Miriam Margolyes Interview (2012)

we have to start by talking obviously about your love affair with uh with Dickens and I I I'm trying to think of something which epitomized your love affair with Dickens I think it was the time that you handled his pen and you actually wept didn't you tell me about that occasion I wonder what you were going to say uh I I was overcome with with the emotion of it I was do where were you do you remember yes I was in the New York Public Library in the Berg collection and there was the the actual pen that he enclosed with his hand and wrote and still it makes me feel a bit solemn and um you cried real old tears I did I I don't know it just came over me I was overwhelmed because I do love him very much and I do respect him and I also hate him what your first encounter with Dickens then the very first encounter was it little dor the very first first encounter was Oliver Twist when I was 11 as a school girl yeah and then later I had a professional interest but uh little doret you see I'm Jewish and Fagan uh is in Oliver Twist and that alerted me to the extraordinariness of dickins here was this character described as a slimy Jew crawling along the p ments and I'd never heard Jews discussed like that I mean maybe Christians think that's what they're like but I'd never heard that before and I was immediately hooked and then I started to laugh at him and that combination of evil and comedy is a particular deenan trait and one of his cleverness is that he can do that and from that I never left him from that I was hooked because then you said but I I was interested suddenly realizing because when you when you eventually um because you go to Cambridge don't you uh and you you're taught then by at Nim you're taught by Lis now Lis had a FR Lis the great sort of English critic had rather mixed ambivalent feelings about I mean at first he used to I think he used to say in the early days about Dickens that Dickens wasn't an author who deserved the attention of the serious mind I think he he changed later on but did he teach you Dickens did he talk to you about in fact his wife Queenie Queenie oh yes QD L she's included in the acknowledgements isn't she at the back of your latest book about Dickens women yes well when you were taught by the luses you never forgot it and she was the person who opened my intellectual life really and I will cherish her memory forever and yes Lis did change his mind that shows how great he was he wasn't one of those academics who just pursue one Groove and never get over it he changed his mind he realized that Dickens is part of the Great tradition of English novelists that he is someone worthy of real respect as a developed artist and I feel that too and he he taught us because at nunam Jean gooda was our supervisor and she got the Le is on board and they they allowed us to go and listen to his lectures because he was a Downing man and um Queenie actually came to nunam and talked and we went to their house in bolstad gardens and Queenie at the end of every term cooked the most fantastic cakes and biscuits and sweeties because she was Jewish he wasn't but she was Jewish so she knew how to cook no I knew Le was a bit because he came up to York eventually after having some sort of row I mean he was always having rows but what about the criticism of of Dickens and I'm thinking there was one I came across for example George George Meredith you know the the the author of the ego is talked about him as really a caricaturist you know that that he that there was nothing that corresponds with life now this business of caricature and character I'm sort of interested in the distinction because when you're doing these characters do you do you fight against the the notion of Dickens as a caric chist it's do you know what I mean he a car jurist I get so cross when people say that because it means that he's not real that he's not focused on on actually what people are like that he's pulling out one element of them out of out of dist in a distorted way he's not like that he builds true yes he builds big his characters are big but there are big characters in the world and I think the way that he does it is to focus perhaps on one element that they show and develop it but it's not caricature that is a distortion I think of his work as being revelatory he's exploring and he's digging into a character and they are real to me those characters are absolutely real but as you say they're large yes what's wrong with I'm large nothing you're tall what's wrong with that nothing at all but you say somewhere that you perhaps drawn to them because we've talked about you mentioned your jewishness already but perhaps being jewishness draws you a little bit to Outsiders and misfits those people who are outside the Orthodox straightforward class structure is this I agree with you completely that is true and he was outside the the class well he was in it actually at the lower middle was where he was rounded very difficult class to be in and I think he felt an outsider too that largess though that that that that sort of word because you've you've occasionally admitted that sometimes when you're playing these characters or when you're when you're filming or on the stage or whatever that you are used to hearing people say to you a