Three years ago, I started employing actors, when I had my first play in the Brighton Fringe. I always think they slightly disapprove of me as I’m a fidget and tend to leave rehearsals early (as I remarked to my husband and co-writer of the latest one as we hightailed it off to the pub one day after only an hour of watching our cast run lines: ‘We didn’t ask them to sit in the room and watch us write the ruddy thing, did we?’) but I love to observe them. In fact, I find it almost too affecting an experience, which could explain my reluctance to watch them too much. That and being a booze-hound.
I even made up a word, ‘limberessence’ – a fusion of limbo, limbering up and luminescence – which describes that perfect moment between privacy and performance. You can see it in that photo of a tiny Carrie Fisher sitting at the side of the stage watching her mother Debbie Reynolds perform, or Monroe and Russell between takes in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Jane looking in the mirror and Marilyn drinking a Coke, or Brigitte Bardot in full costume sitting on her sister’s lap on-set reading a newspaper. I can’t quite explain why I find it so beautiful, but I’m hoping to one day.
An actor who doesn’t want to be looked at makes about as much sense as a singer who doesn’t want to be heard
Is it something to do with the sorrowful combination of being forever hopeful in the toughest profession to gain employment in? (Around 90 per cent of actors can’t find work in their preferred field.) Contrary to the received wisdom about thespians being tough hustlers, one thing I’ve noted over the past few years is that actors are the opposite of writers. We tend to be rotters and dirty realists; they tend to be dreamers – though sometimes a bit dirty too. Writers, good ones, were born ‘jagged with sophistication’ as Amanda in Private Lives describes herself; for example, I remember as a 12-year-old never dreaming about getting married (and my parents union was idyllic, so it was nothing to do with my upbringing) but instead fantasising about being a ‘divorcee’ which I found the most mesmerising word in the world. But there’s a part of even the most reprobate actor that is always a child, excited about Let’s Pretend and dressing up and finding The One. (I’ve never heard a first-rate writer talk about The One.)
It’s because of this affection that when I read an actor moaning about their success, I feel quite cross. Recently I’ve read both 77-year-old old veterans like Brian Cox, talking of his role in Succession (‘One thing I have lost is my anonymity, which I prized… it is a double-edged sword. The success, I am not going to knock it, but at the same time everybody knows who I am now’) and newcomers like 33-year-old Josh O’Connor, talking of his role in The Crown (‘I found it so impactful, people stopping me. You want to be in stuff that’s successful and seen, but I think sometimes we underestimate how powerful even a slight loss of anonymity can be’) similarly griping about how horrid it is to be one of the fortunate 10 per cent. And let’s not forget poor Paul Mescal who told the Times last year that he would be ‘profoundly depressed’ if he was in a film which was so big that people stopped him in the street. Good job he didn’t star in a blockbuster like Gladiator 2, then – sorry, yes he did. ‘If the film impacts my life in that way, I’ll be in a bad spot. I’d have to move on and do an obtuse play nobody wants to see.’ Well, so long as he doesn’t get his penis out on prime time TV, he surely stands a chance of passing under the radar? Sorry, he already did, in Normal People.
What is wrong with these people? An actor who doesn’t want to be looked at makes about as much sense as a singer who doesn’t want to be heard. But there are so many of these Sham Hams around. Some of them are just naturally miserable, but some of them you do feel have a bad case of sour grapes about various things they blame the newspapers for; Brian Cox was an extremist Remainer, for example, who obviously revelled in mouthing off on Question Time about the subject, with very little care for his precious ‘anonymity’. Steve Coogan has made headlines for everything from romping with glamour models on money-strewn beds (‘Lie on them. Go on, lie on them’) to attempting to keep his vast fortune intact by taking full advantage of the pandemic furlough scheme for the gardener and housekeeper at his £4 million mansion (a year after starring in a film called Greed) while poor old Hugh Grant never got over having his anonymity blown by Divine Brown.
The latest to join the cavilling chorus is the writer and star of Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd, who detailed his stalking, sex life and forced sodomy in a way that gave rise to more trigger warnings than a rifle range. Yet he’s now at this where-is-my-precious-anonymity lark too, telling the Guardian: ‘I still don’t think of myself as famous… I went to see the Pogues the other day and I went into a pub beforehand, naively thinking that I could just go in and sit down with some friends. But it was bedlam, it was chaos – people coming up all the time, sharing stories and talking about the show and how it affected them. I kind of thought, oh, I can’t really go into pubs any more and expect to sit there quietly in a corner and have some food… I don’t Google the show or myself. I still keep a quiet life, but I have noticed the crazy part of it, the sudden public attention with people coming up to me and the sudden feeling that there’s more eyes on me all the time.’ Where on earth has he been living, not understanding how fames works?
I do think that actors tend to be worse than actresses when moaning about public attention (with the exception of extreme chumps like Kristen Stewart, who memorably compared being papped with being raped) because actresses accept that movie stars only exist because of desire; when they show up wearing next to nothing on red carpets, they are acknowledging that they need to literally have flesh in the game in order to metaphorically have flesh in the game. But on the other hand, female celebs, actresses included, can be the most shameless in promoting their talent-free nepo-babies. People used to be cut off by their families for going into acting, so disreputable was it; now stars make sure their kids get a foothold in the industry, blatantly disproving their claims that fame is horrid, because if it was, why would you subject your children to the same horrible experience?
Is this high-handedness just an extension of class privilege? It’s undeniable that a higher proportion of public schoolboys and girls become successful actors now than ever before, and maybe they feel it inappropriate to be caught by oikish audience making exhibitions of themselves, so they pile on the agony to play down their indiscreet desire to show off. But performers, by their very definition, want to be looked at by strangers; this might feel shaming to them, as the phrase ‘attention-seeker’ is very obviously an insult. Best own up to it, as I do when accused of it – it really isn’t the worst thing to be.
It’s not half as bad as being a hypocrite, for example. The fact is that fame is highly enjoyable. If you don’t want it, go and get a job that won’t bring it. If you moan about attention, it won’t stop you receiving it; the only outcome will be a kind of Barbra Streisand effect, in that whereas you might have attracted attention in the past for being a good actor, now you will be known as that privileged, pretentious poltroon who doesn’t know when he’s well off. Next time you embark on your latest I-want-to-be-anonymous publicity campaign, remember Meghan and her Worldwide Privacy Tour. And remember what Mae West – one of the greatest stars, yet one of the least pretentious, said – ‘It’s better to be looked over than overlooked’.
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