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The Clare woman who is the most in-demand actress in Britain today
IN the bar of the British Film Institute, Denise Gough is considering the four stages of fame. There’s “Who’s Denise Gough?” “That’s Denise Gough.” “Get me Denise Gough!” And finally, “Can we get someone like Denise Gough?” Right now, she is firmly located in ‘‘Get me Denise Gough!’’
‘‘But it doesn’t last long, that phase. Who cares, I’m in a great place, and that’s all that matters.’’
And she is glad that it’s happened now, when she is 38, rather than when she was 22, being keenly aware of the infantilising effects of fame. Gough is in the middle of rehearsing at the National Theatre for the upcoming production of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s sprawling, epic play about Aids, alongside Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane. But what flung her straight from stage one to stage three was her role in People, Places and Things, the extraordinarily brilliant play by Duncan Macmillan, which was her debut at the National in 2015. She played Emma, a struggling addict in the midst of recovery. It was a life-changing performance which united the critics. ‘‘Mesmerising,’’ they called her. And ‘‘Magnificent,’’ ‘‘Blistering,’’ ‘‘Astonishing.’’ Not one to rest on her laurels, she’s at a whole new level of intensity with Angels in America. Directed by Marianne Elliott, the play is a marathon look at gay America in the 1980s, and her character, Harper, is a fragile, Valium-addicted housewife.
‘‘I’m an emotional wreck because I’ve never played someone so sad. I’ve always played complex women, but with a resolve in the centre. Harper doesn’t have that — Harper is deeply terrified of everything, all the way through until maybe the last two scenes, so rehearsing her is quite an anxious process. She cries a lot,’’ she says. But I’ve never met an actress quite so self-possessed. She is very striking, with the sparkling eyes and a beautiful mouth.
And Gough is unusual in her profession: she speaks her mind without fear of the consequences; she insists on being called an actress rather than an actor, and cites her five-year-old nephew as her biggest influence. She used to swear a lot in interviews until her father pulled her up on it (he wanted to be able to show the articles to the neighbours). And she is politically fluent, and will take any chance to rage against injustice, the treatment of refugees, racial prejudice, and the stereotyping of women.
There is, she says, only so much talking about herself she can do, though she is slightly bemused by her image in the press. ‘‘I feel like I’ve become the Jeremy Corbyn of actors,’’ she laughs (she laughs a lot). ‘‘People say, ‘Ah she’s the grass roots, she’s one of the common people and she swears a lot…’ It’s funny how there’s a place to slip into, and I slipped into it.’’ Despite winning Most Promising Newcomer from the Critics Circle in 2012 (for Desire Under the Elms, at the Lyric Hammersmith), when People, Places and Things came up, Gough was still little known and hadn’t worked for a year.
She calls it her year in Siberia, but instead of torturing herself about failed auditions, she learned that there are other ways of bolstering your self-esteem. ‘‘I did a lot of yoga, a lot of soul-searching, and hanging out with my nephews and nieces — and my sister really saved my ass too.’’ Her dad had always told her: ‘‘‘You’re somebody’s sister and somebody’s aunt, — and at first I couldn’t get my head around that. I thought, ‘I’m an actress and that’s all I want to be…’ ” But, she decided, she couldn’t spend her life waiting to be picked. ‘‘I had to compete with really great women, and I don’t like what being a struggling actress can do to you,’’ she says. ‘‘It can make you crazy — and I just didn’t want it making me crazy.’’ She struggled financially, working in a children’s nursery, and as a waitress, borrowing money from her sister. ‘‘I can tell you, it’s a lot easier being an out-of-work actress when you have money, when you’re not worrying about your rent; because you’re not thinking, on top of all the other reasons, I have to get this because I’m f ***ing broke. I had to sign on, and I found that difficult, because of my pride.’’ When Gough read the script for People, Places and Things, she knew this was the one, that Emma was a pivotal role. She also knew that if she didn’t get the part, she was going to give up.
‘‘I read it and I thought, bloody hell — if it’s not this, I’m done. I can’t be dealing with reading a perfect part and then it not being mine. But I went to the audition knowing I wasn’t going to give them my whole self. I did all the work, and I knew the script really well, but I didn’t go in begging for my life.’’ Jeremy Herrin, the play’s director, had seen many actresses for the role, but it was Gough who got a call back for a second audition.
And while waiting in the green room, she happened to pick up a book that featured a conversation between Oprah Winfrey (one of her heroes) and Maya Angelou, which said something along the lines of if you’re upset and think the world is against you, be grateful for everything you have right now. ‘‘And I remember thinking, ‘that’s brilliant timing’. And I went into the audition and I tore the room apart. I snorted icing sugar which I’d brought with me; I rolled a cigarette and knocked over chairs and at the end of it I read them this piece by Pia Mellody about addiction, about how brave addicts are, and when I left I wished them well and said, ‘I hope you find the right person’, because I thought, I’m not doing this any more.
