Alison Steadman: ‘I was told I’d be lucky to work after 40’ (original) (raw)
It’s quickly apparent that there are two Alison Steadmans. The first and principal Steadman enters the north London studio where the photoshoot is taking place, a dainty figure with a mildly shocked expression, having just emerged from the lavatories where, disconcertingly in the middle of the day, disco music blasts through the speakers. “It’s so loud!” she says softly, with just the faintest trace of her native Liverpool accent. “Why? It’s horrible!”
The other is the Steadman the public sees, or rather the characters she immortalises, who tend, in the words of her ex-husband and great collaborator, the director Mike Leigh, to be “overblown, blowsy women”. Every generation has its own version of her grotesques, starting with the suburban social climber Beverly in the groundbreaking 1977 play Abigail’s Party (“Laurence, we’re not here to hold conversations, we’re here to enjoy ourselves”).
Alison Steadman aged 27 in 1974
GETTY IMAGES
In 1989 she was Jane, who drags her neighbour Shirley Valentine off to Greece, then there was her unforgettable pushy Mrs Bennet in the classic 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and recently the doting Essex mum Pam in the BBC’s mega-hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey, gobbling ham from the fridge while claiming to be vegetarian.
“Blowsy? Overblown? I hope not,” Steadman responds when I remind her of Leigh’s words, chuckling in full-fruity thesp voice. “What are you talking about, darling?”
JAY BROOKS FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. TOP, PHASE EIGHT. NECKLACE AND BRACELET, GIGI’S DRESSING ROOM. EARRINGS, AHKEKE LONDON
Her range is certainly wider than just those two modes. Steadman has an Olivier award for her performance in the stage play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, two Bafta nominations for The Singing Detective and Fat Friends and an OBE for services to drama. “I just love developing a character,” she says. “The bigger they are the more fun it is for me. When I’m on the Tube I’m always watching people, thinking, ‘What’s she wearing those shoes for?’
Advertisement
It can be a bit irritating for other people with me constantly doing other voices and characters, but that’s just what I do. My partner says he lives with about 15 people.”
Whomever she is talking about she inhabits: one second she’s her five-month-old grandson (she has another aged eight), the next her expression is mean and her cheeks puffy as she becomes the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, now serving 23 years for sex crimes. Steadman has her own Weinstein anecdote. In 1992 he came to see The Rise and Fall of Little Voice in the West End, in which she played another overbearing monster in the form of the stage mum Mari Hoff.
The cast of Gavin & Stacey in 2007, from left: Rob Brydon, Melanie Walters, Ruth Jones, Joanna Paige, Mat Horne, James Corden, Steadman and Larry Lamb
“Someone said, ‘Harvey wants to take us for drinks.’ I went to the pub, and I remember he stood there and looked at me like that …” Her eyes narrow contemptuously. “I thought, ‘What’s going on? You’ve just seen the show and I was in it.’ He wouldn’t speak to me. The next day [her co-star] Jane Horrocks said, ‘Isn’t it great we’re doing a film version?’ I said, ‘I don’t think I am.’ I wasn’t a name, I hadn’t been nominated for a Golden Globe.”
Shortly afterwards she found herself waiting next to Weinstein to enter the auditorium at the Baftas. “Again he looked at me …” Evil permeates her features. “If he’d ignored me that would have been one thing, but it was like he was making sure to tell me, ‘I’m not going to use you.’ It was absolutely horrible. So when I heard all this stuff about him, I thought, ‘I’m not in the least surprised.’ ”
By now Steadman, 78, is sitting in the studio’s canalside café, dressed in white jeans and a green silk shirt, elegantly eating a veggie burger without cutlery or a napkin while talking. Her hair is dyed a flattering shade of platinum in preparation for the long-awaited shooting of the final episode of Gavin & Stacey, due to be aired at Christmas.
Advertisement
She has arrived from recording the audio version of her new memoir, Out of Character. People usually find writing their autobiography (in Steadman’s case with the help of a ghostwriter) an emotional experience. Steadman, however, isn’t the soppy type. Only the odd moment walloped her, when she was reading the book aloud.
