‘He is constantly called my toyboy and it is so irritating, not only for me but for him’
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HIGH DRAMA: Julie, centre, with, from left, Tallulah, Neil, Nico and Art in Penance. Right: With Bletchley Circle co-stars
this 50:50.’” Julie adds: “We’re not asking for anything more, we’re asking for equal representation on screen, and not just in male/female, but across the ages as well.”
Of her own experiences with casting, she says: “In the last year, I’ve been up for two jobs where it was a multi-sex part; one was a psychiatrist and they saw men and women for the role.
“It just so happens that the part went to a man, but that’s because it went to the better actor, and I don’t mind that. But they just have to go, ‘Why couldn’t that part be played by a woman?’”
Julie also spoke of how she’s been treated since marrying a younger man last year.
Her husband is 38-year-old Davy Croket, a Belgian skydiving instructor, but Julie has very clear views about the fact he has been labelled as her “toyboy”.
She says: “I think we’ve got to stop calling them ‘toyboy relationships’ because that is demeaning in itself.
“It should just be a norm.
“I’m married to a younger man and he’s constantly called my ‘toyboy’ in the press and it’s so irritating, not only for me but for him as well.” Julie had not been looking for love when she met Davy, and she previously said that marriage was more important to him than it was to her.
They tied the knot in October last year after Davy sought the blessing of Julie’s daughters Edie, 16, and Cyd, 14, before proposing. “My priorities were very much my kids and my work,” Julie said. “Davy just happened to be there.”
In the first episode of Penance her character Rosalie has intense sexual dreams.
BUT the way they were filmed was “very precise – like a jigsaw”, Julie says. “It’s like choreographing a dance and it absolutely should be like that, because then everybody feels safe and nobody is being exposed in that way.”
It’s very different from experiences she had filming intimate scenes at the start of her career, when she was left “feeling desperately uncomfortable – and not just me, but the other actor, and actually the crew”.
“You stop being an actor and start being quite an insecure person,” she confides.
“I then worked with a director called Michael Winterbottom and I had to do a quite intense scene with Christopher Eccleston. And how Michael worked, it was very choreographed, and so I learnt a big lesson from that.
“And whenever I’ve had to do that stuff, I’ve always said, ‘We’re having a meeting about this!’
“But in this day and age, I have to say, that is very welcomed by everybody.”
●●Penance started yesterday on Channel 5 and will run over three consecutive nights