Zoe Wanamaker - British stage actor - Interview

Interview, April, 1999 by John Heilpern

JH: You seem rather vital and chirpy. But maybe you're a secret brooder and depressive. Are you?

ZW: I have been. At the moment I'm very happy, and Electra is part of that. And I love being in New York; it's the first time I've felt at home here. I was born here, but I've lived in England since I was three.

JH: To the audience, Electra seems like an incredibly emotionally draining experience for you. Now, there are two possibilities: One is that you are pretending, and then, like John Gielgud at the end of a performance, you put on your snappy Saville Row suit and go off to an elegant restaurant. But given your background, which is Method acting, maybe you are not pretending that much and the experience is genuinely draining. For all I know, though, when the curtain comes down, you may go into the night tap-dancing.

ZW: Not at all. It has been exhausting, so I've been a monk while I have been here. I haven't been going out at night. I've been resting before the shows. When I was doing the play in London, i went to the gym every day for an hour. No more than an hour, because I hate it. I don't enjoy exercise unless I'm going dancing in a disco or a club. [laughs] It's only fear that makes me do it, fear that I may not be ready physically or mentally.

JH: What else do you do to prepare for the role?

ZW: Well - and I'm telling you a secret now - there seems to be a film in my head that I use every night. I automatically run through various images of my parents, and that feeds me for the entire show.

JH: When the curtain comes down, what then?

ZW: Then the film's gone. But it's done terrible things to my sex life. [laughs] My husband has been coming from London to visit, but even when he's here I cannot let go of what's going on. I think that happens with every show, but it's particularly true with Electra.

JH: Method actors Identify psychologically with the role, right? But if this were true would it mean that you were In love with your dad and wished to kill your mother?

ZW: Bollocks! [laughs] You don't actually have to kill somebody in order to understand what murder is.

JH: George Burns said about acting, Once you learn how to fake it you've got it made.

ZW: He's right. I wish I could do that. I was never able to cry onstage before because I couldn't fake it. Now, maybe because both my parents are dead and I can let go, the tears pour out of me.

JH: The Polish drama critic Jan Kott said that the nature of acting wes real tears and fake emotion. You seem to be saying the reverse, that the emotion has to he real. And that's the power of your Electra. We absolutely believe your agony.

ZW: My parents were both trained in the Method. They were among the first actors to attend Lee Strasberg's classes. And their strictures about acting were always about being true, real, honest. And the Central School [of Speech and Drama, in London], where I studied, was never as good as what my parents had taught me. It wasn't strict enough, it did not have a method. For the English the method is: Do a bit of singing, a bit of dancing, a bit of tumbling, and then off you go! [laughs] So for six or seven years I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know diddly-shit! I splashed about, not knowing what the hell was going on because I'd had no instruction.