And Furthermore (17 page)

I remember just being hysterical with Finty and Helena Bonham Carter, saying, ‘Just look at us, look at the dresses and jewels and things, and nothing to show for it.’ There were five of us nominated – the other four were Helena, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, and Helen Hunt who won it for her performance in
As Good as It Gets
. She was the only American nominee, and somebody said to us afterwards that of course none of the rest of us stood a chance because we had split the British vote four ways. When I went on to the Miramax party an interviewer thrust a microphone at me and said, ‘A nation weeps.’

I said, ‘Oh,
come on
!’

‘You must be very disappointed.’

‘No, I’m not disappointed at all. I didn’t expect to win.’

I really didn’t, and I wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything. The whole event is amazingly tatty, and absurd, and we had a
wonderful
time. We flew back the next evening, landed at Heathrow on the Wednesday morning at 11.30 a.m., and I was at the Aldwych by 2 p.m. I had a couple of hours’ sleep, and then went on. It was almost as if I had never been away. The company kept telling me I had been robbed, but what really took me aback was the audience reaction that night. As soon as I made my first entrance they rose for a standing ovation, which never happens in London. I hugged Sam as Amy, and whispered, ‘What do I do now?’ She whispered back, ‘Just go on hugging me.’ To my astonishment the same thing happened every night that week.

A little later I did win the BAFTA Best Actress Award for
Mrs Brown
, and this time I could actually say I was robbed, as the statuette was stolen before I had even left the hotel. BAFTA were so quick in replacing it that I came to the conclusion this must happen all the time.

I SO ENJOYED WORKING WITH
John Madden on
Mrs Brown
that I wrote him a note after we finished filming, to say, ‘I’ll slouch in any doorway, or walk through the back of any shot for you in your next picture, that’s a promise.’ Some time later he rang me up and said, ‘What I have in mind is not exactly any doorway or passing through the back of any shot.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’ll do it, I shan’t read it, I’ll do it.’

The film was
Shakespeare in Love
, and the role was Queen Elizabeth I. She only had three short scenes, and I think that John must have been nervous that the part was not big enough, because when we next met at a BAFTA awards evening he said to me, ‘Now we really need to sit down and talk.’

‘You’ve changed your mind! You don’t want me.’

‘No, no, I just wanted to know that you liked the script, and still felt happy about doing the part.’

‘Of course, I think it’s wonderful.’ But I couldn’t resist taking advantage of his nervousness. ‘It will be the same perf., you know, different frock.’

I shouldn’t have joked about the frock, because that was the hardest part of the performance. It was tremendously heavy, it took two people to lift it on to me, and three people to do it up. I couldn’t get out of it at lunchtime, and had to sit bolt upright to eat – it was agony. After the first fitting I rang up Sandy Powell, the costume designer, and said, ‘Sandy, I don’t think I should be at a great disadvantage with Gwyneth Paltrow. I think I should be able to look her in the eye.’ He said that he thought the same thing, and then these vast platform shoes arrived, with six-inch heels, which were so uncomfortable to wear. They all called me ‘Tudor Spice’, and sometimes John Madden would say, ‘Sorry, we’ll have to go again, we caught a glimpse of Tudor Spice there.’

On top of that, there was the make-up, which took four hours to put on. Veronica Brebner did my make-up for both Queen Victoria and Elizabeth; she was up for an Oscar for each of them and never got it, which she should have done, because she was so meticulous. My hair had to be pinned, and then glued, the bald cap went on, and then it was all bled in. Then the make-up, then the wig, and then the headdress. I wanted her to have bad teeth, and all her skin cracked, and they did get some terrible teeth made for me. But because it would be so huge on the screen, when your face is three times the size of your house, they said it would be too grotesque, and the Americans wouldn’t accept that. So they just painted my own teeth brown, which looked bad enough.

Gwyneth was playing the invented character of Viola, the object of Shakespeare’s love; the latter was played by Joseph Fiennes. Tom Stoppard had written the final version of the script, and we had a wonderful cast, including Colin Firth, Simon Callow, Tom Wilkinson, Antony Sher, Geoffrey Rush, Rupert Everett, Martin Clunes, Imelda Staunton, and Ben Affleck, so there was much press interest. Somebody made up a totally untrue story about Gwyneth and me, saying there was a frostiness between us, when we got on perfectly from day one, we never had a cross word. We didn’t meet that much, because we didn’t have many scenes together, but we had the most marvellous day sitting in the caravan, having a good laugh. When we took
Amy’s View
to Broadway, she came to one of the earliest performances with her mother, the actress Blythe Danner, and brought her round afterwards. This malicious story about the filming really annoyed me; it seems as if when journalists don’t have a story they will just make anything up, to try and cause trouble.

