30 September 2002
Posted by Bonnie on 30 September 2002 at
12:00
It's your first big lead role, your name pops up on screen straight after the title, and your proud dad is sitting next to you as the action begins. Nice period costumes, a music hall in full song… the Victorians enjoyed such simple pleasures, didn't they?
Uh-oh, here it comes now: the sex scene. The sex scene with the woman! Any second now, that old brass bed is going to creak like hell! What are you supposed to say to your father at times likes these?
"Eyes on sandals!" says Rachael Stirling. "That's what I shouted at him when all these naked breasts hove into view. That's what he used to shout at me when I was a girl and there was some snogging on Dynasty which he didn't think was suitable for me to watch. No parent wants to see their child as a sex object. But afterwards he gave me a hug and said: ?Well done.'"
Stirling, 25, is part of a dynasty herself. Her mum is Dame Diana Rigg, who's just been voted the sexiest telly star of all time for her karate-kicking exploits in spray-on, wet-look black leather in The Avengers. But pleasures were simpler then, too. Mum never kicked up the kind of storm her daughter is currently doing with the lezzies-on-the-licence-fee shockeroonee that is Tipping The Velvet.
"BBC face obscenity row over shocking new lesbian drama," snorted the Daily Mail the other day. In Mail-speak, this kind of headline is known as a "marmalade dropper", meaning it's perfectly capable of bringing breakfast in the Home Counties to a spluttering standstill.
Stirling — whose father is the Scottish landowner, Archie Stirling — smirks and carries on drinking her morning cuppa in London's Langham Hotel. She's wearing a dark blue suit and ballet pumps. Her brown hair, cut in a straggly bob and tugged at constantly, matches her eyes, which in turn match those of her mum. The family resemblance is striking, although she says she's sometimes mistaken for Martine McCutcheon.
"The BBC made me jump through fiery hoops to get this part," she says. "I'm not a big star and they didn't think I could pull it off. The sex is crucial to the story and I don't think it's the most explicit you've ever seen. It's only because it involves two women that everyone's getting their knickers in a twist. I mean, it's only love."
Stirling is tall, beautiful and actressy-intense. You get the feeling she's rarely been frivolous in her life. She went to university — Edinburgh — rather than drama college because she thought it would stimulate her brain more. In her student days, she didn't much like the look of herself, and Britpack artist Jenny Saville's naked fat women gave her an idea for her dissertation. "It was called Jenny Saville In Excess: The Empowerment Of Women In An Age Of Oppressive Body Politics," she groans. "I'm better now!"
The most often-asked question during this promotional whirl — from men who know they will never get the chance — has been: What was it like kissing Keeley Hawes? Stirling says: "I know Keeley and we both just thought: "Wow! Fuck! Right, let's get on with it." She swears a lot, in the way that people with posh accents often do — in jubilation — as if they've just learned the words. Or maybe she's nervous.
"Kissing another actress is no different from kissing an actor, it's fairly mechanical. And in this, by the time you see Keeley and I kiss, you're absolutely gagging for it to happen."
With a giggle straight out of a girls' dorm, she says Tipping The Velvet is "Victorian for munching the carpet". Based on the novel by Sarah Waters, the three-parter reunites her with Andrew Davies, TV's pre-eminent dramatist, for whom she was a brazen Lulu in Othello. "In that I had this great line: ?I used to shag people out of politeness. They only had to say ?Hi Lulu' and I would have my knickers down.'" This time, Stirling is more innocent, at least at the start.
She plays the teenage Nan Astley, who works in her father's whelk parlour on the Kent coast. "I didn't see how my life would have any surprises waiting in it," she says in flashback. Then she goes to see some music-hall: comedians, a ventriloquist… and what's this: a boy singing songs who's really a girl?
Nan falls under the spell of Kitty Butler (played by Hawes), becoming her dresser, her stage sidekick, then her lover. "It's a fantastic role," says Stirling. "Nan follows Kitty to London only to come home one night and find her in bed with a man. She quits the act and becomes destitute, but as a girl she gets harassed a lot on the street. So she becomes a rent-boy, then the live-in-lover of a very rich woman in St John's Hill, then a socialist… I mean, have you ever come across a story as amazing as that?"