Steadman with Tim Stern in Abigail’s Party, 1977
ALAMY
“Talking about my parents was hard, as both have died. My middle sister died as well and my eldest sister, who’s 90, has got dementia. So it’s like my whole family has gone and I find that very sad, because we were a very close family. When I got to the bit when I won an Olivier award [in 1992 for _The Rise and Fall of Little Voice_], and I just wished my dad had been alive to have seen it and said, ‘This is for you, Dad,’ I got quite choked up. I had to stop for a bit. That really got me.”
Otherwise, Steadman keeps painful stuff at arm’s length. When she signed a deal to write the book it was on condition there was nothing in there about her long marriage to Leigh, now 81, who probably wasn’t the easiest character to live with. They married in 1973 and continued working together after they separated in 1995, the same year she moved in with her partner, the actor Michael Elwyn, 82. Steadman and Leigh didn’t divorce until 2001.
The book mentions a couple of unpleasant moments with sleazy drama teachers — all too common at the time. Then there’s a well-known female director who bullied her when she was in Z Cars in the early 1970s.
Steadman and Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine, 1989
REX
“She was a cow and a half, cruel. She would come up to me just before doing the take and say, ‘The producer doesn’t like what you’re doing, speak up!’ and left me there, tears swelling in my eyes, and he was going, ‘Nine, eight, seven, six …’ ” she says, eyes flashing even now at the memory. “I remember when she went to pick up her Bafta, she had a long frock on and as she was heading to the stage I was thinking, ‘Trip up!’ ” She’s dead now, but Steadman is too decent to name and shame her, even though it takes three seconds to find her on Google. “I can’t remember her name now,” she says, shrugging.
Advertisement
Instead of raking the coals, what Steadman also provides is an evocation of a more innocent Britain at the dawn of the 1960s. The youngest of three daughters to a housewife and the production controller for an electronics firm, she grew up in a three-bedroom home on a postwar housing estate, 15 minutes’ walk from Anfield football ground, in a loving, strait-laced family. “I remember being thrilled once because I saw a fox and saying to my dad, ‘It was running hell for leather.’ He said, ‘We don’t use that expression.’ ”
Steadman’s most rebellious teenage act was to defy her mother’s orders and spend Saturday lunchtimes watching an up-and-coming band called the Beatles perform at the Cavern Club, where the ticket price included a cup of tomato soup and a roll. “Mum was right, it was dangerous, it was underground and there was only one entrance and exit.” She and her friends once followed John Lennon and Paul McCartney into the post office.
With Pete Postlethwaite in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, 1992
ALAMY
“It was one of those old-fashioned ones with big desks and inkwells and nib pens. John was sitting there, dipping this pen in the ink, filling in this form, and Paul goes, ‘Hey, sign this for the girl,’ and gave him my book. Without even looking up he wrote ‘John Lennon’, handed it back and just carried on. Paul said, ‘Take no notice. He’s always like that.’ So I have John’s autograph with a nib pen. Paul wrote his with a Biro, those were the new things. He wrote ‘To Alison, love Paul’, and then said, ‘Here, give it back.’ He wrote ‘Beatles’ in brackets underneath. He said, ‘Otherwise in the future someone’s going to look at that and say, ‘Who the bloody hell’s Paul?’ ”
Where does she keep such precious autographs? “I’m not saying! Someone will be breaking in me house to get it!” she shrieks.
As Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, 1995
ALAMY
Her family may have been far from bohemian but they encouraged her acting talent. Her mother was always asking her to do impressions, often of the British comedian Hylda Baker. “I’d be, ‘Right. OK, up the stairs, get a coat on, a fox fur and a hat …’ ” She dissolves into fond laughter.
Advertisement
An average pupil at her grammar school, she stunned her careers adviser by announcing she wanted to act. “The only careers they ever suggested for girls were nurse, teacher, secretary. It was worse for the boys: at my drama school I’d say 70 per cent of them weren’t speaking to their parents, who wanted them to be doctors or lawyers, not actors.”
In contrast Steadman’s parents “waved me off with enthusiasm” when, aged 20, she moved to Essex to study at East 15 Acting School in Loughton. In her second year she met Leigh, who was a visiting director. They became a couple after he cast her in his 1973 Play for Today episode Hard Labour, and aged 27 she married him. For decades the couple worked together to create characters so recognisable they became part of the national consciousness.