They even got wrong the story about the wonderful set that was created for the original Rose Theatre in the studio. It was so authentic that I begged them not to break it up after the filming finished. So they said, ‘Well, you can have it if you like, we’ll give it to you if you’ll store it.’ It was carefully dismantled at the end of shooting, and shipped off in sections to various storehouses in London and Manchester. Then the newspapers said I had bought it, which wasn’t true, although I did find that the initial storage fees were quite high. There were various plans to rebuild it for use as a theatre, none of which have reached fruition yet, though I hope very much that it will return to life one day as a working playhouse.

Shakespeare in Love
received thirteen Oscar nominations, including mine for Best Supporting Actress – much to my surprise. I was even more surprised when I actually won. I just thought, Well, I didn’t get it for
Mrs Brown
, so I am certainly not going to get it for eight quick minutes with bad teeth. The lovely thing was that this time Michael was able to come with me, as well as Finty, because Miramax very generously invited both of them too. We went to their party the night before, and when we got there, who was first on in the cabaret? Me! I had to do Brenda Blethyn in
Little Voice
, so Finty quickly rehearsed me in a corner behind a pillar, and I had to wear a terrible red wig. The difficulty was that it was cocktail time, before you had even had a drink to get in the mood.

But the organisation of the awards ceremony was just as chaotic as before. We had to wait half an hour for the car downstairs, which seemed a very long time, and then we joined the convoy of stretch limousines. I vowed if I ever went again, I would go on the back of a motorbike. It was ridiculous, we were so late that they had locked the doors. They said, ‘Oh my God, they wanted a shot of you when Whoopi Goldberg came in dressed as Elizabeth I.’ They had to wait until a break and then smuggle us in.

Robin Williams was presenting the award, and when he looked down to read the name, Michael squeezed my arm and said, ‘Jude, you’ve got it,’ just before we heard him say, ‘There is nothing like a Dame.’ He said he could tell by the look on Robin’s face. All I can remember after that is looking at Michael, standing up and kissing him, but I don’t remember walking up all those steps. The only other thing I remember is Robin Williams curtseying; I don’t remember the speech, nor anything about how I got off the stage.

I remember crying in a lift, completely overcome, and then meeting the immensely tall James Coburn, who had won Best Supporting Actor for
A
ffl
iction
, and having my picture taken with him, and then with Gwyneth, who won Best Actress. There were so many photographers, you are all blinded for a bit after all those flashlights going off. I had to go into lots and lots of rooms, where there were masses of people, and all the world’s press asking, ‘Why aren’t you wearing diamonds?’ I said, ‘I’m not a diamond girl, I’m afraid.’

Then we went to two parties. The Governor’s Ball was so beautifully done, in a wispy kind of sea-greeny-blue tent. But everybody only goes for twenty minutes, and then comes away again; nobody eats the food. There was a wonderful band, too, I thought it was terribly sad. In fact, I went up to a waiter and said, ‘I’m so sorry about this.’ I don’t think they minded, but I minded, I thought it was terribly rude. We went on to the Miramax party, and I drank a lot of champagne.

The next day Michael and Finty went home, but I had to fly to New York, where
Amy’s View
was due to open on Broadway. I was wandering about the airport at Los Angeles, and suddenly an air hostess came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to get on the plane early?’ So I said that would be very nice, and she said, ‘Well, you might find it tricky otherwise.’ That would never happen here. You could be in an awards ceremony the night before, and nothing would happen at all the next day. They put me in a first-class seat, right at the front of the plane. The only thing that we had not thought of was that every single person had to file past me as they came on board. So there was a lot of shaking hands and taking photographs, until I felt I had met the whole of the plane. I went to sleep on the flight, and when I woke up there were a lot of stick-on notes on the rug over me.

I was very tired when I arrived in New York, so I was glad to be met at the airport by my good friend James Triner, and driven to the apartment they had booked for me at the Sutton Building. It was overflowing with flowers and champagne, and the fridge was full of food, including caviar. That night I went with Larry Guittard to a cocktail party upstairs at Chez Josephine, run by the son of the cabaret star Josephine Baker. When we left to go out to dinner, everyone downstairs clapped. I thought this was so bizarre. Nobody knew me here before, now everyone seemed to know me. The Americans are so nice and welcoming, everybody stopped me on the street to say, ‘Hi, Judi.’ They are not intrusive, just absolutely open.

