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."