little less m l less I am are you do you somehow feel sometimes almost that there's something too timid uh about the world I mean you almost as though you want to personally find a place in it for characters that are a bit larger yes I think that's true I I do feel occasionally somewhat tramed by the world around me and I wish to be untraveled so I think sometimes I'm pushing aside the boundaries of perhaps good taste or even of believability I believe but perhaps other people have a a slightly narrower view than I do a lot of a lot of this I mean your I mean I I've been admir of you in so many ways for so many years but so much of it lies in in voice and I want to just talk to you a little bit about because I know you place a great emphasis upon what voice tells you about people I mean you yourself a very fine voice was that Mary Plowman was it who was taught you elution elution my word you have done your research elution God Rest her dear soul I wondered what your voice was like before Mary flowman got her hands on you not unlike this I don't think remember I was born in Oxford I was conceived in an East End air raid and that's always there at the back boiling away but I was actually born in Oxford and Oxford has a particular voice and a particular arrogance I think and I demonstrate that perhaps unfortunately in my ordinary voice I know it's it's what what people call Posh and I don't particularly like that I find it useful because when I'm with Posh people I can sound like them and feel perfectly at home but it does cut me off a bit I think from everyone else does it betray you then because I I think the example that you once used when you were talking about the ways in which voices allowed you to sense the people the speaker was trying to emulate you use the example of Robert Maxwell because you said something about listenting to Robert Maxwell you could tell what he was trying to be don't you agree with that well I do yes yes because he was trying to be as English as he could he wanted to be an English gentleman yes and he was a Czech Bounder uh and he quite cleverly assumed the vowels of the English but there was something a little bit off always do so you listen in that way when you come across someone are you listening for the way in which the voice might contradict the character which is being suggested by clothes and by no I don't have that kind of skepticism about people as they present themselves but I am looking for Clues Clues to tell me where they come from what sort of Education they've had who their parents were what their politics are all those things are useful and they're all somewhere in the voice and if you if you listen hard enough you can find little Clues and that's fascinating to me it's not just the sound of the voice it's the rhythm of the voice isn't it because this is back to Dickens again because I think what you Relish in Dickens and I think I remember you citing something I think it is magwi uh magwitch's speech by magwi in Great Expectations that that his capacity to capture speech rhythms speech inflections he listened to people more perhaps than any other novelist in those times he was able to reproduce on a page the spoken sounds that he heard around him one of the things that is interesting is that he always makes uh Lower Class People transfer the the the letter V into W now we don't do that anymore cotney don't say very you know it's very nice they say very very nice but he heard it as as worry now I don't know whether that's what actually happened but I think it must have been because he was very accurate do you have because you're so interested in voice you can do so many voices do you are there some voices that you hear that you particularly love I I I'm thinking of say somebody like Dylan Thomas the sound of that voice those those voices are there are that's a wonderful wonderful sonorous expressive instrument and to hear him reading his own work well I I chose one of his records for my desert island when I did desert island discs because I think that is a magnificent voice very much like Richard Burton there's never been a voice like Richard Burton's it's a voice of Fire and Ice it's gripping and thrilling and masculine I absolutely admire that voice but I also like the ordinary voice the people that just talking my grandmother who was um a Scottish Jew born in Odessa well for me that was a very special sound that was the mixture of the two and I love that to me that brings back a whole world that's going now and when I was in Edinburgh recently and I talked to people there and in Glasgow where she lived nobody talks like that anymore it's all God they're dead they're all did which a paradox to which you're fully alert and Alive about Dickens doing Dickens women and about the Paradox of the fact that Dickens didn't understand women we we've got plenty of people who can testify to that not least his his his daughter Kate I think who was pretty and and his brutality we know about to his wife cther I mean we knew about this a bit before Clare Tomlin told us in more detail but I mean the descriptions that he gave of his wife and and as you yourself in the introduction to your [ __ ] women talk about the way he has recourse to stereotypes because of his inability to produce a complete woman you