A lady who was serving in Bergdorf Goodman suddenly said, ‘Oh my God! Look who’s here!’ and gave me the most enormous hug. Maggie Smith was also staying at the Sutton, and when we went into Tiffany’s I said I might get her this very lurid bracelet. The young man was standing there looking down through the glass case, and started to say, ‘Yes, good morning, ladies, can I help you…Ohh, my God,’ as he looked up and saw us. Maggie and I were both in hysterics.

The American stage crew were a knockout. When we did Sunday matinees, everyone brought in something for brunch, and all of us, the actors and the crew, ate it together downstairs. Every other Saturday, between the two shows, the crew cooked a barbecue on the other side of the theatre, which was fenced in. That was so nice. We had a good company spirit at the National, but on Broadway we had it from day one. There was a proper feeling about telling the story, nobody competed with anybody. I still hear from the Barrymore crew.

David Hare had to change some of the dialogue for the American audience – ‘spanner’ to ‘screwdriver’, and ‘Sainsbury’s to ‘supermarket’. They had no idea what a ‘fête’ was, very little knowledge of what the Lloyd’s Names crash was all about, and the line ‘I don’t care if he’s buggered the Dagenham Girl Pipers’ went for absolutely nothing.

We had two weeks of previews before the first night, by which time all the critics had been. I said to Sam Bond, ‘Honestly, we don’t have to be worried about this, they’ve seen it, they’ve made up their minds.’ We had the most glorious first night, with the kind of reception you only seem to get in America, which we then had on nearly every night during the run. I always got a round of applause when I came on, and most nights there were standing ovations at the end. Nobody normally stands up for you in England, that is not our fashion. Many things are different in the American theatre. The curtain never went up on time, it was always about ten past eight, it just isn’t fashionable to go up on time. The cellphones rang occasionally, despite the notices up in the foyer, but that now happens in England too – far too often.

The thing I never quite got used to were the wooden police barriers placed outside the theatre, to control the large numbers of autograph-hunters, which I had never experienced before. I had a wonderful driver called Mike to take me to and from the theatre, and sometimes after a show he had to wait for up to half an hour before I could get away. I would glance up at him leaning on the car, and he would say, ‘They’re selling them all.’ The joke was that when Michael came over to see the show, I warned him in my dressing room, ‘Wait till you see the crowds at the stage door, wait till you see,’ and when we went out there was just one man standing there.

The trickiest audience came the night after the nominations were announced for the Tonys (the Antoinette Perry awards for performance in the New York theatre). We could feel the audience take several paces backwards, as if to say, OK, show me – which is exactly what happens at home too.

You can never predict that a play will be a success on Broadway just because it has been in London, or vice versa. Nobody ever quite knows how productions will cross the water. It is a very subtle thing, but you can never say whether or not something is going to be a success when it transfers. So I was rather pleased when one of the New York papers pronounced: ‘This Dame is a class act.’ To stop it going to my head, someone else asked, ‘Is she a Dame as opposed to a broad?’

It was nearly forty years since I had been there with the Old Vic, so I went down to Greenwich Village and walked around with Larry Guittard, looking for my old haunts of that visit. When we walked past Julian’s Bar, where we used to drink before, Larry said, ‘Look at Julian’s.’ There were about fifteen men at the window, all waving; Julian’s is a gay bar now. New York is just as beguiling today as it was on my first visit, the only difference between then and forty years earlier was that now I needed a rest every afternoon, whereas when I was there before I didn’t. Then I hardly had any sleep at all, but I knew I couldn’t do this show on no rest.

At the Barrymore Theatre I had the dressing room that Marlon Brando shared with Karl Malden in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. I used to tell everybody that this was where Karl Malden used to go to the loo in the loo, and this is where Marlon Brando used to go to the loo in the basin.

One particular bonus for me was that the Barrymore was just down the road from the Brooks Atkinson where Tim Pigott-Smith was playing in
The Iceman Cometh
. So the black glove was going to and fro like all-get-out. It went wrapped around some flowers on Tim’s first night, and came back to me the same way on mine. I had it given to him onstage the night that President Clinton went. At the beginning of Act II when I entered all dressed up carrying a bag and gloves, and had a line, ‘Oh, let me take off this hat,’ one night I nearly carried on the black glove with my own, until it was snatched out of my hand at the last minute. That glove whirled about quite a lot on Broadway.