Helen McCrory is known for playing strong women. She’s the gunslinging matriarch in period gangster drama Peaky Blinders and her CV is full of meaty stage roles, including a heartbreakingly defiant Medea at the National in 2014, and big-screen appearances, notably as an intransigent Cherie Blair in The Queen. So it’s strange to see her sitting down and eating very daintily, pushing the food to one side of her mouth.
“Look at me, I resemble a little gerbil,” she says.
Personally, if I had to compare her to an animal, it would be a cat. She has a feline sensuality and a formidable emotional intelligence which have marked her out as one of the most compelling actresses of her generation. These qualities are being put to good use in her latest stage role as Hester Collyer, the tragic wife at the heart of Terence Rattigan’s smouldering 1952 master-piece The Deep Blue Sea. The unhinged, sexually infatuated Hester has abandoned her High Court judge husband and Eaton Square home for a chaotic, all-consuming affair with boozy, former RAF pilot Freddie.
