That's Another Story: The Autobiography (35 page)

When the possibility of an Oscar nomination for
Educating Rita
was mooted after the film’s warm reception in Britain, I thought it a ludicrous notion, but nevertheless it happened and it was, to say the least, a shock. I guess the inordinate amount of publicity I had done around the States had paid off. I was first nominated for, and subsequently won, a Golden Globe. I was also asked to co-host the ceremony for this with John Forsythe, he of the blue-white hair who played the handsome patriarch in the American television series
Dynasty
. I thought that because of this I had probably not won, and therefore had not really thought of anything to say should the opposite be true. When my name was called out as the winner of Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, all I could think of was a daft joke alluding to the fact that, as I was also running the show, it was a bit of a fix and that the cheque was in the post. This also happened to be rather topical as at the time there had just been a scandal involving a very bad actress whose billionaire husband had tried to buy her a Golden Globe. My joke went down like a cup of the cold proverbial and was lambasted in the press as tasteless.

The Oscars were a very different kettle of fish; in fact the Oscars were like nothing else. Unlike the BAFTAs, Britain’s version of the Oscars, which were a fairly stuffy affair that people mainly read about in a smallish column on a fairly insignificant page of a newspaper the next day, the Oscars were like the Second Coming. During the week running up to them, it seemed that every daytime programme and every news show was running a feature on them. There would be in-depth discussions of the various nominees’ performances and whole programmes given over to what the nominees might wear on the night. I remember seeing a long, lacy, wafty thing being proposed as my possible number for the big night and thinking: God, are they going to get a surprise! I was in fact going to be wearing a knee-length, soft, black-leather number, given me by Elizabeth and David Emanuel, who only a couple of years previously had designed the wedding dress for the Princess of Wales. It was pronounced by one publication the worst outfit there, but, as this was Hollywood, I took it as a compliment.

My fellow nominees were Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger, and according to the newspapers and the bookies I was the rank outsider at something like a hundred to one. We all knew that it would be Shirley MacLaine who would end up holding the golden phallus and thanking her Auntie Betty for being so supportive. She did, in fact, give a very funny speech, opening with saying that the interminable ceremony had felt longer than her entire professional life. Her amazing career had spanned thirty-odd years in which she had never won an Oscar, and her performance in
Terms of Endearment
, for which she was nominated, was rich and real and funny, and it deserved to be honoured. So I suppose I was fairly relaxed about the whole thing, knowing that I didn’t stand a chance. It would have been much more tense-making if I had thought that there was a possibility of winning.

I was thrilled to be in the same line-up as Meryl Streep. Although we were more or less the same age, I felt like I had grown up being mesmerised by her on screen and that she belonged to some other rarefied and glittering stratosphere that bore no relationship to the prosaic, let’s-have-a-cup-of-tea world that I inhabited. The last thing I expected, dear reader, was twenty-three years later to be sitting on my arse in the middle of an olive grove, on the beautiful Pelion Peninsula, in southern Greece, with my sprained ankle resting in the esteemed actress’s lap while she shouted orders in a marvellously Brown Owl kind of way.

‘Ice! Quick! Get it elevated!’ - and almost like a group of twittering Brownies people were running this way and that, only too keen to obey, icing and elevating as if their lives depended on it. Someone obviously misunderstood and in the mele’e an ice lolly was shoved into my hand. Then sucking on my lolly and on Meryl’s instruction I was carried through the streets of the village to my digs like a May Queen. This was done by the member of the crew most people fancied, which was a bit of a bonus and helped to counter-balance the humiliation caused by folk coming out of their houses and shops to stare and some of them to inexplicably cheer as if we were a newly married couple. The film was
Mamma Mia!
and when my agent rang to say I had been offered the part of Meryl Streep’s friend in . . . I didn’t wait for the rest, I screamed ‘YES!!’ it turned out to be a bit of a hit.