know was prepub unattainable grotesque the you know the longings those all those categories of women many of whom you you play in this but all of whom are not complet women in a way but then and this is you enter an excuse for him I think it's an excuse or you you say that all our relations depend upon our initial relations with our parents I mean to what extent do you think that gets him off the off the hook because yeah we had a bad time with his own mother didn't he yes I don't think it excuses but I think it explains I think he was daming DED a damaged psychology and I think it was his mother who damaged him but he allowed that to go on throughout his life and you know I I I think that's foolish and wrong I blame him for that but his mother treated him badly she was harsh in a way that he couldn't accept and and that somehow stimul ulated him emotionally to be able to write about children the way he did no one has ever written about children as Dickens did and he I think saw himself as a deprived child and because of that he was able to depict these moving children in in literature I don't like children very much but I like Dickens children children now let's talk a little bit if we may about about your mother we keeping in mind this reference that you made to Dickens and relations with your parents constitute your relations later on I mean she's called Ruth you just ballsy shrewd extrovert she left school at 14 um you absolutely adored her there some little suggestion a little indication that she might have been a little bit too extrovert even even you even accepted or slightly accepted the word later in life I think that she might have been just a tad vulgar yes I think she probably was actually but she had such Vitality that I never saw that until until later I mean I'm looking at her now through the prism of age which is a distorting influence on me as well and I'm also seeing her Through The Eyes of perhaps those around me she was big she was fat she was loud she was warm she was costic and she was embarrassing she would she was embarrassing she was well she when when we went to people's houses you know if I was invited or she was invited she'd pick up the plate and look at the back of it and say oh oh duon you know and she'd say you could you could get um £15 for that you know she would price everything and I think that is perhaps a little vulgar and I do that that so I'm I'm vulgar too and she was wonderfully pushy wasn't she because you got to yes I've got two instances which I think would just lovely one was the thing that you were invited by I don't know where the invitation came from really but you were invited by Augustus John how how old are you to go and pose I asked to go and pose for him you're being pushy I was the pushy one oh okay so you know I fell in love with him on television perhaps as people fall in love with you as you're doing this interview John Freeman a predecessor of yours in that kind of role he interviewed Augustus John in the face tof face program and I saw this wonderful old man boiling with with sexuality with power with with vision and I thought I want to I want to meet that man I want to do something for him how old are you marry mest 17 okay and I wrote to him and said I I'll model for you for nothing I didn't know that he wanted me to model nude I probably wouldn't have offered because I'd have been embarrassed because I've never been proud of my body it's a it's a shocking body but anyway I wasn't bad at 17 and um for some reason my parents allowed me to do it I never know why they your mom was a famous person and you were getting because I mean it's a bit like I because later on there's more purpose to it when your mom does the thing with Isaiah Berlin no less I mean first of all there you are posing for Augustus John but then you know around about this age as well your mother's meeting Isaiah bin and saying uh Miriam should be coming to Cambridge well the thing was Mommy was pushy for for those she loved she was pushy for me for my father she wasn't really pushy for herself she wanted me to succeed with all her heart and and in a way perhaps I have I I don't know if she would think that I'm now you know where I should be but she invited as Belin who was a patient of my father's and asked him directly if he would support my application for college entrance and of course he did what a reference I know well that's the point but how did she know being someone who had never had any schooling at all really left at 14 left at 14 how did she know know that Isaiah Berlin was somebody who would open every intellectual door she knew she was shrewd she had her ear to the ground in that way and she immediately knew this was the man to ask and so of course no no college would turn me down it wasn't that I was bright it was she was bright when we when you're talking about we're talking about your mother a lot and but of course good because she deserves to be talk but sort of that that does push your dad slightly into a shadow because I because your dad was less less easy to read more of a more of a mystery and you once said that he was always afraid that the door would shut in his face uh and as though he was a bit frightened and I'm not quite certain what he was frightened about I wonder tell me what what