'The three ages of woman: youth, middle age & wonderful'
On paper, the prospect of two septuagenarians rekindling a teenage romance must have looked somewhere between gloomy and twee. ‘I get scripts all the time,’ says Anne Reid, ‘and almost always I would be cast as someone in an old people’s home.
‘But not everyone my age [she will be 79 in May] is sad and old. I know a lot of my contemporaries who remain very feisty in their 70s and 80s.’
She blames the writers for not reflecting this. ‘It’s why Sally Wainwright’s script of Last Tango In Halifax was such a joy to receive. As soon as I started reading it, I knew I wanted to play Celia.’ As it turns out, the part was written with her in mind. ‘And what’s nice is that Sally has written my characteristics into the role the further we’ve progressed.’
But even Anne, initially best known as Valerie Barlow in Coronation Street all those years ago, could not have foreseen Last Tango’s spiralling success. ‘I can’t go to M&S or John Lewis without being stopped by people who tell me how much they enjoy it. And I’m always thrilled.’
A third series has just been commissioned – filming begins in June – and the word is, it will be shown in the run-up to Christmas.
Hard as it is to believe, given their on-screen chemistry, Anne and Derek Jacobi had never met, so had not worked together before. ‘Well, we’re good actors,’ she says, ‘and I made a point of being physical with him – the British tend to be uptight.
‘I remember saying to Caroline Quentin, who played my daughter in Life Begins, “Now look, I’m your mother. We’re really, really close. Look at it this way, I breastfed you.” At which point, she promptly stuck her fingers down her throat.’
Anne with Derek Jacobi in Last Tango In Halifax
Anne’s own romantic history is quite different from Celia’s. She met Peter Eckersley, a writer and producer, on Coronation Street and ultimately head of drama at Granada. ‘Not that he ever gave me a job. I always used to say that I’d slept with the head of drama for 15 years and it did my career no good whatever.’
Peter died in 1981 of cancer aged just 45. ‘It was dreadful,’ she says, ‘just dreadful. And so young. I was left with Mark, my nine-year-old son, to bring up alone. My biggest worry was whether I would do right by Mark. As a result, I deliberately didn’t work for about six years.’
But she never contemplated marrying again. ‘To be honest, I’m surprised I got married in the first place. I’m very independent. I got so used to making decisions for myself. I don’t want someone else making them for me.’ In many ways, she puts this down to her very particular upbringing.
‘My father was a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, posted to India, the Middle East, Cyprus, Beirut, all over. I was sent away to boarding school in Snowdonia at the age of 12, which I loved but I only saw my parents once a year in the summer. It made me very self-sufficient. I’ve always been a loner, perfectly happy with my own company although I’m very sociable, too. I write in my diary: “Spent day all alone. Wonderful!”’
Mark is a film editor and the father of Anne’s two grandsons, Alexander, seven and Lawrence, five. ‘They’re the light of my life. I never thought I wanted to be a grandmother. I didn’t want anyone calling me Granny. Little did I know! At one day old, I fell in love with each of them. And they’re so funny.
‘A couple of years ago, Alex said to his father: “Where does Grandma Annie get her clothes?” Mark said: “Well, she gets them in shops. Where do you think she gets them?” Alex thought for a moment… “Which shops?” Mark replied: “Clothes shops, of course. Why are you asking?” So Alex said: “Well, I’ve never seen in the back of a T-shirt a label that says, ‘Age 75–76’.” Isn’t that heaven?
‘I remember Frank Finlay saying to me when we did Life Begins, “If I’d known being a grandfather was going to be so wonderful, I’d have gone for that first and not bothered with the bit in the middle.” It’s somehow like being given your child back. And my daughter-in-law Sarah is the nicest person on the planet.’
Always in demand, the role that changed her career was when she was cast as Daniel Craig’s lover in the film, The Mother. ‘Oh, no question. And it knocked on the head all those offers of playing ladies in the kitchen making sandwiches.’
She’d been invited to audition but with no real hope of getting the part. ‘It seemed a waste of time, me playing the lead in a film. I felt they’d need a name to get financial backing. However, I did my best, but heard nothing for weeks. Then I was offered a role in Calendar Girls – I’d better not say which one – so, because I didn’t think I’d be chosen for The Mother, I told my agent he ought to let them know I wouldn’t now be available.’
All hell broke loose. ‘They wouldn’t hear of me pulling out. The phone was ringing off the hook. Very satisfying. But then I started to worry about who was going to play the much younger man who’d be my lover. Someone was suggested – again, I can’t say who – but I told them I wouldn’t agree to do it if they cast him. What the two of us had to do was so intimate, it really mattered that the man was right.
