'I'd have given up every word I've ever written...if I could've had a child of my own'
Half a century ago, Lynda La Plante was working as a waitress in a cafe in Regent’s Park. ‘It was a beautiful sunny day and I suddenly saw a navy blue Bentley with white leather upholstery driven by a woman wearing a straw hat and with a little boy as a passenger.
‘As the car passed, I thought to myself: “I’m going to have one of those one day.” And so it came to pass.’
A fan of cars, Lynda, 71, now has her Bentley Continental as well as a Saab convertible, a Range Rover and a Smart car, ‘the definition of brilliant design. If someone asked me to do an advert for it, I’d do so for free. I absolutely love it.’
We are chatting in her beautiful house in Kingston, Surrey. She is the best of company, combining a writer’s ability to tell a story with the flair of a former actress to put it across with conviction and humour.
She makes no apology, she says, for enjoying the considerable wealth she’s accrued from her novels and TV series, the most popular of which, Prime Suspect, was a hit around the world, handing its star, Helen Mirren – and this is something she herself acknowledges – what turned into a flourishing film career.
‘The producers wanted another actress, but I’d seen Helen on the stage and I knew how gifted she was,’ Lynda says. ‘So I stuck to my guns and, if I may say so, I was right.’
Dame Helen is also on record as saying that some of the notes Lynda gave her to play the role of Jane Tennison proved helpful. For example: ‘I said Jane wouldn’t smile, she wouldn’t touch anybody and nor would she fold her arms in front of her because that sends out an aggressive message that you’re the boss whereas you want to appear open; you want to encourage people to share information with you.
‘I also told her to keep her voice on an even level. Jane was a woman in what was a very masculine world back then so she didn’t want to sound shrill.’ Helen took all of this on board, says Lynda. ‘So, if it’s the case that I gave her a gift, the reverse is also true.
‘She’s proved without doubt that not only is she a consummate actress but she’s also shown that a woman of a certain age can be feminine, sexy, attractive in every way. And I don’t know the name of her stylist but she deserves a pat on the back. I think Helen looks better with every year that passes.’
Lynda is a dab hand when it comes to identifying new talent. Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Paul Bettany, Ralph Fiennes, Idris Elba – all were spotted by Lynda and her casting director younger sister, Gill Titchmarsh, before they became household names and all were cast in La Plante TV series. ‘I love fresh faces. In my opinion, half the success of Scandinavian thrillers like The Bridge is down to the fact that we don’t know any of the actors involved. It means you follow the story rather than the so-called star.’
She’ll be putting her preferred way of casting to the test when her next project reaches the small screen, as it surely will. Jane Tennison is to make a comeback but not in a way that can involve Helen Mirren.
Prime Suspect was shown on ITV from April 1991 to October 2006. The last episode, Prime Suspect: The Final Act, pulled in more than 7 million viewers
Prompted by a question she was asked following a talk she gave last year, Lynda made up her mind to revisit Jane as a 22-year-old rookie policewoman in the 1970s. She’s now busy writing what she hopes will be a series of novels about how the young Jane moved up the ranks. The first book, titled simply Tennison, should be out next spring.
In the meantime, though, Lynda’s new thriller, Twisted, has just been published and has already found its way into the bestseller lists. ‘I knew about dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder),’ she says, ‘but it wasn’t until I was at a dinner party in the Hamptons on Long Island’ – Lynda has a house there where she spends July and August – ‘and I found myself sitting next to a psychiatrist that it really caught my interest.
‘This man told me he’d just been working with a patient who had a hundred distinct diff erent personalities. Well, there was no stopping me then. I quizzed him as closely as I could and later undertook my own research. Until then, I hadn’t realised to what extent dissociative identity disorder could take over a life.’
If her work makes the adrenalin course round her body, it is her 11-year-old son, Lorcan, who makes her heart beat faster. Unable to conceive during her marriage to musician Richard La Plante, Lynda pursued the possibility of adoption in America. ‘I would have given up every word I’ve ever written, every penny I’ve ever earned if I could have had a child of my own.’
And now she has him and he is, she says, the light of her life. He would also appear to be a smart lad. ‘He can mend anything that’s broken. And he’s got his own studio with microphones. He can record anything. And he’s totally and utterly computer literate. I think he must have been born with this ability.
‘We were cycling together not long ago in the park. I got off my bike and the stand snapped off . Lorcan said he’d fix it. So we went to buy a new stand and Lorcan then took it with the bike into the garage. I went in about 15 minutes later and the bike was in pieces. I was horrified.
‘But he explained that he’d had to take off the gears, the wheel and so on. I told him to leave everything where it was and I would take all the parts to the local bike shop. He said, “Mother, just leave me alone.” And, an hour later, he’d fixed it. He was 10 at the time. How did he know how to do that?’
In those rare moments she’s not spending time with her son or sitting at her computer, Lynda is, by her own admission, a great acquirer of anything that takes her fancy – and it’s not only cars. For instance, she collects Goldscheider Art Deco face masks.
Lynda collects Goldscheider Art Deco face masks
‘But I learnt from bitter experience that you should never buy something at auction if you haven’t seen the object. I spent a lot of money on one mask – I was bidding by phone – only to discover that part of a finger from the hand beside the face had broken off . In the end, I made the auction house reimburse me.’
At one point, she got hooked on racehorses. One called Supply And Demand was very successful but then she bought another, without any real knowledge of what to look for, and it turned out to be a weaver.
‘I didn’t know what that meant until it was explained to me that a weaver is a horse that stands in its box and continually moves its head from left to right and back again. Well, that sets off all the other horses. She was beautiful but quite unsuited to racing. So that was another lesson learnt. I named her Wicked. As in a wicked waste of money,’ says Lynda with a merry chuckle.