Stirling was attracted to the role by her character's voyage of self-discovery and her own life to date has been an eventful trip. Born in London, she grew up in Scotland, but, contrary to legend, the Stirlings at the time — her parents divorced in 1993 — did not own all of Stirlingshire.
"It wasn't a Jane Austenesque childhood. Yes, the house was beautiful, but it wasn't a castle. It didn't have, you know, wings. What was I like as a kid? A complete nightmare, I'm sure. Energetic, always riding my pony and swimming in rivers — and pretty self-contained. Well, there weren't any kids living next door."
She's just back from visiting her father and, although she's now based in London (with her DJ boyfriend John Lycett-Green), she still calls Scotland home. "This is going to sound a bit slushy but I feel like Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind about it: I've got to go there, just to touch the earth. And every time I come back down south, England just seems so small and petty. Scotland's got this vastness, those huge hills where no-one's ever going to build a… what's the word?… a suburb."
She gets defensive about her parents, and any privilege they might have bestowed on her. Her father, she insists, isn't enormously wealthy. If you're a landowner these days, "nine cases out of ten you're in deficit". Foot-and-mouth was a "kick in the guts" for him as it was for so many others. And she's at pains to stress her mother did not smooth the path for her as an actress.
"I got into acting because it was the only thing that fulfilled me. But I got into it by myself. I joined the National Youth Theatre undercover, no-one knew who Mama was. It's been a blessing and a curse being the daughter of Diana Rigg. I'm hugely proud of her and have learned a vast amount from her. But I had to find out for myself if I was any good at this, and before I could, people were making comparisons. That was fucking frustrating. I've never once gotten through a door because Mama's made a call. Well, she might have helped me get an audition, but never a job."
Stirling won't talk about her parents' split, which happened after her father had an affair with Joely Richardson, other than to say she now enjoys a great relationship with both of them. She has two older brothers. "One's a writer and the other, well, I can't say… he's a builder."
She can be a bit touchy about the posh question, too. "I don't think I am… I mean I didn't go to balls. OK, I went to one, called the Northern Meeting. But no-one filled in my dance card. No dashing white sergeant whisked me off my feet. I was a big, big lass, you see."
She didn't have a boyfriend at pony-club camp either, and also drew a blank at "tenner-for-a-snog parties". She says: "I didn't start to feel remotely attractive until I was 21." En route to this minor epiphany, she went to Wycombe Abbey, a girls' boarding school.
There were initiation ceremonies, including "density baths": if the water rose above a set level the other girls put you on a diet. "You were also allocated ?pashes' with the older girls which meant you had to make their bed and wash their knickers." Bearing in mind the theme of Tipping The Velvet, did she ever have a crush on one? "I don't think so. I thought they were all fantastically cool, but that was because they got to wear clogs."
Stirling is serious-minded, but funny with it. She's still analysing — maybe even agonising — about some of the events and circumstances that have brought her to this precise moment in her life. But the moment is undoubtedly a good one. "For the first time in my career I think I can say about Tipping The Velvet that I couldn't have done a job any better." So, at last, maybe she could get to wear the clogs.
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29 September 2002
Posted by Bonnie on 29 September 2002 at
12:00
At this time of year, one's thoughts naturally turn to lesbians. If cuddling up to one female body is an appealing thought as autumn rolls in, how much warmer would it be to curl up with two? And luckily the BBC is obliging us with Tipping the Velvet, a full-on Sapphic romp through the music halls of Victorian London, adapted from Sarah Waters's novel of the same name.
It has been impossible to move this September without the image of the heroines, played by the luscious Rachael Stirling and Keeley Hawes, in their viciously laced corsets. And, Zadie Smith aside, Waters is the most lauded female novelist of the year, her latest book, Fingersmith, having been shortlisted for every major literary award (including next month's Booker). Waters is just one of several mainstream novelists escaping the clichés of girl-on-boy chick lit. Stephanie Theobald, who coined the phrase "bi-try", found success this year with Sucking Shrimp, while regular readers of this column may remember how much I admired Helen Cross's My Summer of Love, a black comedy about two teenage girls' obsessive intimacy.