The day of the Academy Awards itself was a bit like a cross between Christmas, some kind of distant crisis and your wedding day; gifts arrived at my hotel room, of exotic beauty products that I had never heard of, and hand-made chocolates, champagne and flowers from film companies, agents and people wanting to advertise their products and services. A blur of masseurs, hairdressers, stylists and make-up artists came and went, until all that there was left to do was go. It was all strategically timed with military precision. We were told in no uncertain terms that, as a thousand limousines would be converging on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion more or less simultaneously, we must leave our hotel at the allotted time so as to be on the red carpet at the right point. I was being accompanied by my agent and a friend of hers, Dan.

Just as we were about to leave, I heard a scream from her bathroom. It turned out that after much coaxing, the zip in her dress had given up, spitting out a couple of teeth as it went. We stood there for several seconds, staring at it, Sara pink with panic and perspiration, and Dan pulling the two sides of the overstretched zip together as if they might get the message and mend themselves. Eventually he remembered the sewing kit in the bathroom and did a sterling job of lashing the two bits together with some big loopy stitches in a contrasting but not altogether inharmonious colour, with back-up from a couple of safety pins. We were off.

When we arrived at the theatre, we were met by something that I had never experienced before. There were huge crowds of overexcited people, gawping and screaming, many of whom had camped for several days previously on the grass outside, and of course there was the red carpet. Then it was a rarity, reserved for enormous premières, but even so, this was in a league of its own. It must have taken us a good hour and a half to get up it, as we were waylaid by endless television crews and journalists who had travelled not only from all over America but from all over the world. After the ceremony, which may not have been quite as long as Shirley MacLaine’s career but was probably longer than mine, there was a do with dinner and dancing. I was paraded round by a Columbia Pictures executive to meet various famous folk, three of whom stick out in my memory. The first was Michael Jackson, who was dressed in his then normal military gear and had a very little voice; the second was Mel Gibson, who was just very little. The third was Liza Minnelli, whom I had in fact met before.

Just before we were to start filming
Educating Rita
, Michael Caine threw a party at his restaurant, Langan’s Brasserie in London. In the small hours, as the party was drawing to an end, a lot of us went on to a club called Tramp where after a couple of hours I found that I could not stand a minute longer the blistering agony of my new cowboy boots, which I had purchased only that day from R. Soles on the King’s Road, so I decided to go to the Ladies’ to take them off. Because I was wearing no hosiery whatsoever and my feet, after at least a couple of hours of frenzied dancing, had probably swollen to twice their size, their removal proved nigh-on impossible. As I sat on a chair, veins popping in my forehead and face crimson with effort, the door opened and in came Liza.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello.’

‘Need a hand?’

‘Oh . . . yes please.’ Whereupon she bent down and pulled my boot off.

‘Oh, my . . . you’re bleeding. Do you want the other one off?’

‘Yes, of course, Liza and then fix me an ice-cold Martini, call me a cab and you may take the rest of the night off.’

No, that’s right, I didn’t say that; just, ‘Oh . . .’

She whipped it off and said, ‘Wait here, I’ll be right back.’

I sat there, staring at my feet. They looked unsavoury and gross, and I thought: Liza Minnelli has just heaved my sweaty, blood-soaked boots off these. Within minutes she was back brandishing plasters, antiseptic and cotton wool; lifting the aforementioned plates on to her lap, she gently bathed and dressed them.

‘Oh, you should throw these boots away. Nothing should give you that much pain.’

I was just wondering whether we were about to embark on a discussion about something more than blisters when she jumped up and lifted her skirt. I laughed nervously. I had read
The News of the World
, I knew what these Hollywood stars were capable of. She began to remove her tights. Oh my God! Liza, I’m not that way inclined, even when I had a bit of a crush on Mrs Banbrook in year seven; my fantasy never went past friendship, couldn’t we just—

‘Here, put these on. It’ll make getting the boots on and off easier. And trust me, throw ’em away.’

So when I met her at the Oscar bash some eighteen months later, I felt as if we were old friends.

‘Julie, hi! Congratulations!’ I noticed then and since that Americans congratulate you after an awards ceremony, even if you haven’t won, simply for being nominated. In Britain that doesn’t happen; you’ve simply lost and people look sorry for you, avoiding all eye contact.