‘Then I was asked if I knew of an actor called Daniel Craig. I told the director, Roger Michell, that I’d never heard of him. This was way before James Bond. So Roger sent me a cassette of something Daniel had been in. Fifteen seconds into playing it, I leapt for the phone and shrieked, “Get him, for God’s sake!”’
Working with Daniel Craig in The Mother changed Anne's career
Joking apart, she says, she worried about the sex scenes. ‘I didn’t want everyone tittering. When Daniel and I got into bed together, I just looked at him and said: “I hope this isn’t going to look like Tom Cruise and Thora Hird.” I was also concerned about what my son would think of his mother cavorting like that. But when he saw the film, he told me he was very proud of me.’
Now she has the pick of the parts.
‘I won’t retire. Why would I? But then, I’m so lucky. I get offered a wide variety of work. Just as well because I can’t do anything else. And, if the phone should stop ringing, I’ve got my cabaret. Some people play golf. I do cabaret.’
Ever since she befriended the American singer Barbara Cook, Anne nursed a secret ambition to put together her own one-woman show, a mix of songs and gentle anecdotes lasting about 80 minutes. ‘Three years ago, a friend of mine who lives in Antibes and has a club there, asked whether I’d like to fulfil my ambition.
‘So I worked out a show with my musical director friend Stuart Hutchinson, performed it in front of a mostly British audience and, of course, I absolutely loved it. Then I did it again in 2012 in London at the St James Theatre.’
Last year, she repeated the exercise at The Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly Circus. ‘I was apprehensive in advance but, after three minutes on stage, I was in my element. I love talking to an audience. If I’d got bad notices, though, I’d have called it a day. But they were very flattering.’
It’s why she’ll be back there in March. ‘And you can have a meal in the brasserie that’s attached to the club, so it makes a nice evening out.’
No need to ask whether life is going well. ‘I’m so happy, it’s ridiculous,’ she says. ‘As you get older, people get nicer and nicer. You know the three ages of a woman: youth, middle age and you look wonderful. Alan Bennett says, if you live to be 90 and can still eat a boiled egg, they think you deserve the Nobel Prize.’
In Anne Reid’s case, of course, it happens to be true.
Anne Reid is appearing at The Crazy Coqs Jazz Club at Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, London W1, from 25 to 29 March: 020-7734 4888, www.crazycoqs.com
‘But not everyone my age [she will be 79 in May] is sad and old. I know a lot of my contemporaries who remain very feisty in their 70s and 80s.’
She blames the writers for not reflecting this. ‘It’s why Sally Wainwright’s script of Last Tango In Halifax was such a joy to receive. As soon as I started reading it, I knew I wanted to play Celia.’ As it turns out, the part was written with her in mind. ‘And what’s nice is that Sally has written my characteristics into the role the further we’ve progressed.’
But even Anne, initially best known as Valerie Barlow in Coronation Street all those years ago, could not have foreseen Last Tango’s spiralling success. ‘I can’t go to M&S or John Lewis without being stopped by people who tell me how much they enjoy it. And I’m always thrilled.’
A third series has just been commissioned – filming begins in June – and the word is, it will be shown in the run-up to Christmas.
Hard as it is to believe, given their on-screen chemistry, Anne and Derek Jacobi had never met, so had not worked together before. ‘Well, we’re good actors,’ she says, ‘and I made a point of being physical with him – the British tend to be uptight.
‘I remember saying to Caroline Quentin, who played my daughter in Life Begins, “Now look, I’m your mother. We’re really, really close. Look at it this way, I breastfed you.” At which point, she promptly stuck her fingers down her throat.’
Anne with Derek Jacobi in Last Tango In HalifaxAnne’s own romantic history is quite different from Celia’s. She met Peter Eckersley, a writer and producer, on Coronation Street and ultimately head of drama at Granada. ‘Not that he ever gave me a job. I always used to say that I’d slept with the head of drama for 15 years and it did my career no good whatever.’
Peter died in 1981 of cancer aged just 45. ‘It was dreadful,’ she says, ‘just dreadful. And so young. I was left with Mark, my nine-year-old son, to bring up alone. My biggest worry was whether I would do right by Mark. As a result, I deliberately didn’t work for about six years.’
But she never contemplated marrying again. ‘To be honest, I’m surprised I got married in the first place. I’m very independent. I got so used to making decisions for myself. I don’t want someone else making them for me.’ In many ways, she puts this down to her very particular upbringing.
