Like an Olympic Athlete; a lifetime of training for one perfect moment

Here are some pics and a 6 second Vine from Closer Than Home,  a short film set in the 1950s that I was filming in Southampton mid the crazy mid February winds! What attracted me to this part was the chance to play a 1950’s period piece as a yummy mummy with ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf’ Elizabeth Taylor level alcoholic rages. Yes that is me doing a selfie with my red spotted iPad, 1 second in!! *If you have never seen the 1966 ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf’ it is a must, both Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are incredible in it. Raw real acting. The play by Edward Albee is powerful stuff but no wonder it had 13 Oscar nominations and Liz Taylor won the Oscar for Best Actress for.

So nice that in the first 6 weeks of 2014 my yummy mummies are getting more and more out of control. I think my favourite part was staggering out in my red dress, kitten heels and full 1950s hair and makeup in the truly horrendously cold storm winds on the coast swigging a bottle of champagne with one hand. Of course at the beginning of the first take the bottle was so heavy to swig that as I drunk out of it, I managed to tip champagne into my eye and felt it gush over my face and dress and then had to continue blind drunk, literally, to fall over and finish the scene. I felt like an Olympic Athlete; a lifetime of training for one perfect moment. From the feedback I got, my champagne drunkenness was fab, I haven’t seen the rushes but if it was, it’s thanks to my decades of drinking the stuff. Not that I have ever managed to pour it in my eye before.

Oscar the location cat was beautiful but less fond of us crew and cast than we were of him.  Oscar’s owner and the location provider was amazingly helpful to the cast and crew, not just giving us lifts and his home but also serving his champagne for the film scene.  Champagne de Bleauchamp sponsors a lot of the film festivals including the London Film Festival.  I also had a six hour, three train journey with my ‘husband’, as opposed to the 2 hour direct trip it should have been without the rains so at least I got to know the man I had to hate and love in equal measure that weekend durinh filming. It is part of the weird actors life that my Valentine’s Day was spent having a morning audition playing a wife about to poison her husband and then meeting a stranger at Victoria station at 2pm Valentine’s Day to travel to the set.

In that funny small world of actors and film, Karl Churchill my ‘husband’ turned out to have done a music video with Doug James. Doug played the lead in the feature film ‘The Jewel Of The Balkans’ that it is being screened at the end of Feb at the Curzon Soho that I was in. Plus Ellie McAlpine, this weekend’s  ‘Daughter’  of mine is great friends with Grace Calder, who played my daughter in the Victorian period drama in 2013 Through The Fire as they went to the same university, York. As always once you start talking to actors, directors and crew you realise how small a world it really is!! Karl was involved as he has worked with James Lyndon from Worn And Torn Films before.

Nadir Najim was very on it as a Director of Photography, and all the crew including Director Bhavi Satkunarasa that had to stand outside and film in truly horrendous conditions are to be recommended for bravery!!