And Furthermore (23 page)

I used to be able to go out to tea after a matinee, but I can’t do that any longer. I don’t like to break the continuity of the theatre. I don’t even go to the canteen between two shows unless it is for something very, very special, like the day John Gielgud came to see
Amy’s View
at the National. Instead, I just have something light in my dressing room: potted shrimps or a bit of chicken – although I was really spoilt when I was playing at Wyndham’s Theatre. Michael and Finty gave me a present of a lobster salad sent in every night from Sheekey’s Restaurant just down the alleyway, I can still remember how delicious that was. I had the same thing when I played next door at the Albery, now the Noël Coward Theatre. After that meal I sleep. My dresser wakes me with the cup of tea and the ginseng phial, and I am off again.

I love the repertoire system, I like to be employed but I don’t like to be working every night. Michael used to give me the occasional little talk about taking it more easily, but I have never wanted to do that, there are not enough hours in the day for me. He also used to say that we should live each day as if it is the last, and I have always shared that view, as long as I can remember.

You do see people who work towards an age, and then at sixty or sixty-five you see them go into a deep decline, and you wonder: Why? What do you retire for? You retire if you are in a job that has just kept you employed, and given you some kind of income, and then you retire to do things that you really want to do. Well, I am doing the things I want to do now, so I don’t want to retire. Actors are really remarkable people to be with. I like the company of other people, but I
love
the company of actors, and to be in a company. My idea of hell would be a one-woman show, I wouldn’t be able to do that, I wouldn’t know who to get ready for. The whole idea of a group of people coming together and working to one end somehow is very appealing to me. It is the thing I have always wanted to do, and I am lucky enough to be doing it. You don’t need to retire as an actor, there are all those parts you can play lying in bed, or in a wheelchair.

What I want to do now is to be a tad more choosy. I want to do something that is much more unlikely for me, more daring, and if I am going to put my energy into a play, then I will do something I haven’t tackled before. (Although if anyone came up to me and said, ‘Would you do
Absolute Hell
,’ of course I would do it.)

I have read a couple of new plays recently which I thought were good plays, but not for me. I have never done a Stoppard, never done a modern American play. I quite like not knowing what I will be offered, and being a bit uncertain about it. I would love to go to New York again for a short time, if it was the right thing for me to do. I made some terrific friends, and the whole of that theatre scene is so compact and intense. You all go and eat in the same area, so you meet actors who are in other plays, and you absorb the whole of the theatre scene in New York when you are there.

There is still so much I want to do, and I pray that I will be given the chance, and the time to do it. I treasure all the friends I have made through my work, and I look forward to making new ones in the future.