With Jim Howick in Here We Go, 2022
BBC
There was drippy, nature-loving Candice Marie in the 1976 Play for Today classic Nuts in May. The following year in Leigh’s black comedy Abigail’s Party, Steadman was Candice Marie’s opposite: the monstrously insecure Beverly, inspired by various women Steadman had observed while living in Essex and a “silky-voiced” woman working on a make-up counter at Selfridges. The play, also recorded and abridged for the BBC, was such a hit that when Steadman gave birth to Toby, now 46 and an illustrator, the following year, she was established enough to take a year off work without worrying. “I loved being home with him. I loved watching him grab and learn things.”
Leo, a film-maker, was born three years later and Steadman informed her agent she wouldn’t work during the school holidays. “I said, ‘Don’t even show it to me, I don’t want to know what I’m missing.’ ”
As her sons grew up, she landed roles in the British hits A Private Function, Clockwise and Shirley Valentine, as well as working with Leigh in films such as Life Is Sweet, Secrets & Lies and Topsy-Turvy.
Advertisement
Holding her Olivier award for Little Voice, 1993
REX
Steadman is ferociously protective of her private life and no doubt mindful of her children’s feelings. She says she and Leigh “have always stayed friends” and see each other at events connected to their sons or work. “We saw each other at a recent screening of Nuts in May. We all went and then Mike took us out for lunch. It was lovely to be together.”
What Steadman never anticipated was that she would still be working long after her children had left home: into her fifties, sixties and now seventies. Gavin & Stacey, which ran on the BBC for three series between 2007 and 2010, plus some Christmas specials, endeared her to a whole new generation. Created by James Corden and Ruth Jones, it became one of British television’s most popular comedies.
She immediately knew she had to play the Essex mum Pam when she was sent the first script. “I could hear the voice, and it just clicked with me. She’s lying on the couch with cucumbers on her eyes. Gavin comes in and says, ‘You all right, Mum?’ and she says, ‘I’m not actually. I’ve been crying all afternoon, I’ve been watching this programme, this mother badger was crying because her babies had died.’ ‘Mum, badgers don’t cry.’ ‘Gavin, I know what I saw.’ I thought, I’ve got to do this.”
Steadman with her ex-husband, the director Mike Leigh, in 1991. They separated in 1995
ALAMY
She was determined to be involved in the upcoming Christmas special, even though there were potential clashes with other commitments. “No way José were they going to do it without me!” she exclaims, pronouncing José with a hard J à la Pam. “I’m dreading the final day of filming already. Even reading the script I got choked up thinking this will really be it this time. I love it, the writing is beyond good. All the characters get a fair share in the script, so everyone gets a turn to shine.”
Steadman is far too canny to be drawn on the subject of Corden, who spent eight years in the US hosting The Late Late Show before returning last year to the UK dogged with accusations of being “difficult”. All she will say is she and Elwyn have tickets to see Corden in his (now finished) run in The Constituent at the Old Vic. “I’ve been really busy doing this book but I thought, ‘Gotta see it.’ ”
She expected her career to be long over by now. “It was always, ‘Darling, if you can get beyond 40, you’re lucky.’ But the thing is, life doesn’t end at 40. We all keep living — well, not all of us, obviously — but that thinking comes from the days of when, unless you were gorgeous and glamorous, nobody wanted to know.” She fixes me with a wry look and cackles. “It’s all about men, isn’t it?”
She and Elwyn, who have never married, live in Highgate, north London, where they love birdwatching in the local woods. Elwyn has had the more run-of-the-mill patchy acting career — highlights include the role of Simon Staunton in HBO’s House of the Dragon. In a recent podcast he cheerily admitted his partner was more successful than him, adding it had only been an issue “every now and then. I’ve been called Mr Steadman maybe twice in 28 years.” Steadman refuses to be drawn on this, simply nodding and responding “Mmm” when the subject is brought up. She turns to the canal and changes the subject. “Ooh look, a baby coot! It was calling for its mum!”
If she becomes heated about anything it’s the environment: she shuns red meat and plastic bags. “I haven’t knowingly used a plastic bag for at least 18 years. I used to spend hours emailing Tesco and Sainsbury’s saying, ‘Why are you using plastic in your packaging?’ My son said to me, ‘Mum, they’re not taking any notice, they don’t even read those emails.’ I still despair, but now I just do as many petitions as I can.”
