It is said she has a face like an English sky -
turning from spring rain to summer sunshine to leaden
grey in no time at all. And Miranda Richardson has
certainly made the most of her intensity during a career
that has seen her master comedy, terror and tragedy. On
screen she has a remarkable way of channelling intensity
and eccentricity into her characters, usually women
walking a fine line between despair and control.
No-one is better than this 39-year old Lancashire-born
actress at delving into the emotions that can unhinge
people, then playing with them in front of the cameras.
She did it so well depicting the edgy murderess Ruth
Ellis in Dance With A Stranger, the betrayed woman in
Louis Malle's Damage, the tragic Vivienne Haigh-Wood in
Tom And Viv, and last year in Robert Altman's Kansas City
she played a woman escaping alonely marriage in a bottle
of dope. And yet it is for her wickedly infantile Queen
Elizabeth in Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder TV comedy series
that she is still best known in Britain. In Robert
Duvall's The Apostle, in cinemas from June 12, Richardson
has one of her most low key roles in years. She plays a
secretary who has a gentle romance with Duvall's
guilt-ridden Pentecostal preacher.
A very private person away from the film set or stage,
the actress is remarkably pale and unassuming in person.
Her eyes give away that characteristic flicker if she
finds a question awkward. There's no mistaking that a
very able brain is busying itself behind those blue eyes.
"I mean, it's constantly busy up here," she
says, pointing to her forehead. "But I can't answer
how I come across to other people really."
Richardson has consistently done good work, and part of
the reason must be that she likes to surprise audiences.
"The old definition of a star is someone who is
comforting. You know exactly what you're going to get
from them. I don't know if people ever know what they're
going to get from me."
She is usually sent any half-decent scripts going because
of her reputation as one of the finest actresses around.
"I've been working long enough now to have some
choice, which is fabulous. Working mainly in England I'm
used to working between genres so I don't feel any
stigma. "I also love comedy because everything is a
challenge," she adds. "Comedy, if you get it
right, feels really satisfying. I think if you can do
comedy well you can do just about anything."
Richardson had a middle class upbringing in Southport,
the daughter of an Oxford-educated businessman. She
established an early name for herself in theatre and
television before breaking through into films in 1985
with Dance With A Stranger. She isn't sure how she came
to be an actress. "Perhaps a lack of good
judgement," she smiles. "I had a hell of a
start with Dance With A Stranger, it was a fantastic part
to be able to begin with." "I like the vagaries
of filming. You can try a scene again and again. In
theatre you have to wait another night to be able to have
another go at it. I do like the sort of immediacy of
film."
For many people, her most visible role was as an
eccentric Queen Elizabeth I in the television series
Blackadder. "It was her infantilism that I so
enjoyed," she says. The wickedly unhinged quality of
that character only fed into a public image that the
actress has been battling with ever since.
The Hollywood studios appear to be a little unsure what
to do with her talent for playing women walking the
difficult line between scorn and edgy sensuality. Not
wanting to feed too much into this, she turned down the
sinister role taken by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.
"I know some people think I'm difficult, sort of
distant and cold. Sometimes I'm simply scared, so I'm
misunderstood. I'm actually shy, like most people, but
I'm willing to take chances."
She likes to keep a relatively low personal profile,
carefully guarding her privacy, living as she does
quietly in South London with her two cats. "To relax
I do some gardening and read a lot. I don't watch a great
deal of television. That's probably it. I also
sporadically run and use this thing that was set up to
help injured dancers. Instead of using weights you use
this frame that makes you resilient. * It's a kind of
fusion of mind and body. I also do yoga."
She now says that writing is a possible new direction for
the future, but adding - characteristically modestly:
"I'd love to think so, but thinking about it is one
thing and doing it is another. I would love to have a
really passionate idea, but it hasn't quite happened
yet."
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Created by Clive
Sarney
e-mail to sarneyc@senet.com.au
This page created June 14th, 2001;
last modified June 14th, 2001
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