‘‘When I left, I said a little prayer to the gods of theatre and I went about my day and thought, ‘whatever happens, I’ve done my best’.’’
Interlude: Gough has a fixation with huskies. She has found that, whenever something significant is about to happen, she sees a husky. Er, right, I say. Go on: ‘‘They appear in my life when things are a bit heightened. I know it sounds ridiculous. I had been thinking that I hadn’t seen one in ages, and we were at this zebra crossing and a husky walked across with his owner — and then my phone rang and it was my agent. She said, ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ And I said, the bad. And she said, ‘There isn’t any — we’re going to the National’. The play went down a storm. She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, and the Critics’ Circle award. Addicts came up to her in the street and told her she had helped them to kick their addictions. When they performed the play at a treatment centre in Catford, and somebody shouted out ‘‘Good Girl!’’ at a moment when
‘It wasn’t Angela’s Ashes, but it was a varied upbringing’
Emma makes a crucial decision to get clean, Gough burst into tears and said that endorsement was better than any review.
She is proud of her performance. ‘‘I worked really hard at it, and sometimes the elegance and brilliance of the writing can catapult the central character.’’ In October, the play is going to New York, off Broadway, to St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, and Gough cannot wait.
Denise Gough grew up in Ennis, Co Clare, in Ireland, the seventh of 11 children. ‘‘That means that there are 10 people between you and your holy grail, which is your mother and your father.’’ Subconsciously, to get attention, she became the clown within the family. ‘‘I noticed it the other day in rehearsals — I would literally have toppled over to make people laugh. And Marianne said, ‘Jesus, will you just calm down’.”
It wasn’t Angela’s Ashes, she says of her family, but it was a varied upbringing. ‘‘My parents have done well to raise 11 human beings who stay in touch with each other and look out for each other and care about each other. As the seventh one, I was a needy little thing, still am, though not in the same way. I was a bit anxious, obsessed with wars and the Holocaust…’’
When she was 15, she left home for London, with a boyfriend. Not, she says, because she was desperate to become an actress; she already thought her life was a movie.
‘‘And London kicked the hell out of me.’’ She was a wild, broke teenager, quickly split up with the boyfriend and had a rough time.
‘‘But I couldn’t go back because
I’m really stubborn and I couldn’t show that I’d made a mistake.’’ She remembers picking up cigarette butts off the streets, and cannot imagine what it would be like to come here not speaking English — ‘the refugees who’ve been in the backs of trucks, over mountains — I mean, I had jobseeker’s allowance, the NHS, scholarships…’’
She worked in a bar in Camberwell, and got a full scholarship to the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in Wandsworth, aged 19. She started as she meant to go on. When, at drama school, she was given the role of Irina, the most boring of Chekhov’s three sisters, she shaved her head in order to get cast as the more interesting character, Natasha. Gough is fearless, and recognises the importance of that quality onstage. Now, she says, she feels like a racehorse. ‘‘Suddenly everyone wants you to do everything.’’ She is less interested in television than theatre, but is amazed by the number of people who assume she’s just using theatre to get into TV.
‘‘I was offered something that would have clashed with a play in the West End and they couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t drop the theatre job.’’ Gough is true to her word. A few days after I interviewed her, she performed onstage at the Haymarket Theatre as part of
Moving Stories, to raise money for UNHCR, the refugee agency, with a line-up that included Joe Pasquale and Mel Giedroyc.
She thinks actors should use their status to help refugees. ‘‘Our humanity is at stake and I get to draw attention to that a bit. I feel it’s really important to use that position to talk about more than yourself. You’re an actor and you’re getting paid a f***ing fortune. Behave yourself! It’s such a lucky position to be in. I can only do things that have some sort of message.’’
One of those things is Guerrilla, a Sky television series about black activism in England in the 1970s, alongside Daniel Mays, Freida Pinto and Idris Elba. She is also the lead in Paula, a BBC2 drama written by the playwright and film-maker Conor McPherson, about a chemistry teacher who is disconnected from life and uses sex with inappropriate men to jolt her into feeling alive.
‘‘I’m proud of it because it’s a female-driven piece, and also she’s really complex and a bit ugly and she doesn’t really care if you like her.’’ Gough’s father tells her that she needs to make sure she is looking after herself and not devoting too much time to causes, but she says: ‘‘It’s the only way I can make peace with what I earn and the work I do, and having to talk about myself all the time. It’s really the only way I can do it and sleep.’’
It probably helps to keep her feet on the ground that she grew up in such a large family.
Gough is level-headed about her overwhelming reviews, and her legions of fans, but slightly disconcerted with her relatively new-found fame. Once, she says, a girl came up to her and bowed. ‘‘I said, ‘You must never, ever do that again’.” We can sympathise entirely with the sentiment, if not the action.
‘Angels in America’ is showing at the National Theatre from April 11 and is broadcast live on July 20&27 at ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk; ‘Guerrilla’ is on Sky Atlantic from April 13 while ‘Paula’ will be shown later this year on BBC 2