This website is dedicated to the talented and beautiful British actress Rachael Stirling, star of film, TV, stage and radio.
Obsession, jealousy, betrayal. A powerful black man in a white society. Acclaimed screenwriter Andrew Davies takes these themes from Shakespeare and reworks them into an achingly intense contemporary story set in present-day London. As racial tensions threaten to explode, political forces propel John Othello into a high-profile public role over the head of his best friend and mentor Ben Jago.
You've spent a long time turning interviews down. Was that because you thought you would just be asked about your mother?
Yes. I think I was almost too cagey about my mother. I hadn't dealt with it very well. I didn't really know how to, so I went completely undercover. I got an agent on my own and got into the National Youth Theatre on my own. I did it all on my own and that is important when you are trying to find your own way. Now I like to get the mother stuff out of the way in an interview. She is my ma, not Diana Rigg and that's it. But I am so proud of her and it took a long time for me to acknowledge that in public. I felt it would take away from what I did.
It clearly hasn't though. You're about to be seen in ITV's stunning update of Othello. You play Lulu, best friend of the doomed Desdemona. There are some very intimate moments with Christopher Eccleston, who plays Iago. How do you prepare for scenes like that?
You sit down and talk about it first and you laugh a lot. Then you have 500 people around and a camera up your right nostril. You don't see nudity, but in a way I suppose it is more intimate than that. They never have full sex because I don't think Jago — as Iago is called in this — would let himself go like that. Jago and Lulu are quite similar animals. If he hadn't been so fixated with Othello they might have fallen in love. Lulu seems your average spoilt kid, but she has a lot of dignity to her and strength. She is street-wise and slightly sordid in a way that Desdemona isn't. She has learned about men the hard way. She had this great line: "I used to shag people out of sheer politeness. They only had to say 'Hi, Lulu' and I would have my knickers down".
Oo-er, but Lulu is still quite upper-class. Your dad Archie Stirling had an estate in Perthshire, Scotland. Are you posh too?
Well, I speak with a posh accent… Not too many plums in your mouth though. No, (laughing) not too many plums. It has always been perceived that I grew up in a large estate like something out of a Jane Austen novel. I didn't. My father is often described as a landowner, but I think many farmers will tell you owning land is not about living in luxury and being profligate — now it's more about survival. I know compared to many I have been very lucky, but it wasn't the silver-spoon upbringing that's often made out.
You went to boarding school in England when your parents' marriage was breaking up (her father had an affair with the much younger Joely Richardson). Was that your choice?
Yes it was. I was given a choice of schools and from the age of 11 to 18 I went to Wycombe Abbey girls school in Buckinghamshire where I had an incredible education. It is one of the top schools in the country and they give you the confidence to believe that you can do and be, anything. That is the privilege of private education, but it ain't all jolly hockey sticks. The first week we were dragged up to the attic and put through a sort of initiation by the older pupils. The 16-year-olds brought out a tampon and asked what it was. I put my hand up and said it was a candle and they collapsed giggling. They put us through tests to see what we knew. We were petrified.
But they didn't do anything cruel to you?
Well, it was all about power, so it was cruel in a sense. But at the same time, no sooner are you grown up than you can't wait to turn the tables and do the same thing to the younger ones. We were also made to "fag" — where the younger girls do chores for the older ones. It was proper Cruella De Vil-style stuff, but at the same time you are all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and eager to please. I was like: "Oh, really? What can I do for you? Shall I wash your pants?" Boys' bullying is well- publicised, but girls' bullying is much more psychological — more malicious. It is an almighty thing to go away from home to school and be disillusioned at the age of 11 and a half. I am not sure that I would send my own children to a boarding school. I was OK because I was equipped to deal with it, but not all children are.
With the benefit of hindsight, would you have been happier at home?
No. I would have had a shit time at home.
Because of your parents' divorce?
No — nothing to do with that. You go through a weird patch when you start going through puberty and it's fine because you have spent your fury and your frustration at the structure which is boarding school and its staff, who represent authority. By venting your feelings on them, instead of your parents, your parents remain important, separate and sacred. When I got my period I phoned mum. She said don't worry everything's going to be fine. The next day I got a bunch of flowers from her and a note saying "Welcome to womanhood", which was lovely.