Twisted, by Lynda La Plante, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £18.99.
‘As the car passed, I thought to myself: “I’m going to have one of those one day.” And so it came to pass.’
A fan of cars, Lynda, 71, now has her Bentley Continental as well as a Saab convertible, a Range Rover and a Smart car, ‘the definition of brilliant design. If someone asked me to do an advert for it, I’d do so for free. I absolutely love it.’
We are chatting in her beautiful house in Kingston, Surrey. She is the best of company, combining a writer’s ability to tell a story with the flair of a former actress to put it across with conviction and humour.
She makes no apology, she says, for enjoying the considerable wealth she’s accrued from her novels and TV series, the most popular of which, Prime Suspect, was a hit around the world, handing its star, Helen Mirren – and this is something she herself acknowledges – what turned into a flourishing film career.
‘The producers wanted another actress, but I’d seen Helen on the stage and I knew how gifted she was,’ Lynda says. ‘So I stuck to my guns and, if I may say so, I was right.’
Dame Helen is also on record as saying that some of the notes Lynda gave her to play the role of Jane Tennison proved helpful. For example: ‘I said Jane wouldn’t smile, she wouldn’t touch anybody and nor would she fold her arms in front of her because that sends out an aggressive message that you’re the boss whereas you want to appear open; you want to encourage people to share information with you.
‘I also told her to keep her voice on an even level. Jane was a woman in what was a very masculine world back then so she didn’t want to sound shrill.’ Helen took all of this on board, says Lynda. ‘So, if it’s the case that I gave her a gift, the reverse is also true.
‘She’s proved without doubt that not only is she a consummate actress but she’s also shown that a woman of a certain age can be feminine, sexy, attractive in every way. And I don’t know the name of her stylist but she deserves a pat on the back. I think Helen looks better with every year that passes.’
Lynda is a dab hand when it comes to identifying new talent. Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Paul Bettany, Ralph Fiennes, Idris Elba – all were spotted by Lynda and her casting director younger sister, Gill Titchmarsh, before they became household names and all were cast in La Plante TV series. ‘I love fresh faces. In my opinion, half the success of Scandinavian thrillers like The Bridge is down to the fact that we don’t know any of the actors involved. It means you follow the story rather than the so-called star.’
She’ll be putting her preferred way of casting to the test when her next project reaches the small screen, as it surely will. Jane Tennison is to make a comeback but not in a way that can involve Helen Mirren.
Prime Suspect was shown on ITV from April 1991 to October 2006. The last episode, Prime Suspect: The Final Act, pulled in more than 7 million viewersPrompted by a question she was asked following a talk she gave last year, Lynda made up her mind to revisit Jane as a 22-year-old rookie policewoman in the 1970s. She’s now busy writing what she hopes will be a series of novels about how the young Jane moved up the ranks. The first book, titled simply Tennison, should be out next spring.
In the meantime, though, Lynda’s new thriller, Twisted, has just been published and has already found its way into the bestseller lists. ‘I knew about dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder),’ she says, ‘but it wasn’t until I was at a dinner party in the Hamptons on Long Island’ – Lynda has a house there where she spends July and August – ‘and I found myself sitting next to a psychiatrist that it really caught my interest.
‘This man told me he’d just been working with a patient who had a hundred distinct diff erent personalities. Well, there was no stopping me then. I quizzed him as closely as I could and later undertook my own research. Until then, I hadn’t realised to what extent dissociative identity disorder could take over a life.’
If her work makes the adrenalin course round her body, it is her 11-year-old son, Lorcan, who makes her heart beat faster. Unable to conceive during her marriage to musician Richard La Plante, Lynda pursued the possibility of adoption in America. ‘I would have given up every word I’ve ever written, every penny I’ve ever earned if I could have had a child of my own.’
And now she has him and he is, she says, the light of her life. He would also appear to be a smart lad. ‘He can mend anything that’s broken. And he’s got his own studio with microphones. He can record anything. And he’s totally and utterly computer literate. I think he must have been born with this ability.
‘We were cycling together not long ago in the park. I got off my bike and the stand snapped off . Lorcan said he’d fix it. So we went to buy a new stand and Lorcan then took it with the bike into the garage. I went in about 15 minutes later and the bike was in pieces. I was horrified.
‘But he explained that he’d had to take off the gears, the wheel and so on. I told him to leave everything where it was and I would take all the parts to the local bike shop. He said, “Mother, just leave me alone.” And, an hour later, he’d fixed it. He was 10 at the time. How did he know how to do that?’
In those rare moments she’s not spending time with her son or sitting at her computer, Lynda is, by her own admission, a great acquirer of anything that takes her fancy – and it’s not only cars. For instance, she collects Goldscheider Art Deco face masks.
Lynda collects Goldscheider Art Deco face masks‘But I learnt from bitter experience that you should never buy something at auction if you haven’t seen the object. I spent a lot of money on one mask – I was bidding by phone – only to discover that part of a finger from the hand beside the face had broken off . In the end, I made the auction house reimburse me.’
At one point, she got hooked on racehorses. One called Supply And Demand was very successful but then she bought another, without any real knowledge of what to look for, and it turned out to be a weaver.
‘I didn’t know what that meant until it was explained to me that a weaver is a horse that stands in its box and continually moves its head from left to right and back again. Well, that sets off all the other horses. She was beautiful but quite unsuited to racing. So that was another lesson learnt. I named her Wicked. As in a wicked waste of money,’ says Lynda with a merry chuckle.
Twisted, by Lynda La Plante, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £18.99.