This recent flush of Sapphic passion is not just a literary phenomenon. Kissing Jessica Stein, a film about a woman who is so fed up with men she starts dating women instead, was a surprise summer hit. Around the same time, the papers were agog at rumours that the actress Saffron Burrows had left her long-time lover, the film director Mike Figgis, for fellow thespian Fiona Shaw. There were no denials and, if an affair existed, it was a case of life mirroring art, as the two were co-starring in the National's adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's lesbian love story The Power Book. While in Hollywood it has become de rigueur for modish actresses such as Angelina Jolie to suggest they have bisexual urges.
Looking at this brave new labia-loving world, you struggle to remember that the lesbian life was, not so long ago, a rather friendless path to follow. Why else would Radclyffe Hall have titled her infamous, banned Twenties novel of sexual inversion The Well of Loneliness? It's wonderful — isn't it? — that we've moved so far from the days when the Evening Standard spluttered, "I would rather put a phial of prussic acid in the hands of a healthy girl or boy than the book in question." Unless we aren't quite as cosmopolitan as we all think.
It's here I must admit that this article started life as a piece for a woman's magazine. I was commissioned to write something on "latent lesbianism" and agreed with alacrity. Like Angelina Jolie et al, I have always felt there's a dozing Sappho waiting to escape my epidermis, given the right woman, two bathrooms, and my husband's acquiescence. Furthermore, as we straight people say, "A lot of my best friends are lesbians," and — here's my trump card — my own younger sister is a full-blown member of the sisterhood. How could I be better prepared for the task in hand?
Feeling jaunty, I phoned around my gay girlfriends for input, which proved both fierce and forthcoming. I was on no account to write an "insulting lipstick lesbian" piece. I must point out that "bi-try" was the style-conscious straight girl's equivalent of the gap year student's trip to Thailand. And I should say that Kissing Jessica Stein is as relevant to Sapphic experience as Mary Poppins is to childcare.
When I assessed all my material — the Zeitgeist stuff and my friends' opinions — one thing seemed clear. Straight women are gradually sequestering gay women's turf, just as the great unwashed British male once looked to his homosexual brother and discovered grooming products. But with straight women it is less to do with style than lifestyle envy. They are cottoning on to something London's clubland has known for some while: the most excitement you can currently have on two legs is to be young, talented and lesbian in Soho.
In the Fifties and again in the Nineties, Soho swung to the beat of its drunken artist tribe, but in 2002 it pulses to the leggy gait of a smooching sisterhood, hanging out in the Candy Bar, or strutting their stuff at club nights Shine or Playgirl. My own knowledge of this is, for the main part, vicarious. My sister Dorcas, who has the sort of androgynous good looks that made Chloë Sevigny a star, writes the Sapphic column for my magazine The Erotic Review and is my guide to the orchid-house scene. In her company I can glide past the clipboard minxes and sit at bars where sloe-eyed women hold your curious gaze. The dungarees, stout shoes and moustaches of lesbian legend are nowhere to be seen.
My sister is a great seductress and her slew of ex-girlfriends includes a successful model, several authors and a Soho stripper. But you will never read tabloid reports about celebrity women on the scene. The sisters don't shop other women, and the all-male paparazzi cannot access their hangouts. For this reason the clubs and bars harbour a surprising number of Arab princesses — according to my sister, their burly minders turn a blind eye to women lovers, but would kill them if they slept with men. I had a pulse-raising moment dancing thigh-to-thigh with one of these gorgeous creatures, and believed Dorcas when she told me that "you don't know the meaning of sexy until you've been with an Arab woman".
I thought all this might make an interesting story. That wannabes, such as myself, want to gatecrash the Sapphic sanctum, and that gay women distrust their new chic status, fearing invasion by a fashion-victim sorority. But when I submitted the piece I found I had fatally misunderstood the commission. What was required was not "latent lesbianism" but "lesbianism lite". I should have told the readers that "this winter, Sapphic sex is the new black". Which is possibly true, but where does it leave real lesbians, such as my sister? I remembered something a bisexual friend had said to me: that no one minds if two girls have a fling; it's when they get serious the whole world panics.
