‘Everyone must have a voice’

Marianne Gray talks to the down-to-earth Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn about her latest film

Brenda Blethyn doesn’t really understand why people continually ask her why she plays dowdy, often downtrodden characters, like Cynthia, the despairing mother in Secrets & Lies, or James McAvoy’s heartbroken mother in Atonement, or Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, who horse-trades her daughters. Or, indeed, like her latest role, the anxious Elizabeth, an ignorant, conservative, prejudiced woman, in London River.

‘I just don’t see it like that,’ says Blethyn, who has made a brilliant career out of playing understated, restrained women. ‘Everyone must be portrayed. Everyone must have a voice, even the flawed ones. I don’t try to smooth out the edges. I try to present people as honestly as possible, even if I wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon with them.’

We meet in London and spend part of a pleasant afternoon together. She has just finished work in Edna O’Brien’s Haunted at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, a play the actress describes as a ‘feast of language, with words that reach the parts other plays don’t’.