you meant when you talked about him in that way as being bit of a mystery I mean you you described your mother she's explicit she's extrovert you know you can see where she's coming from you know the sort of person she is but your father physician as you say difficult difficult to understand he was a shy quiet man and when he married he married into a an explosion and he didn't really know for the rest of his life how to deal with it she was huge in every way and he was having to deal with that and I think it was it was beyond him actually I think he found it difficult he adored her they adored each other they adored each other and they adored me and we were a I have described this as a fortress family but he he was desperately shy and quiet he didn't want to be noticed and my mother did and I do you know I'm upset if people don't notice me which is a bit pathetic actually but that's the truth you're the only child this in this Fortress family so you're the I there was there was even a suggestion that your mother didn't want to have any other children because no she didn't want child birth she didn't I'm amazed that they actually consumated the marriage to be honest a cousin of hers had died in child yes and I found out afterwards that was true yes they they had so she was terrified of sex in really and um I don't I don't know how much it played a part in my parents' life but if you you are the only child but it seems reading about about your childhood not just an only child but but you are an adored only child you know you are the focus of attention your parents cherished yes and even to the expense the expense of perhaps of if you not making friends uh because you're so much locked into the family I think oh no no no that's not that's not the case W your friends who complained you spent so much time with your family I couldn't get to see you my friends may have complained but I was never held back from friendship and one of the things I'm proudest of in my life is the friends that I have made all over the world I find it easy to make friends because i' I'm confident my parents gave me confidence and so I can reach out to people unafraid and I have wonderful friends no they never stop me from making friends they may have made it difficult for friends to come to my house but Mom was very hospitable her tomato sandwiches were the Talk of the Town they were I have never had tomato sandwiches the way mommy used to make them but it was it was a hot house intensity I'm still saying that it was much emotion was bubbling on the surface all the time you told your mother everything she told you everything yes yes absolutely I used to get into bed with Mommy every day every single day until she died until I left home anyway that and we would talk about the world and everything that we thought and people we shared everything she had a huge effect on me and we need this context don't we to understand I mean a very rather familiar perhaps over rehearsed story about you is the way that you know when you tell your mother that you're gay then you know shortly afterwards I mean three days later she has a stroke but you know when some people I think hear that story they think well you know why did she tell her mother but you've already explained that this is a you are used to telling each other everything and then here so therefore it is not it is not unusual it's not strange it's not uh it's not a barent in any way to tell her about this I can't hold back from anything I'm telling you everything that's the way I was brought up to be open most people are brought up to be closed but I wasn't and therefore it was natural for me to talk to my mother about everything and I think that's right I think people should I don't think people should have secrets from each other so I defend absolutely the way I was brought up I think I was spoiled I was indulged too much that's where they were wrong they they loved me too much but they didn't stop me from having friends I mean I always think and I think perhaps you do now a little bit that you blame yourself or too much or you see the stroke as too much related to the Revelation but Ian I know know that I mean afterwards it it was really the aftermath where because probably your mother wanted you to have a conventional Jewish marriage it probably wasn't necessarily the revelation of your sexuality so much as the loss of that Prospect I wonder you know but anyway but but moving on from that you then had of course seven years in which your your mother's in a in a wordless prison someone who spoke so much and so exuberant is silent and you spend seven years looking after him it's something I fear that I would be visited by a stroke as my mother was it's a it's in a way a wrong a wrong word for what it is a stroke sounds a very affectionate gentle thing that a stroke of the s that my mother had is a blow it is a a catastrophe that failed her in in a moment and it was the worst time of my life you still had the sense did you and I mentioned this because I have a have a close friend who recently had a stroke so I'm seeing this myself did you sense that her that her brain that she was Artic that that thoughts were there in her brain but simply she had the an incapacity to communicate them did you feel that she was as it were