want to do is watch plays where someone walks on stage and they’re so relaxed, I think they’re making it up in front of me.
‘What I basically want to do,’ she says, leaning forward conspiratorially, ‘is to work with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I mean, I tell her every time I bump into her,’ she laughs, ‘but she’s not quite getting the hint.’
As for the physical effects of turning 50, McCrory has little time for such ‘nonsense’. ‘Sometimes I think there must be some sort of insensitivity in me, because in my head, there’s only one alternative to ageing and that’s dying,’ she quips. ‘Ageing or fucking dying!’ She shakes her head. ‘So, you can see why I try not to worry about it!’
The fifth series of Peaky Blinders starts on BBC One this August.[/hide]