On The Road: Anna Chancellor
Actress Anna Chancellor isn’t keen on beach life. She much preferred travelling to Japan to appear in King Lear, she tells Louise Flind
Is there anything you can’t leave home without? I have to have moisturiser. There’s a miracle woman in Toronto who makes her own cream literally called Miracle cream. I’m addicted to Miracle cream.
Favourite destination? My husband, Redha, and I went to Arizona which was spectacular. Someone did say to me, in a mystical way, ‘Arizona is a very special place with special vibes’ – and actually it is. You’re driving in the middle of nowhere and you have prairies of yellow grass and the distance turns to pink – it’s like another planet.
Earliest childhood holiday memories? Probably with Dad [John Chancellor, an antiquarian book dealer, the brother of The Oldie’s former editor Alexander Chancellor]. My parents divorced when we were very young; so Dad had half the holidays. I don’t think he knew how to look after all these children crammed in his Renault 16. There’s four of us. We used to kill each other in the back of his car as we’d drive across what Dad would call the Continent. How could anyone call it the Continent?
We would go and stay with my Aunt Zanna [Chancellor] at La Cavina in Italy. My cousins and my sisters are a tiny bit older than me; so there was heavy flirting going on in the piazzas, Beatles playing on those Dansettes, and Zanna had lots of those Munch posters and a brown swimming pool. I remember it strangely as being one of the most romantic times of my life although I must have been so young.
Are you a traveller? Yes, probably. Redha and I are building a house on the south coast of Crete on the Libyan Sea. We’ve driven there across ‘the Continent’. We went miles out of our way because we discovered a fabulous café beside a petrol station in Ancona. We came a different way back, but we still drove five hours out of the way to go back to the bar – we didn’t realise it was a morning bar and it was closed. Swiss roadside lavatories in the petrol stations are like something from Richard Rogers. They’re steel, the seats come up and the loos turn into sinks – which, in any other country, would be disgusting but, in Switzerland, it’s very clean.
Do you find working in theatres abroad different? I did King Lear in Japan. They’re so polite, the Japanese audience – they sit through four hours of interminable Shakespeare, then clap and clap and you know they haven’t understood a word. The Fool was an iconic Japanese actor and, on the opening night, they didn’t just bring bunches of flowers, but banks of willow trees – it was almost like the Chelsea Physic Garden, just for him. They didn’t care about any of us. When he came back with us to Stratfordupon-avon, no one knew who he was. The cruel life of fame. In the Japanese theatre, they’d serve marvellous, handmade biscuits on lime-green tissue paper with beautiful painted pictures of Mount Fuji and lovely cups of tea. At the Royal Shakespeare Company, it would be Wotsits and custard creams... Where did you go on your honeymoon? Claudia Fitzherbert, books editor of The Oldie, and her boyfriend, Fram Dinshaw, have a flat in Menton which they lent us – rather Noël Cowardy, overlooking the Mediterranean – and we caught a train over the border to Ventimiglia. It was so marvellous to see scruffy Italy compared with posh France.
Do you lie on the beach? I’m not a great admirer of sand – it gets in my pants, and I’ve never managed to get a towel on and off with any form of discretion. If I filmed myself walking around, I’d be like Clouseau. I pulled my jumper off the other day and nearly knocked myself out with my necklace.
Best and worst experiences in restaurants when abroad? When we were driving through Italy, we came to somewhere called Ascoli Piceno, with just a family restaurant. I had the most amazing risotto I’ve ever had in my life. And I always, if I’ve enjoyed a meal, go into the kitchen. I’m like the Queen. I congratulate. My feeling is that people like praise and acknowledgement, being somebody like that myself.
Memories of your uncle and former Oldie editor, Alexander Chancellor? Alexander came into proper wakeful focus when he took Dad to live with him in the Coach House at Stoke Park in Northamptonshire. Alexander was always coming over and cooking, or sending his daughter Freya over to speak to Dad. Alexander wasn’t always there but he’d come back and check up on Dad. Stoke Park is where my father died and where Alexander found him. And it was very touching this rather maternal care of his vagranty older brother. Dad adored him. They all adored him – he was so sweet and good-looking. I find it hard to believe he died a year ago but, mind you, if you smoke and drink like that…