mentally living still no even though no she she she wasn't brain dead she did have thoughts but she didn't have thoughts the way you and I do she didn't have fleeting coherent thoughts she had long agonizing difficulties and it it was absolutely horrific and I will I will never get over it it's always at the back of my mind that the fear that that could happen to me because it's a medical thing but but it gave me a sense of the tragedy of life and perhaps without that I would have been a very trivial person and I don't believe I am a trivial person now but I could have been without that and yet you say so we were talking before about I mean I mentioned about friendship and you and and I understand you bridled the the sort of implication that perhaps your parents were stopping you making friends or something but but you did describe after your mother died you said that it was something of a Liberation and I when I first read that I thought oh I know you what you're talking about is the the fact that you know you don't now have to to look after and she's freed from this business of being in this wordless prison but you go on to say that because if she'd been alive she might have wanted to interfere in the relationship that you had with your partner and that she might have that she she might have wanted to break that up yes I believe she would have mommy knew no bounds or No Boundaries she would have done that she would have because she would have felt it was wrong she felt homosexuality was a an aberration uh something not exactly disgusting but pitiful and she would not have accepted it in me she simply would not have accepted it and I don't agree with that I think you're born or it it comes upon you and you go with it I wouldn't dream of being gay or straight I'm who I am and that was the path that I took and that's where I am and I and I defend it and I don't in a way I don't have to defend it that's it you know that's where we are but mommy would not have accepted it how much your parents still with you how much do do you still remember them and you've done a great deal of geneological re research haven't you you've gone back into I mean your father died in 1995 I think he was 96 years old and you spent years looking after him as you did with your mom but I think I found it a bit difficult to trace this but you because you're because your father's family comes from bellus right and you've actually I managed to find something you traced him back to was it grodno in uh in in bellarus was that the town the family the family yes my father was born in Glasgow you you've got you've got you but you you spent a long time going around trying to find the root yes oh yes yes I'm very interested in doing that you ask how much my parents are with me that's the answer still yes you've I wonder if I wonder if I could put it like this do you some people have perhaps said to you I have an idea that your therapist once said to you that you should try to be a bit more objective about them did you take that advice yes and no up to to a point up to a point but how can I be objective about people I love I'm not objective it's not human I can criticize them but I love them and I love them still and they gave me life my goodness how can I be critical I'm going to be a vulgar I've got to be a vulgar Freudian here though because this is the idea of you being the Eternal child you know where I'm going I think the little statement that I think your therapist made was said that you were a talented toddler age seven her task was to try to get you to the age of 12 and you were talking before about Dickens having you know being able to see through the eyes of a child I'm just trying to put this together I mean there is something is this about something child like or something childish that you still want to retain you start I mean when you admire Dickens being able to see through the eyes of a child I mean sometimes when I watch you particularly on somewhere like a chat show people say oh could hens look what she said and I said yes but she's being naughty uh she's she's the child at the at the Tea Party and you know and she's farting at the Tea Party now I love it I love it I mean I know I farted here have I you're lucky now we might we might wait till later on but you see oh I don't think she know no I said no no no she's disingenuous uh that's in a way what I I know you love the physical part of your life and I I've read that being shocking is one of the ways in which you say you get rid of nerves if you could produce an effect all of a sudden you're in charge and in control a little tiny bit but is that is that is there something childish something impish something about [ __ ] up the Tea Party about about this well I yes I I I suppose there is I mean I think I I I have got um you made me cry actually um think about Dy no it's all right I just WIP um I I I think there is something a bit childish or childlike about me but I mean so what I mean that's who I am I'm perfectly capable of being adult and severe and quite unpleasant on occasion but yes and I I don't mind that that bit of the Imp I think it's quite useful and I have fun it's quite fun sometimes to see people reeling back in shock when I've said something uh but you know sometimes there's no harm in that I