SHE’S GOT A MIND AS SHARP AS A STEEL TRAP
Brenda Blethyn reveals how solving fiendish cryptic crosswords helps her to play Vera, TV’s cleverest detective
BRENDA Blethyn is wearing a blue-and-white crushed velvet jacket by Eileen Fisher, a smart black blouse and trousers, heeled brogues from Russell & Bromley and a beautiful silver necklace.
She is a picture of elegance and absolutely nothing like the TV detective she plays, who looks as if she gets dressed in the dark at a jumble sale.
Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope, a character created by novelist Ann Cleeves, huffs around Northumberland upholstered in seemingly endless layers of shapeless blouses, a scruffy old mac that even Columbo would have rejected and a battered hat.
Blethyn laughs when I mention Vera’s, ahem, ‘low-key’ sense of style. ‘No, she’s definitely not interested in labels,’ she says. ‘I reckon maybe someone in her village has a catalogue and that’s where she gets her clothes from.
‘In the books she has a skin condition and doesn’t like going in the sun, so the hat I wear is a wink towards that. I bought it in a fishing tackle shop in Newcastle.’
We’re meeting at ITV in London ahead of the return of Vera for its tenth series of four feature-length episodes. It is one of the channel’s flagship crime dramas, pulling in huge audiences. It also sells all over the world. Not bad for a cop who’s getting on a bit and is grumpy, rude and exasperating. ‘I think women of a certain age all over the world like the fact that Vera’s in charge of a load of men,’ says Blethyn. ‘And part of the appeal is the fact that she isn’t manufactured. She’s a real person. There’s no vanity there.’
Blethyn came to professional acting in her late 20s, having worked in a bank and as a secretary. ‘I really enjoyed my job as a secretary,’ she says. ‘I don’t feel it was time wasted. I think life experience is a great thing. And I didn’t know all this – acting – was round the corner.’
She went on to star in a huge range of films, such as A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford and starring Brad Pitt and small independent movies. She has twice been nominated for an Oscar, for Secrets & Lies (1996) and Little Voice (1998). The former bagged her a Golden Globe and a Bafta.
Brenda was the youngest of nine children. Her father was a chauffeur, her mother a maid. ‘We were pretty poor as kids,’ she says. ‘We didn’t have a telly, we didn’t always have a wireless and my dad would set us little puzzles to do. All the family do puzzles. When I used to visit my late sister in Florida we’d play games from morning to night. She could do The New York Times’s puzzle, I can’t.’
She was 19 when she married her first husband, but they separated a few years later when he fell in love with a neighbour. They parted amicably, but before she left what had been their shared home she papered the walls with topless photographs of herself.
‘I still don’t know why I did that. It was idiotic,’ she wrote in her memoir. Years later, she asked her ex if he’d a good laugh when he saw them and was mildly offended when he said he couldn’t remember them.
She met her second husband, art director Michael Mayhew, and they married in 2010. They live in London but Blethyn moves to the North East when shooting Vera, working 16-hour days. ‘I try to get enough sleep and I hardly drink,’ she says.
‘Part of Vera’s appeal is she’s a real person. There’s no vanity there’
Vera returns to Virgin Media Three in series 10, early in the New Year..