Steadman with her partner, the actor Michael Elwyn, last year
REX
Does she support Just Stop Oil? “I do but it worries me their campaigns are so over the top. Sometimes I can’t quite go along 100 per cent with them. So I’m just holding back on that.”
Occasionally Steadman’s continuing popularity can be overwhelming. Her sons recently told her off for stressing about how she would fit in Gavin & Stacey around filming the third season of the (excellent) BBC sitcom Here We Go. “But I don’t want not to work. That’s our job.” She admits she finds learning lines harder and harder, while she bowed out of stage acting a decade ago after a bout of stage fright. “You just get to an age where you think, ‘I can’t handle it. I’m not enjoying it any more.’ It was very sad and occasionally it still makes me sad, but that’s life.”
She has a few gripes about the physical downsides of ageing but says that simply to be still alive is a privilege. “And as we get older, we get more confident. I used to be so nervous, I’d get myself in terrible states. When I was 17 I went to a black-tie type dinner and I was terrified of picking up the wrong fork or drinking at the wrong time.” She hunches up and her eyes dart around. “I was sitting like this, watching people to see what they were doing. It was ridiculous. Now if I’m at a posh do, I do what I want, I drink what I want. If I want to put a fork in something like this then I will.”
Extract: Why I couldn’t turn down ‘Three Steaks Pam’
Ruth Jones and James Corden had mentioned they were writing something and that there was a role I might like, but beyond that I didn’t know much until they sent me a script. Pam, aka Pammalarr, was a gift of a part for me. The series was commissioned straight away by the BBC, which meant that James and Ruth had to get their skates on to write it. It wasn’t until I did a chemistry test with Larry Lamb that I knew who’d be playing her husband, Mick. The scene that we had to do together is one of my favourites from the first episode, let’s just call it the Three Steaks Pam scene.
It’s a classic that reveals the personalities of each character so quickly and precisely. Pam has three steaks on her plate as she’s on the Atkins diet and explains to Mick and Gavin, who are perplexed, that one is the actual steak and the other two are substitutes for chips and peas, which to Pam is completely logical.
Steadman and Larry Lamb in Gavin & Stacey, 2008
ALAMY
Mick’s having none of it, so much so that Pam pushes her plate away saying that if she eats it, she’ll be known for ever more as Three Steaks Pam. The irony is that people will often refer to her in this meaty way when they’re talking to me about the character. Larry and I had such a laugh, we were easy company with each other and all of us knew this was a relationship that would work on and off screen. We had worked together years before and had become friends.
I can remember thinking on our first day of filming together, “This is the beginning of the best job ever.” When Joanna Page came up to me and said in her lovely sing-song voice, “Hiya, I’m Jo and I’m playing Stacey,” I thought, “Oh my God, you are perfect, you are the best casting ever.” And then my little prince came over and in his understated, gentle way went, “Hi, I’m Mathew Horne (Gavin),” and again I thought, “And you’re perfect as Pam’s son and a perfect match with Jo.” It continued like that as all the characters came into the room. There was magic in the air and we all felt it.
I’m often asked, “Where does the character come from?” When it comes to Pamla, Pamalaar, Pammy or Pam, I have to say that it came from Ruth and James and their writing. My job was to lift it off the page and add colour to their black and white. They gave Pam some cracking one-liners, such as, “What you said then was really boring, I switched off after banana,” to Stacey. And, “You’re a leek-munching sheep shagger,” to poor Gwen. I especially love, “My little prince, you’re the victim of a victimisation.”
Then there’s the phrases that are in her DNA such as “Oh, my Christ” and “You and me are going to fall out today, Mick, Michael.” One of the wonderful things about Pamela is the conviction with which she says everything. Her many malapropisms feel completely correct and not to be doubted — ours
is not to question while!
There are many magic moments but one of my favourites is when she has just come back from the shops and is jamming ham into her mouth before anyone comes home as she needs to keep up the pretence of being vegetarian. Stacey comes in and says, “You’re eating ham, Pam.” It’s so simple and so funny. But what really cracks me up in the scene is Pam’s response when she goes into ye olde English and says, “Do you think ill of me my child?” and, “Promise me that thou shalt speak of this to no one, swear it, forsake me not.” Honestly, writing like that is such a delight.
© Alison Steadman 2024. Extracted from Out of Character (HarperCollins £25). Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk. Discount available for Times+ members