don't want to hurt anybody ever about people you don't like haven't you you've always said these are the people I like and these are the people that I don't get but it's good to be clear so much is obfuscated in life I like it to be clear I don't mean that you can't allow ambivalence and you can allowed also change as Lis did when he took Dickens on board but I do like a certain Clarity in my relationships and in all things and I force it on people occasionally but in the wonderful world of Showbiz it's very unusual to find someone who is prepared to say that they star they're working alongside in a film is dull and dreary and tedious or whatever isn't it that's S I suppose it is because we come on and say how wonderful everybody is yes and on the whole I think it's nice if you can be positive if you can find a positive angle about somebody do it mommy used to say that she said don't speak ill of people always speak good of them if you can I speak well of them now there's another area of explicitness where you've got into some trouble a much more serious area in a way than that of you know personal dislikes and grudges this is over over Israel uh and over attitudes to Israel I mean you've said I'm I am I'm a proud and an ashamed Jew which is as I read you a response to those Pro very pro-israeli groups who want to say that anybody who speaks out about anything that's going on in Israel should be ashamed of themselves because they are really denying something about their own identity I mean you've gone out you've gone to refugee camps with action AG you've gone to a place like saio and you've pronounced that nobody in the world should have to live like this when you've seen it but I've even found out on the internet that there was some Jewish group wanted to come and picket the theater where you were appearing because they wanted to draw attention to what they saw as your unreasonable criticism of Israel yes it was when I was performing at the Arts Depot in Finchley which is a a new venue to me and and a rather nice one uh but it is of course in Finchley which is the the area where a lot of Jewish people live I live in clam I would like to make that clear uh and um I was astonished to learn I didn't know it when I was performing because I went into the theater early and this demonstration was going on outside but it was quite vehement and a member of the audience who was supporting me was actually arrested and subsequently released because he he' never been in trouble with the police before and I don't know who he was even but um yes it is a very difficult area for me it's a difficult one and and I have to be unusually careful about about what I say because I don't want to make things worse I want to make things better but what I would say is if you go to the west bank and to Gaza and you see the effect of the Israeli occupation on the people and the way that the occupation is being carried out whoever you are you would be appalled and that this is not good for Israel publicly and privately and it should be stopped and the only way I can see that we can stop it is if if the diaspora the people not in Israel bring pressure to bear on the Israeli government and say you can't do this this is wrong and it is contrary to everything that that Jewish people believe about how to treat others I think we have already lost the propaganda war and I think we deserve to lose it we remember I'm saying we because I have to stand alongside Jewish people because I am one so my my beef if you like is with Jews with Israelis I can only speak to them I can't speak to Arabs or Palestinians only as a as an outsider and it would seem to me to be perhaps impertinent to do so but I'm a Jew and I want Jews to be good and fine and and as I believe they always used to be and Israel is an Abomination at the moment and it's not an easy thing to say and it's brought me a lot of trouble especially from people that I love like Moren Lipman who is a fellow artist a magnificent person and somebody who publicly has castigated me for my opinion which she has every right to do as do the people who demonstrated against me they have every right to demonstrate and I believe that I have the right to say what I say it is not a comfortable position to be in but I believe that I am telling the truth and I will not stop when I've spoken about this matter to other people on this program in particular Howard Jacobson and Frederick Raphael I may I must be careful not to misinterpret them but I think that what concerns them is the fact that a criticism of Israel can be taken up by those people who are anti-semitic and they can use this as an opportunity to voice what are essentially anti-semitic opinions of course this can't be can't can't be said of you but do you do you feel there is a danger that attacks upon Israel uh I'm talking about verbal attacks you political attacks propaganda attacks upon Israel can be used to disguise anti-Semitism without doubt they're absolutely right that doesn't excuse making a a I mean of course there are anti-semites it's a very real thing anti-Semitism I've experienced it loathsome as it is but I can't hold back a criticism because it might be used against Jews generally speaking I don't accept that I think if you see something is wrong you have to speak