After school you studied Russian and art history at Edinburgh University and did two films while you were still there?
Yes, that was amazing. The first was Still Crazy, with Bill Nighy, Timothy Spall, Juliet Aubrey and Jimmy Nail. The director asked me if I would quit university. I said no and so they flew me down to Pinewood for filming and back for lectures. I played Juliet's daughter and fell in love with a young guy in a rock band. My performance was awful. It took me 10 takes to walk through a door, but I learned a lot. I was absolutely terrified in the company of such accomplished actors.
Hadn't you met any of them through your mother?
Don't be daft. I had never been to a celebrity party in my life. Nobody even knew who my mother was until halfway through filming when a newspaper ran a piece about me being "undercover" on the film. I went on to do Complicity with Jonny Lee Miller. Then after graduating, I did Another Life about Edith Thompson, who was hanged for a murder she didn't commit, and Maybe Baby, the Ben Elton comedy.
Joely Richardson was in that too. Wasn't that rather awkward?
When I first heard I had the job and that Joely was in it I thought, "Oh God!" But I never thought about backing out because it was work and I needed the money. We met working on the film and it was hard, but OK. It was nine years after the event so a long time had passed and we sat down and talked about it — I faced my nemesis and we got on. Also, it's not like we are the only people this has happened to. Lots of people live with adultery and marriage breakdowns. It happens all the time.
You once said you were unconvinced by the idea of a man and woman being together forever. Do you still feel that?
No. I have flitted around a bit — I always have. I flitted and then I met the boy. I think I probably am having it — real love — for the first time. I never believed there was someone out there for me, but now I do. We always knew each other to say hello to, but suddenly one day I let go and the flood gates opened and it has been exhilarating, amazing. We have had more than six months of that absolute joy of getting to know someone. Letting them know all your neuroses and then they still love you and even laugh at you when you get the green-eyed monster.
Who is this perfect man?
John Green. He is a DJ in London — he works in clubs and does everything from rock to hip-hop and he's my boy. He is 23, a year younger than me — I know we are young, but I really feel I have found my soul mate. I know this business is tough on relationships but I feel he will cope.
Actress Rachael Stirling is about to make a name for herself in a racy adaptation of Othello for ITV. And if she looks familiar, it could be because her mother is Dame Diana Rigg.
Rachael Stirling is wearing a new anorak which she picked up only yesterday during a whistle-stop tour of Topshop. It is a big, baggy parka-style affair with a fur-trimmed hood and a bright orange lining. "Such a bargain!" she says. "It cost me less than 40 quid!"
Stirling loves bargains — thanks to the high rent on her flat in Notting Hill, West London, she moans, she is just as skint as any 24-year-old — but she is definitely not a fashion junkie. "I like having something nice to go out in. But it's not the most important thing on the planet. I find people interesting; that's why I'm an actress. But I couldn't care less what clothes they're wearing."
It's easy for her to say this. She would still look fantastic if she were wearing an old bin liner. Like her mother, Diana Rigg, Stirling is an alluring creature with dark, mischievous eyes and a pretty, snubby nose — and she has one of those deep, crisp voices that bring to mind the more naughty of Nancy Mitford's heroines. Then again, since she spent her summer holiday horse-and-carting across the Wiltshire bridleways, she is probably being truthful when she describes herself as a "jeans and trainers girl". "It was very romantic," she says of the trip, which she took with John, her DJ boyfriend of seven months. "The pace of life was the complete opposite of the way it is when you're filming. Off you go, clippety-clop, at the pace of a snail and, somehow, it re-energises you."
It is only two years since Stirling graduated from Edinburgh University, where she read history of art and Russian ("I wanted to read Chekhov in the original"), but in that time she has been more or less constantly in work. She insists, however, that her ability to land roles has nothing to do with her mother; more than one director has hired her without knowing her background, and her agent was told only after signing her.