‘My father was a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, posted to India, the Middle East, Cyprus, Beirut, all over. I was sent away to boarding school in Snowdonia at the age of 12, which I loved but I only saw my parents once a year in the summer. It made me very self-sufficient. I’ve always been a loner, perfectly happy with my own company although I’m very sociable, too. I write in my diary: “Spent day all alone. Wonderful!”’
Mark is a film editor and the father of Anne’s two grandsons, Alexander, seven and Lawrence, five. ‘They’re the light of my life. I never thought I wanted to be a grandmother. I didn’t want anyone calling me Granny. Little did I know! At one day old, I fell in love with each of them. And they’re so funny.
‘A couple of years ago, Alex said to his father: “Where does Grandma Annie get her clothes?” Mark said: “Well, she gets them in shops. Where do you think she gets them?” Alex thought for a moment… “Which shops?” Mark replied: “Clothes shops, of course. Why are you asking?” So Alex said: “Well, I’ve never seen in the back of a T-shirt a label that says, ‘Age 75–76’.” Isn’t that heaven?
‘I remember Frank Finlay saying to me when we did Life Begins, “If I’d known being a grandfather was going to be so wonderful, I’d have gone for that first and not bothered with the bit in the middle.” It’s somehow like being given your child back. And my daughter-in-law Sarah is the nicest person on the planet.’
Always in demand, the role that changed her career was when she was cast as Daniel Craig’s lover in the film, The Mother. ‘Oh, no question. And it knocked on the head all those offers of playing ladies in the kitchen making sandwiches.’
She’d been invited to audition but with no real hope of getting the part. ‘It seemed a waste of time, me playing the lead in a film. I felt they’d need a name to get financial backing. However, I did my best, but heard nothing for weeks. Then I was offered a role in Calendar Girls – I’d better not say which one – so, because I didn’t think I’d be chosen for The Mother, I told my agent he ought to let them know I wouldn’t now be available.’
All hell broke loose. ‘They wouldn’t hear of me pulling out. The phone was ringing off the hook. Very satisfying. But then I started to worry about who was going to play the much younger man who’d be my lover. Someone was suggested – again, I can’t say who – but I told them I wouldn’t agree to do it if they cast him. What the two of us had to do was so intimate, it really mattered that the man was right.
‘Then I was asked if I knew of an actor called Daniel Craig. I told the director, Roger Michell, that I’d never heard of him. This was way before James Bond. So Roger sent me a cassette of something Daniel had been in. Fifteen seconds into playing it, I leapt for the phone and shrieked, “Get him, for God’s sake!”’
Working with Daniel Craig in The Mother changed Anne's careerJoking apart, she says, she worried about the sex scenes. ‘I didn’t want everyone tittering. When Daniel and I got into bed together, I just looked at him and said: “I hope this isn’t going to look like Tom Cruise and Thora Hird.” I was also concerned about what my son would think of his mother cavorting like that. But when he saw the film, he told me he was very proud of me.’
Now she has the pick of the parts.
‘I won’t retire. Why would I? But then, I’m so lucky. I get offered a wide variety of work. Just as well because I can’t do anything else. And, if the phone should stop ringing, I’ve got my cabaret. Some people play golf. I do cabaret.’
Ever since she befriended the American singer Barbara Cook, Anne nursed a secret ambition to put together her own one-woman show, a mix of songs and gentle anecdotes lasting about 80 minutes. ‘Three years ago, a friend of mine who lives in Antibes and has a club there, asked whether I’d like to fulfil my ambition.
‘So I worked out a show with my musical director friend Stuart Hutchinson, performed it in front of a mostly British audience and, of course, I absolutely loved it. Then I did it again in 2012 in London at the St James Theatre.’
Last year, she repeated the exercise at The Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly Circus. ‘I was apprehensive in advance but, after three minutes on stage, I was in my element. I love talking to an audience. If I’d got bad notices, though, I’d have called it a day. But they were very flattering.’
It’s why she’ll be back there in March. ‘And you can have a meal in the brasserie that’s attached to the club, so it makes a nice evening out.’
No need to ask whether life is going well. ‘I’m so happy, it’s ridiculous,’ she says. ‘As you get older, people get nicer and nicer. You know the three ages of a woman: youth, middle age and you look wonderful. Alan Bennett says, if you live to be 90 and can still eat a boiled egg, they think you deserve the Nobel Prize.’
In Anne Reid’s case, of course, it happens to be true.
Anne Reid is appearing at The Crazy Coqs Jazz Club at Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, London W1, from 25 to 29 March: 020-7734 4888, www.crazycoqs.com