Anita’s sailing on from the Queen Vic to Annie
it was only later that I found people can be difficult. So I found my voice and became confident about using my voice and then finally I learned how to use it in a way… without upsetting people.
“So I hope I’m a nicer person now. My husband might disagree! He’d probably say, ‘She’s a nightmare to live with but great fun’.”
Being married to the Queen guitarist isn’t quite as wild as you might expect. “Brian is like an absent-minded professor,” she says. “Before our wedding, his mother said to me ‘Please don’t think you’re marrying a rock god, darling, you’re marrying a scientist’.
“He’s not bothered by the minutiae of life. His head is full of the big stuff. He could explain all about the mysteries of space but couldn’t find his car keys.”
Anita will be touring with Annie until the end of April – when Craig Revel Horwood steps into Miss Hannigan’s shoes.
“Brian and I are already planning our holiday,” says Anita. “We’re going to Zanzibar before he goes off on tour.” But first they have a date in LA. May has been nominated for five Academy Awards for Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
“My husband at the Oscars? I think I can get out there,” she smiles. “I think I can get the week off…”
Anita, now 69, has come a mighty long way from the Mile
End Road. She was born in Stepney, east
London, and grew up in a council flat. Her parents, a dress-cutter and a seamstress, worked hard but never had money.
“It was tough but that’s life,” she shrugs. “You learn that in the East End – get over it and get on with it.
“My dad always told me to be proud of my roots and I am, I love East End people and the sense of community. But he said ‘There’s a world out there and if you want to get anywhere, you have to get out there’.
“We didn’t have any money for singing or music lessons but I was nurtured and protected and loved. I had a very happy childhood.”
Back then it was rare for women to aspire to more than motherhood or secretarial jobs. At 16 Anita worked for Prudential Assurance. “There are probably still lost claims from those days where I filed them in the wrong place,” she laughs.
But she wanted more from life. So she started amateur dramatics and at 18 was accepted at London’s Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
Her first job after leaving was at Forum Theatre, Billingham, in
County Durham. “I got off the train and I thought the bomb had dropped, everywhere was so flat and derelict.” Her first TV role was alongside Jim Davidson in ITV sitcom Up The Elephant nd Round The Castle. Then in 1985 it was EastEnders and the role of Angie Watts changed her life. “It was different then. It was a drama about ordinary people and
their lives but then it became a soap.” Anita is slimmer and greyer but when she smiles, the years melt away and she’s Angie again.
“I caught a couple of the old episodes. I thought, ‘Wow, I was looking pretty good back then’. I wish I’d known then that I looked so good!”
And she still gets recognised. “People mostly say, ‘Ooh, it’s you!’ It’s like a neighbourly thing. They’re nice and friendly.”
As is Anita, unless you make her queue. “I hate queues,” she fumes. “And rudeness.” And social media, road rage and people who beep their horns in traffic jams. “What good does that do? We should try to be nicer to each other.
“We all hurt. We all bleed. When people are truly bad, they have to be punished of course. If someone hit a child in front of me, I would floor them because I do come from
Stepney after all!”
Angie was an alcoholic, just like Miss Hannigan. “I’ve played a few drunks,” she smiles. But she has undertaken serious theatre roles in plays such as Steven Berkoff’s
Kvetch and Oedipus (he calls her “a dynamo”) as well as comedy. She starred in TV sitcom The Rebel with Simon Callow as an elderly Mod. She even played guitar in one episode
– or appeared to. “Brian showed me the fingering so it’s passable. I just fronted it out – 30 seconds of looking like a rock star. In panto they had me doing Don’t Stop Me Now and I mimed the guitar solo to that too.”
She relaxes by watching old movies. “On prime time, it’s all violence but if you stay up late, you’ll find classics.”
Are there any challenges left? “I’d love to play Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. The part is iconic. I keep saying I’m going to retire but while people keep offering me parts as good as Miss Hannigan, I’ll take them.
I feel grateful, happy and blessed.”
Annie (anniethemusicaltour. uk) opens on Saturday in Manchester