Diary – 28 February 2004

I’ve always considered myself a working actress and like about 98 per cent of my fellow thespians spend a great deal of time ‘resting’ involuntarily. It therefore irks when great swaths of the media refer to actors disparagingly as ‘luvvies’ and represent us as parasites and people who love swanning around and dressing up. I’ve just started rehearsing Full Circle with the nicest, most hardworking and dedicated group of people you could find, and that is how I’ve found most actors to be. Because they love working in a vastly overcrowded profession, they often get paid far too little. For rehearsing six days a week, eight hours a day, and often spending extra hours going to fittings and learning lines, we are all receiving the Equity minimum of just over £300 a week, which is a lot compared with a pensioner’s £102 per week, but I believe is on the low average means of the nation and certainly a complete joke when compared with my accountant’s sum of £650 an hour! However, and according to the distinguished theatre director Stephen Daldry, when Jane Root, controller of BBC2 (earning, I’m sure, far beyond Equity scale) deems the Olivier awards — where the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Kevin Spacey, Maureen Lipman, Ross Kemp, Anita Dobson, Lee Evans, Richard Wilson and Joan Plowright were presenters and honorees — as being ‘not worthy of televising’, I really must ask, was it because no one was prepared to flash their boobs?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Archibald Leach.