‘Hi, Liza.’

She hugged me and whispered conspiratorially in my ear, ‘Don’t tell Shirley, but I voted for you.’

‘Oh thanks, that’s nice. No, I won’t tell her.’

I don’t suppose she’ll ever read this; I mean, after all, I haven’t read
her
autobiography.

Then as I was being dragged off to be introduced to yet another weary megastar, I managed to get in, ‘I’ve still got your tights! Not on me, you understand, I splashed out on a new pair for tonight. Though I might have had more luck if I’d worn yours! No, I’m glad Shirley won, we can all sleep safe in our beds now.’

In 1984 the party to be at was Swifty Lazar’s and directly after the rather sedate dinner and dance, Willy Russell - who had also been nominated for, but not won, Best Adapted Screenplay - and I set off to find it. We couldn’t locate either of our limos, so we jumped into a cab and instructed the driver to take us to Swifty Lazar’s, thinking it was the name of a restaurant. When the befuddled-looking cabbie said he had never heard of such a restaurant, we took him for a chancer and duly got out and into another taxi. Again, the driver had never heard of the place, so in frustration we went on to another party that we
had
heard of, but by the time we arrived there were just three people propping up the bar and, not knowing any of them we decided to call it a night. So we never made the big post-Oscar party. We found out the next day, when quizzed as to where we had got to the night before, that Swifty Lazar was not a restaurant at all but a very famous old Hollywood agent. The whole Oscars thing was a not-to-be-missed experience but it has to be viewed for what it really is, which is first and foremost a wonderful piece of hype and marketing for the film industry; many a brilliant film and performance has gone unnoticed over the years because, for whatever reason, there hasn’t been the budget to sell it and distribute it properly.

On every Oscar night various parties are held around Tinseltown, all with varying ‘must be seen at’ ratings.

At my second Oscar experience in 2001, when I got the Best Supporting Actress nomination for Mrs Wilkinson in
Billy Elliot
, it was the
Vanity Fair
party that everyone wanted to get into and as a nominee you were sure of an invite. However, I chose Elton John’s party instead because he’d asked me personally at the première and he’s far too cuddly to turn down anyway, plus there’s always the chance that he might play the piano and do a turn.

No one could have predicted the phenomenal success of
Billy Elliot
. We all knew that we had a really good script, a fabulous central performance from Jamie Bell, and a skilfully directed, funny and charming film from Stephen Daldry, but how were they going to sell to the general public a film about a miner’s son who became a ballet dancer? And to which bit of the public would it appeal? Apparently no one knew how to approach it and things were looking grim until two people from Universal came to a screening and said, ‘We like it.’ From that moment everything changed. Once a big studio showed an interest, everyone else did too.

In 2001, my second film BAFTA was for
Billy Elliot
; this was a very different acting experience from
Educating Rita
as I was allowed to really create a character. Although it was already brilliantly written by Lee Hall, Stephen Daldry and I would get together and generate whole new scenes on the spot: something I have never been party to, before or since. All films, in my experience, are so schedule dominated that there is never the room for such a ‘luxury’, but somehow Stephen managed it. I had real fun with the character, taking away any maternal instinct that she might originally have had, as this would not only make her and her relationship with Billy more complex and thorny, but also steer her away from any sentimentality. Then the choreographer, the redoubtable Peter Darling, told me how his dance teacher had smoked and called out instructions to her pupils whilst perusing the
Daily Mirror
. Well, I couldn’t resist that, could I? I pored over documentaries about the little dance schools that seemed to be particular to the North-East, where the film was set, and loved the fact that the majority of the teachers couldn’t really dance themselves. This suited me perfectly as dancing - well, at least choreographed dancing - was something that scared me and I already had the ghost of my experience on
Stepping Out
haunting me.

In that film, which was shot in 1990, dear Lewis Gilbert, for it was he, told me that although it was a film about a tap-dancing class, it didn’t matter a jot that I had never tap-danced and that I hadn’t a clue how to do it.