"Thanks to my surname, I was virtually undercover for the first few jobs I did," she says (her father, Archie Stirling, is a Scottish landowner and businessman; he and Rigg divorced eight years ago). "I was almost dismissive of my mother in the beginning; I was just so adamant about proving that I could do it on my own. But now I know I got where I am off my own bat, it's easier for me to say how enormously proud of her I am."
Rachael did two movies while she was still at university: Still Crazy, a comedy about middle-aged rockers, and Complicity, with Jonny Lee Miller. "I was a real mess in Still Crazy," she says. "I didn't know anything. I'd fly down to Pinewood, shoot, then fly back up to a lecture. It was all a bit mad. By the time I did Complicity, I was beginning to understand the technical side of film. But I was writing my thesis at the same time. I'd sit in my caravan on set, scribbling away, waiting to be called. I got a 2:1 but I know I could have done better."
More films followed, including Another Life with Natasha Little, and a play at London's Donmar Warehouse. Later this month, she can be seen on ITV in Andrew Davies's contemporary adaptation of Othello, alongside Christopher Eccleston and Keeley Hawes; Stirling plays Emilia, though in this version, set in a 21st-century London seething with racial tension, the character is called Lulu.
"I loved playing her," says Rachael. "Lulu is a Sloane, but a clever, foxy, witty, loyal Sloane. I played Desdemona in the National Youth Theatre's production of Othello, and I remember the huge burden of going on stage knowing that there were probably hundreds of young people out there who'd never seen Shakespeare before. But there's lots of sex in this version — so that might perk things up a bit for them."
As a child, Rachael lived mostly at her parents' house in West London, though there were regular visits to her father's 5,000-acre estate in Perthshire. Then, in 1990, Rigg and Stirling separated following his affair with Joely Richardson. After the split, their daughter, the only child of their relationship, elected to go to boarding school, and it was there that the acting bug took hold.
When Rachael was younger, she used to tell funny stories about her parents' disintegrating relationship; on one occasion, she told an interviewer that on being offered a plate of pastries by the butler, her mother turned to her father and said: "Why don't you have another tart if you're so keen on them?" But these days, Rachael is older and wiser and, consequently, a little more discreet. She adores both her parents — she and her mother share a passion for Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn movies — and her two half-brothers from her father's first marriage to Charmian Scott. "They're ten and twelve years older than me, in the construction business, and they're amazing. When I was little, they used to bully the life out of me. They would feed me upside down to watch the food trickling out of my nose, put me in rivers to see if I could swim. Then suddenly, you turn 15 and a different relationship is established: you're quite good company, you've got quite pretty friends, you start hanging out with one another. They're proud of me on the sly, but we don't talk about what I'm doing that much. It stops me from becoming a big-headed plonker."
Her childhood, she says, was not particularly theatrical, and she is not convinced that actors can marry one another if they mean to be happy. "When I was a teenager, I always thought I fancied actors, but often when you meet them they're not all they're cracked up to be. I don't know whether I could share both work and playtime with someone. I'd known John all my life, but we only got together the night after I finished Othello. We met up in a club and that was it. It sort of works. He does his thing, I do mine."
She is about to start shooting a thriller caller Polyesterday, again with Jonny Lee Miller. Beyond that, she will just keep on auditioning and hoping to land interesting parts. "I read about people who've been in some pop band for five minutes and they say, "Oh yes, I've been sent some scripts." Bull! They're still going to have an audition. You have to work your arse off to get jobs. Some people make it sound really easy, but it isn't. It's bloody hard."
So would she like to follow in her mother's footsteps and play a catsuited action girl who dispatches her enemies with neatly timed karate chops, à la Emma Peel in The Avengers? "Ooh, yes! I'd love to do an action film. I went to a party the other day, and because I was driving I wore really heavy boots. When I got there, my skirt made it difficult to dance, so I just tucked it into my pants and got on with it. I felt like Lara Croft. It was brilliant."
This website is dedicated to the talented and beautiful British actress Rachael Stirling, star of film, TV, stage and radio.
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