It seems what is "latent" in our society is not so much lesbianism as the way lesbian reality is proscribed. Why else are so few prominent women "out"? Perhaps the taboo is driven by fear. Women tend to access their gay side more easily than men, and a mass movement to same-sex relationships is therefore far more plausible and threatening to the fabric of society.
The sexual fluidity of the human female probably springs from the dominant role that mothers play in their upbringing. A young girl's observation of her mother, and her subsequent questioning of what makes women lovable and desirable, mean that girls become competitive with their mother and other women for male attention. The man whose notice is fought for is often less key than the woman who stimulates the contest. My friend, the psychoanalyst Darian Leader, explained it to me thus: "A bloke sitting in a café sees an attractive woman walk past the window with a man and looks at her. A woman sitting in a café sees an attractive man walk past the window with a female companion and she too looks at the woman. What interests her is the relationship between them and what makes him desire her."
Women, it seems, routinely eroticise their own sex. And most women are also keenly aware that by expressing sexual interest in another woman they will increase their allure to men. No wonder society has historically felt the need to keep its mothers cleaving to the straight and narrow. Without them, the flower of the nation's young womanhood would flock to join Dorcas as she stalks her twilight world, free from the awkward negotiations of heterosexual dating.
And the lingering taboo does have its up side. The raffish and mesmeric energy of Soho's Sapphic scene is surely drawn from its defiance of outdated strictures. It's a girl's world.
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28 September 2002
Posted by Bonnie on 28 September 2002 at
12:00
Every lustrous inch is dripping with gold.
But make no mistake, this young lady is as bold as brass.
Posing in nothing but a slick of glittering body paint, actress Rachael Stirling said she felt surprisingly confident.
The again, she is the daughter of Dame Diana Rigg, who this week was voted the sexiest TV actress of all time for her classic role as Emma Peel in The Avengers.
Miss Stirling, who stars in BBC2's new drama Tipping the Velvet, was just as smouldering in her golden girl pose.
She even looked a little like her mother's Sixties contemporary Shirley Eaton who played the ill-fated Jill Masterson in the 1964 Bond movie Goldfinger.
Miss Stirling, 24, had to get used to peeling off her clothes for the sexually explicit period drama.
She told how standing behind a curtain ready for her golden scene was her most memorable moment.
"None of the film crew had even seen me in this state before the scene," she said.
"But I found it strangely liberating. First you don't feel totally naked because the gold paint is like a second skin.
And second, I'm never going to do this again in my life — ever." Her confidence teetered a little however, when her father, Scottish landowner Archie Stirling watched some of the scenes.
"I had to scream: 'Eyes on sandals' at him when we were watching a scene with breasts everyone," she confessed.
"That's what he used to say to me when I was watching a snogging scene on, say, Dynasty, which he didn't think was suitable."
However, Tipping the Velvet is certain to provoke controversy when it is screened.
It is a three-part series based on a 1998 novel about lesbian culture in Victorian England.
It was adapted by Andrew Davies, best-known for his screenplay of Pride and Prejudice in 1995.
Miss Stirling's character Nan Astley becomes a sexual underling to a rich sado-masochistic woman, played by Anna Chancellor, best known as Duckface from Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The show also stars Keeley Hawes, seen most recently on BBC1's Spooks.
Campaigners for tighter obscenity laws have already condemned the £1million series as inappropriate viewing for BBC2.
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11 September 2002
Posted by Bonnie on 11 September 2002 at
12:00
When a young actress lands the starring role in a groundbreaking new BBC drama, it usually calls for celebrations all round. But when Rachael Stirling, the 25-year-old daughter of Dame Diana Rigg, was offered her latest part, friends advised caution. "People said, 'Are you sure this is the right thing to do?'" she reveals. "You see, it's so controversial."
The role in question is the heroine of the £10 million period drama series Tipping the Velvet, which, because of its gay scenes, has become the most controversial drama production the BBC has ever attempted.