out against it whoever is doing the wrong it's like the Catholic Church covering up the horrific pedophilia that was endemic throughout the church it's the coverup that is shocking and I feel it's a very similar thing I will not be silent to turn away from that it always seemed to me that um you have not been allowed or not been credited with sufficient seriousness um I sometimes I wonder if it's partly your fault it's partly your fa I'm sure because you you put in I mean you so many magnificent performances and you you win Awards the Age of Innocence I'm just think and and endgame as well I mean uh that was with Mark Ryland wasn't it yes yeah I mean I mean performances and Simon mcburn and Tom hickey yes yes I mean performances like that you know very much very widely pred and yet somehow well I don't know it's the old but but you know the national hasn't called or you know you haven't been and I get when I read what you have to say about this that you do feel in the way that you wish that that more serious side of you that that that capacity to play those sorts of Parts had had been recognized is that is that is is that true oh yes I I think it is mind you there's many actresses who would say that they haven't had the career they wanted and and that that's true but yes I I feel that it is my fault uh because I've been a funny little person and perhaps maybe I'm not good enough you know maybe I really am not in the top draw and that is also possible but of course you don't want to think that about yourself no I have been asked to to go to the National recently and I I I wasn't free to to do it I wasn't able to do it I I have been asked uh to go to the RSC many years ago but not recently and yes I would like to be considered a proper actress not just a funny little came Ro you only go on being naughty naughty Miriam for well naughty Miriam as a as a human being perhaps because that is obviously it's a part of who I am but I am capable of delivering proper purs proper performances and I'd like to be considered as such but you know you you you take it as it comes there you are I mean these big Hollywood films you know you know Le Leonardo DiCaprio you know Barbara he knows me yes yes he knows you you know but I me do you still well perhaps this is just me this is just provincial boy talking but you know the idea suddenly you know you're escorted in and here's Barbara stren and you she comes up to you and says Ah hi hello how are you today I mean isn't this wonderful isn't this rather lovely to know all these people of course it and your good friends people like Maggie Smith Rowan Atkinson all the people that you particularly like I know well I mean I've worked with them you see that's what well I wouldn't say that they're friends I would I I think Maggie Smith would be appalled if she thought I was described as a friend of hers say a friend well she's very nice but I didn't know that I'd want to spend a lot of time with her really um no I I I have other other close friends I know a lot of people like we all do in the business I don't think celebrities are friends of mine they they are in a in a higher plane and I wouldn't presume we should say here that your mother and father were together for 43 years and that you have been with your present partner we're not going to into details because I know that you don't want to but it's worthwhile saying that you've been with her for longer than that now I think it's about 44 yes yes yes longer you've beaten your mother you've beaten your mother and father Rel and there's a little mirror image here as well I think because in a way we we're talking that this is uh a relationship of contrast like your own parents because you are your mother your partner is much in terms of characteristics much more academic much more uh yes she's a much finer person than I am I I wonder that she's put up with it really but yes I'm very blessed I'm very blessed I think life is sweeter shared and I have been able to share my life with a magnificent person who prefers to take a a quieter role than I do and so I don't mention her name and publicly appear with her but that's her wish um and those who know me know who she is and and she's wonderful and and um wise and sharp and Australian you last line I'm going to give you is one of your lines and it's it's slightly sad line but it's a lovely line perhaps an epar for you in which you once said you were regretting perhaps the lack of leads of the national you just mentioned you've been approached by the and you said I may have to settle for the smiles I've got nice phrase do you mean that can you settle for that no I want more and we'll see what the next few years brings but at least I've had a chance to talk to you and that's a lovely thing and I've been very honest with you and I might regret it afterwards looking at this if I ever get to see it but I'm I'm I'm glad of the opportunity to set something straight uh not my sexuality but no I want my epito to be that I made a difference

Channel: VHSfx

Views: 227,688

Keywords: Miriam Margolyes, Film (Media Genre), charles dickens, jewish, judaism, harry potter, blackadder, Theater, actress, actor, stage, accents, oxford

Id: T3M7VvxXPXw

Length: 44min 6sec (2646 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 28 2014