fri 04/04/2025

actors

Olivia Williams interview: 'Are you on drugs?' 'No I've just spent the day acting'

Olivia Williams’s first film was, (in)famously, seen by almost no one. The Postman, Kevin Costner’s expensive futuristic misfire, may have summoned her from the depths of chronic unemployment, but the first time anyone actually clapped eyes on her...

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'I were crap at school': Jodie Whittaker, the new Doctor Who

“Jodie is a remarkable young woman. She’s game. She’s a good actress, and she’s willing.” So said Peter O’Toole of the first female Doctor Who. Jodie Whittaker, born in 1982, is best known for Broadchurch on the small screen and Attack the Block on...

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10 Questions for Adeel Akhtar: 'The first form of defiance is to laugh'

Earlier this year Adeel Akhtar won the BAFTA for best actor. In Murdered By My Father, he gave a heartbreaking performance as the widowed father of a daughter who goes against his desire to arrange an advantageous marriage for her. In a nuanced...

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10 Questions for actress Tracy-Ann Oberman: 'it's made me pretty fearless'

What do you call a woman who murdered Dirty Den, is the darling of TV comedy producers, writes radio plays about the golden age of Hollywood, hosted and judged Channel 4’s Jewish Mum of the Year, was until just a few weeks ago tap dancing through...

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'What did you do?' Actors reveal their Shakespearean secrets

Much of the brilliance of Shakespeare lies in the openness, or ambiguity, of his texts. Whereas a novelist will often describe a character, an action or a scene in the most minute detail, Shakespeare knew that his scenarios would only be fully...

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Charlotte Rampling: 'I had to survive!' - interview

The seizième arrondissement, the Paris equivalent of Kensington and Chelsea, or Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Haussmann’s Paris par excellence. Here, in a gated complex where American heiress Florence Gould hosted lavish wartime salons, indulging in...

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Tim Pigott-Smith: from The Jewel in the Crown to King Charles III

It is the fate of a certain type of well-spoken classically trained actor to wear the livery of the English Establishment. Tim Pigott-Smith, double-barrelled and tall with a high forehead, was one such. But the full arc of his career encompassed...

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Anna Maxwell Martin: 'I like playing baddies' - interview

She was Lyra in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at the National, she has shared the stage with Eileen Atkins (in Honour and The Female of the Species), played Isabella in Measure for Measure, Regan in King Lear and Sally Bowles in Cabaret. She...

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Richard III, Schaubühne Berlin, Barbican

Hated the Schaubühne Hamlet (same lead actor, same director as this latest Shakespeare auf Deutsch); loved Ivo van Hove's Toneelgroep Kings of War, with Hans Kesting's Richard III on the highest level alongside the Henrys V and VI. Thomas Ostermeier...

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10 Questions for Actor Conleth Hill

Some know him only as Lord Varys the scheming eunuch, spymaster to the king of the Seven Kingdoms. Game of Thrones fans may be less familiar with Conleth Hill's other career as a nimble. light-footed stage actor of staggering range and skill whose...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Actress Emily Watson

Emily Watson made her remarkable debut in Breaking the Waves (1996). In Lars von Trier’s grim parable, Watson plays Bess, an ingénue from a remote religious Scottish community who, when her husband is paralysed on an oil rig, perpetuates their...

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10 Questions for Actress Phoebe Fox

In London and New York, Phoebe Fox (b. 1987) is known to theatregoers as Catherine, the niece over whom Mark Strong's Eddie Carbone went pazzo. Their physical intimacy, in Ivo van Hove’s sizzling Young Vic production of A View from the Bridge, made...

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