Based on the highly praised debut novel by Sarah Waters, it tells the story of Nan Astley, a sweet 18-year-old living in strict Victorian times. As she grows into womanhood, she leaves her father's oyster parlour in Whistable for the bright lights of London where she is taken under the wind of glamorous music-hall star Miss Kitty Butler, a male impersonator in top hat and tails played by Keeley Hawes, 24.
Some of the scenes between Nan and first love Kitty are so intimate that the director called for them to be shot on a closed set. However, Rachael doesn't appear fazed, despite tackling such scenes for the first time.
"I couldn't afford to be afraid or self-conscious," she says. "That wouldn't do anyone any favours and I'd have been misrepresenting my character, so I just went for it. The kissing was fine — and at least we didn't get 'tache burn!
"Seriously, though, if you're dubious about a part, don't do it; you'll never persuade the audience to believe in the story or character. I never wavered in my determination to play this role and to do it as best I could."
In forthcoming episodes, viewers also see Nan become the sexual slave of an aristocratic widow played by Anna Chancellor ('Duckface' in Four Weddings and a Funeral). How does Rachael think her parents — Diana Rigg and Scots landowner and businessman Archie Stirling, who divorced in 1990 — will react?
"Mamma read the book and just said, 'Oh, this is the first lesbian drama since Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, isn't it?'" says Rachael. "We didn't talk about it again. We don't, really — I go off on my thing and do it my way."
As for her father, Rachael reveals that when she was a girl he used to react to anything risqué on TV by calling out: "Eyes down to sandals!"
"He hasn't read the book so he doesn't know what it's about, except that I've told him it's going to be 'eyes on sandals' for a large percentage of the performance!", she laughs. "I'm a bit sorry for my two brothers. They're a lot older than me and it must be hard for them to watch."
Although Rachael is happy to say that she has a very good relationship with both her parents, she admits that when she started her acting career after studying history of art and Russian history at Edinburgh University she did her utmost to keep her pedigree a secret and never mentioned her mother. "I went 'undercover' until I worked out that people thought I was all right as an actress. Once I felt I'd justified myself, I owned up to the other half of my life, which is my mother."
Rachael's portrayal of Desdemona in the National Youth Theatre's 1996 production of Othello led to inevitable "like mother, like daughter" comparisons, aided by Rachael's dark-eyed prettiness, resonant voice and height — she's tall like her mother, who was recently voted the sexiest star in TV history,
Is it an advantage to be the daughter of such a distinguished actress? "At first, I was so desperate to prove I could do it that I was almost disparaging about my ma. Now my attitude is huge pride. But it's such a boring cliché to be the daughter of an actress. I'm a living, walking, breathing, smoking cliché! It's lovely to have a career in common with my mother. But even if it opens doors, it never gets you the part. And I've lost parts because I've been too tall!
"It's been nice to come home to somebody who has been there, done that and got the t-shirt. But my parents left it to me. We're utterly independent. I tend to throw myself into whatever it is I do — and no amount of warning or advice can ever stop you from making a mistake."
Many who have seen Rachael as Nan believe that Tipping the Velvet will make her a star, building on her success in films like Still Crazy, Maybe Baby and Complicity. "Oh, who are these people? I'd like to meet them," laughs Rachael, who reveals that the BBC didn't initially consider her right for the role as she wasn't a "household name". Not one to give up, she auditioned six times before clinching the part.
Rachael is aware that this production is inviting controversy and attracting audiences who are more interested in the sex scenes than the drama. "Yes, some people are bound to be watching it for purely titillating purposes, but my wish is that they turn it on with voyeuristic intent and get caught up in what is a wonderful story," she says. "It mirrors every young person who has ever had any insecurity or who has ever felt that they didn't fit in. This is the journey of a girl determined to find where she fits in."
In her own private life, Rachael is happily settled with John Lycett-Green, a nightclub DJ and the son of writer Candida Lycett-Green and late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. "I never believed there was someone out there for me — now I do," she says. "I really feel I've found my soulmate."
As for her career, she doesn't rule anything out — certainly not the soaps. "You've got permanent work and have a really food time. These actors go in day in, day out and they're brilliant.
"When I'm 50, I'd like to be the next Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders!"
