Fancy footwork sees her through
Refreshed by a trip to our shores, Imelda Staunton dances her way into audience’s hearts in her new film, writes James Croot.
It was two years ago, but Imelda Staunton has vivid memories of the weeks she spent touring New Zealand. With husband Jim Carter, the 62-year-old actress explored the country early in 2016.
‘‘We had the best, best time. It was utterly breathtaking wherever we went and I’m a little bit annoyed that I live in London,’’ she says. Enthusing that the drive from Oamaru to Queenstown was ‘‘sensational’’ and the food across New Zealand ‘‘unbelievable’’, the Harry Potter and Vera Drake star admits she is keen to return to our shores as soon as she can.
However, this week, Kiwi moviegoers will at least be able to see Staunton on our screens for the first time in almost four years (although she has voiced Paddington’s beloved Aunt Lucy twice during that time).
In the new film Finding Your Feet, she stars as Lady Sandra Abbott, whose life is turned upside down when she discovers her husband is having an affair. Deciding to go and live with her far more bohemian sister Bif (Celia Imrie), uptight Sandra struggles to adjust to her new surroundings.
Staunton is fully aware that this British drama isn’t exactly ‘‘a piece of Ibsen’’ but she believes director Richard Loncraine’s (My House in Umbria, Wimbledon) tale ‘‘is a great piece of light in – let’s face it – these dark times’’.
‘‘This has a lot of fun in it and a bit of sadness. Hopefully, this will just make people smile. It isn’t, I hope, twee, or too sentimental – it’s funny. Yes, it’s a film for people of a certain age, but I think it can be shown to people of all ages, like the kids’ cartoons that all us adults like to watch. It’s just a good film – whatever age you are – but it’s one with people over 21 starring in it, which is nice.’’
Bristling that no one ever talks about films that are made for 15- to 19-year-olds in the same way as those for mature audiences, Staunton says films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Finding Your Feet prove maudlin shouldn’t be the default setting for olderskewing fare.
‘‘It doesn’t have to be people in their 60s in a cardigan going, ‘oh, dear is your back sore? Mine is – isn’t it awful getting old?’ This is about people having a difficult time and really dealing with it.’’
Conversely, shooting Feet was anything but a difficult time. There was the prospect of a few days in Rome, working with old friends Imrie and Timothy Spall and the fact that much of the production took place about 20 minutes from her home. ‘‘That was a bonus. After our trip to New Zealand, I didn’t want to go away again, I just wanted to be at home. Plus, having done a lot of theatre recently, it was nice to just do it on the day and go home.’’
Staunton says it was more than just familiarity and proximity that attracted her to the project. ‘‘As always, it was the script. It was a page-turner for me.’’
Full of praise for director Loncraine, she says his biggest asset was that he made the on-set atmosphere so relaxed and easy. ‘‘He made sure that we were all comfortable and that everyone was making the film that was on the page.
‘‘We came across difficulties because it was a low-budget film, but we worked our way around them. If something didn’t work, he’d go, ‘okay, let’s try this’ – and it would work. He’s been making films for 400 years – he knows how to get on with it and do it.’’
Staunton says one of the only difficult periods was the couple of weeks when Imrie was on doubleduty, performing a play nearby in the evenings. ‘‘I was like a schoolmistress,’’ Staunton laughs. ‘‘I’d say, ‘right, that’s it, you’re out of here’, and she’d say, ‘just one more take’, and I’d say, ‘no, you’re not, you’ve got to get to the theatre and have a rest’.’’
Staunton admits she needed plenty herself after ‘‘hot and sweaty’’ dance rehearsals. ‘‘I’m just glad we weren’t learning the dance to be dancers in the film – we were ordinary people struggling to dance. But we still had to be good enough. So I spent days and days in the kitchen trying to run through the steps.’’
One dance scene offered no chance for rehearsal, she says. ‘‘It was real guerilla film-making. We were supposed to be flash-mob dancing in Piccadilly Circus, so we literally just walked down there and started dancing. The pubic were like ‘what the hell is going on?’’. We’d do it and then disappear into a hotel for 20 minutes until they had moved on, then we’d do it again for a different audience. It was by the seat of our pants really.
‘‘We did feel secure in the dance and yet we knew it wasn’t a controlled atmosphere like a normal film set. We just had to go with that.’’
Delighted to have been able to share the experience with her old Royal Academy of Dramatic Art classmate Spall, Staunton can’t help but extol the virtues of the 60-year-old, whose last film was the Christchurch-set and shot, Margaret Mahy-adaptation The Changeover.
‘‘He’s always utterly truthful on camera and hilarious off-camera – that’s a nice combination to be around. He never does any tricks or anything like that. You just know the path he treads is the absolute truth – and that might be hilarious, serious, or heartbreaking.
‘‘Tim and I, it’s not George Clooney and Angelina [Jolie] doing this film, it’s me and Tim. We’re ordinary people and I think that’s what makes it quite attractive, in a way. I sit in a cinema and watch whoever it is – Scarlett Johansson, Annette Bening – all those people one could never look or be like, but then I think, ‘well, maybe audiences can relate to Tim and I being ordinary people who can do extraordinary things’.’’
But after two big theatre projects [Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And Follies] last year, Staunton is keen to do some rather ordinary tasks.
‘‘I’ve just been on holiday again and now I don’t want to do anything at all. After seven years of theatre with a few films thrown in, I just want a bit of life. So I will wait and see what comes in and in the meantime just be at home with ‘Carson’ [her nickname for her husband, coined from his most famous role as Downton Abbey‘s butler], doing the garden, the odd trip and stuff like that. I’ve been shovelling it out for quite some time and theatre in particular is so tiring that I’m more than happy just to be at home for a bit.’’
❚ Finding Your Feet (M) opens in New Zealand cinemas on February 23.
"I spent days and days in the kitchen trying to run through the steps." Imelda Staunton on learning to dance for Finding Your Feet