In a promo for Season 2 of Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful,” Helen McCrory is shown reclining in a bathtub filled with blood, eerily singing a variation of an old English folk ballad known as “The Unquiet Grave.”
“That was at 6 o’clock in the morning in a bright studio, and it wasn’t my finest hour,” says the actress, “but apparently a cracked voice is what they wanted.”
She then jokingly adds that she floated in the tub, “So I must be a witch.”
Continue reading ‘Penny Dreadful’s’ Helen McCrory talks hunting the hunters in new season
She grew up a ‘feral, compulsive liar’… perfect training for an actress. She’s at her most relaxed either asleep backstage during the interval or talking to strangers – which is why husband Damian Lewis has to remind her: ‘You’re not the Queen!’
What is your earliest memory?
Walking along a path near our home in Cameroon with my mum and my brother and my labrador Jasper. I am looking down at my knees, which were very dark at the time because they were covered in dust. I lived in Africa until I was six or seven, in Cameroon and Tanzania. It was absolutely beautiful, a great place to grow up.
What sort of child were you?
A feral, compulsive liar. Every country we went to, I would make up these fantastical stories about who I was and what my parents did, and just pray to God that my father’s posting would come around quickly before I was rumbled in the playground. I would say things like, ‘My father works for the Queen,’ which was based in truth as he worked for the Foreign Office, but I was just such a liar. I suppose in the end it was good practice for being an actress.
By Luaine Lee | April 22, 2015 | Tribune News Service
“My dad’s got a Glaswegian accent,” she says, which is something of a surprise. She nods in agreement. “I sound like I come from Suffolk!” she adds, pronouncing it ‘Suff-auk’ – for emphasis – as if she were schooled at Eton.
She continues, keeping the oh-so-posh voice on for comedy effect. “People are like, ‘Oh, hello, where do you come from?’ And I say, ‘I come from West Africa, actually!’ But you can’t tell.”
Confused? Well, that’s just what it’s like meeting McCrory, a mistress of the deadpan, who is as entertaining off-screen as she is on. Her father is indeed from Glasgow, a former diplomat whose own father was a welder.