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1 September 2002
Posted by Bonnie on 1 September 2002 at
12:00
Rachael Stirling took being the star of a racy drama about lesbian love in her stride. But her dad almost choked on his popcorn.
Rachael Stirling has, up to now, perhaps been better known for being Diana Rigg's daughter than for her work. But that's set to be swept aside in controversial style with a passionate new TV drama series, Tipping the Velvet.
Rachael, 25, plays a lesbian heroine in the music hall world of the 1890s. The original novel was adapted by Andrew Davies, who turned Pride and Prejudice into one of the BBC's biggest hits.
Rachael's character Nan Astley has a series of affairs with women — played by the likes of Jodhi May, Anna Chancellor and Keeley Hawes — in the three-part series.
"There was no point me having any doubts once I'd been given this job," she says. "Some of the sex is very explicit and we all had to just go for it, with our characters doing some very naughty things with one another.
"A key moment for me was standing behind a curtain, ready for a scene in which I'm shown painted gold with a dildo. None of the film crew had even seen me in this state before the scene.
"But I found it strangely liberating. First, you don't feel totally naked because the gold paint is like a second skin. And second, I'm never going to do this again in my life — ever.
"So why wish it were over — why not relax and enjoy it? I've kept the gold dildo, too. I'm moving into a new flat soon and I might use it as a coat hanger — nailed to the wall."
As relaxed as Rachael was about her performance, she still warned Diana and her father Archie Stirling before they saw a preview tape of the first episode.
"My father was watching and whenever I kissed Keeley — there are a couple of double nipple moments in certain scenes — he said: 'Eyes on sandals.' Which is what he used to say to me when I was a kid.
"He was holding up a magazine over the telly, joking: "I can't. I just can't." I don't think he'll ever be able to watch episode two, which has some very explicit, full-on scenes with Anna Chancellor.
"Mum's reaction, as ever, was very supportive. She cried all the way through the first episode, which is what happens when she likes something I've done.
"It's probably the first work I've had after which they could both say: 'Yes, you've made the right decision.'"
Director Geoff Sax was aware of Rachael's work from his production of Othello and chose her for the key role.
"The first reaction at the BBC was: 'Tough tits — we've never heard of her,'" she says. "So Geoff went through a lot of interviews with other actresses, but six auditions later I finally got the part. It was one I wanted more than any other."
Rachael, who's also starred in the films Another Life, Still Crazy and Ben Elton's comedy Maybe Baby, is aware that Tipping the Velvet sets new boundaries of sexuality on BBC television.
"Some of the stage directions put off potential American investors," she says. "One just says: 'Nan stands with the dildo jutting obscenely from her bush.'
"But it's not grotesque. Many of the scenes are done with a great sense of cheekiness and humour. And it didn't feel odd, shocking or different to me.
"Love it love, whether woman to man, woman to woman or man to man. Perhaps I've underestimated some people's homophobia, but I didn't find any of it abnormal."
Rachael, who researched the role, says: "In the late Victorian era there was a fashionable underworld of lesbianism that was kept very quiet and low-key. But I've seen a collection of photos you wouldn't believe."
Rachael's own love life is strictly heterosexual. "I've never even kissed a girl before," she says. "I love women, but I'm not physically attracted to them and that stays exactly the same after all these scenes.
I can understand why some women are attracted, though, because women are much more beautiful naked and make such good friends."
What was the reaction of her boyfriend, London-based DJ John Green? "He said: 'Oh God, you didn't say there'd be tongues'", she laughs. "But he loves it.
"It was tough for him because it meant me working nonstop for three months, without any time for anything else. My character is in every scene throughout, so I was working from 5.30 each morning until 10 at night."
Rachael's clearly proud of having won the role without any influence from her mother Dame Diana, who became the only woman to marry James Bond in the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
"I love her desperately and I love our relationship, but I find such a calling card really cringeworthy," she says. "I like the fact that I've made a go of things, keeping myself financially without any help from family or home."
Rachael, who'll also be seen shortly in a production called Bait with John Hurt and Sheila Hancock, is back in corserts again for a movie, the 18th-century love story The Triumph of Love.
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