IT’S TIME TO EMBRACE MY DARK SIDE
She asked a friend to father her child, played a fighter pilot in Star Wars and has just moved to LA in her 60s to pursue a career in Hollywood. And now, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel star Celia Imrie tells More, she’s ready to do something really shocki
Iwish I had done this earlier,’ says the elegant Celia Imrie, sitting in a hotel in Hollywood before her next audition. At the age of 63, this quintessentially English comic actress suddenly finds herself fashionable in the movie capital of the world and is determined to make up for lost years.
‘I had a young son to look after before and perhaps I didn’t have the courage to do this, but I’m running out of time and, you know, what the heck!’
American casting directors love her cool classical beauty, cutglass accent and the wild look in her eye that says anything might happen, as seen in the highly successful The Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel and its imaginatively named sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Imrie appears with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith as the youngest of a gaggle of ageing retirees who set up home in crumbling hotels in India – and she gets to flirt outrageously with Richard Gere. ‘Lordy Lord, have mercy on my ovaries,’ says her love-hungry character Madge on first sight of him. When the handsome new arrival says being in India is a dream, she asks mischievously: ‘Any other dreams I could help you with?’
After the success of those films – and at an age when many others in her profession settle for touring provincial theatres in Agatha Christie plays – Imrie has upped sticks to Los Angeles to risk the cut-throat world of Hollywood casting meetings and auditions.
‘I’ve come out here to roll up my sleeves and have a go. You find that determination even more vividly as you get older,’ she says. ‘It’s quite an adventure. How long am I going to be here? I don’t know yet – until I’ve got a marvellous
part!’
She is in a playful mood this morning, ready to talk freely about the Indian summer she is enjoying as an actress, the new sense of daring in her personal life and her unexpected second career as a novelist. The comedy thriller Not Quite Nice and its new sequel Nice Work (If You Can Get
It) feature another set of ageing women abroad, this time in the South of France.
Imrie creates the kinds of characters she would love to play: including strong, interesting women like Theresa, who is just entering her 60th year and ‘doesn’t want to turn into a couch potato’ and Zoe the ‘eccentric exSixties King’s Road dolly-bird’ who would be Imrie’s first choice in a film of the books. ‘Although I hope I’m too young!’
Imrie is a fine comedy talent, winner of an Olivier award for her part as the flirtatious Miss Babs in the West End musical version of Acorn Antiques, her long-running soap spoof with Julie Walters. But she is probably best known for one memorable scene in 2003’s Calendar Girls. The sight of Imrie posing topless behind a pair of iced buns – as one of the daring WI members making a naked calendar for charity – prompts Helen Mirren’s character to call out: ‘We’re going to need considerably bigger buns!’
After Calendar Girls, men and women started coming up to her in the street and making comments about her buns.
‘Two young men on Santa Monica Boulevard did it last Saturday,’ she says. ‘They were adorable. They usually clutch their fronts and say, ‘Aren’t you the one?’ I go, “Hmm, I’m surprised you recognise me with my clothes on.” I make them really embarrassed. I’m forever flattered.’
Imrie made headlines a few years back when she admitted that she quite liked being wolf-whistled. ‘I usually do, yes. I should be so lucky for heaven’s sake. Come on, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just saying: “Thumbs up!”’ Some women are seriously offended by it though, aren’t they? ‘Bad luck then. Bad luck.’ Mirren went to Hollywood
after Calendar Girls
but Celia Imrie preferred to stay home to raise Angus, the son she gave birth to at the age of 42.
His father is the actor Benjamin Whitrow, a friend 16 years older, who agreed to have a baby with Imrie on her unique terms: she wouldn’t marry him, live with him or ask him for anything at all and she would pay for everything the child needed herself.
‘I was terribly lucky. I left it to the absolute last moment. Ben is a wonderful father. All is very happy, thank you.’
Now Angus is 20 years old and training to be an actor. ‘I wouldn’t have swapped the joy of having my son for the world, but I had to be responsible then. Now he’s wonderfully selfsufficient, so I feel free to come here.’
She is seizing her chance now because the Marigold films and others such as Quartet (starring Maggie Smith and Billy Connolly) and Charlotte Rampling’s Oscarnominated 45 Years have helped create a new market for older performers.
‘You would have laughed if you’d seen me yesterday sitting in an office with a stream of very well-known actresses, all of much the same age, all going for the same part.’
But Imrie is a couple of decades younger than Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and many of those she appears alongside – so is well placed to take advantage of the trend for quite some time.
‘In my head I am still 26. However, I have to be realistic and it just makes me more determined to make the most of the next 20 years.’ She is relieved at not having to try so hard to look young. ‘They know what I look like, so I can present myself as I am. They’re not going to get a terrible shock and fall off the chairs and think: “She’s got wrinkles!” Because they don’t have them here, as you know…’
That’s very Celia Imrie: charming, self-deprecating and witty. She’s a pleasure to talk to, even at seven in the morning, the only time available in a busy day of meetings and auditions.
If the casting directors are slow to get the message they will see her later this year in Bridget
Jones’s Baby, the third movie in the series. She has been in all three. She will also appear alongside Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in the screen version of Absolutely Fabulous.
Yet Imrie seems quite like Sally, the actress in her new book who flees the limelight for the anonymity of a sleepy seaside village on the French Riviera, where Imrie has a holiday home.
‘I did exactly what one of the characters does: I fell in love with the place. I went to an estate agent who gave me three choices, I said: “I’ll take the first one.” I’ve never done anything so daring in my life, but I don’t regret a minute of it.
She did this 10 years ago, after suffering the scare of two pulmonary embolisms. ‘I hadn’t been very well. A very good friend of mine said: “Come on, let’s go.” And it was my salvation.
‘I have an apartment and it overlooks the sea. I don’t have any curtains, so I can see the moonlight on the water.
‘I find it completely inspiring. It is breathtaking.’
In her new book, Imrie’s portraits of ex-pats are vivid, but she avoids them in real life. ‘I mostly come across them at the antique market, but the truth is I do love to escape.’ Sally, the actress heroine of Nice
Work (If You Can Get It), falls for a Russian millionaire who seems too good to be true. She has been married before and describes it as ‘a form of quasi-employment’ – while Imrie herself has called it a trap before. Does she still believe that?
‘That is the childlike image of marriage that has stayed with me, I’m afraid, so I’ve never had the courage to do it.’
Her impression was formed as a child in Guildford, Surrey, where she was one of five children born to Diana and David Imrie, a radiologist. Her dream was to be a ballet dancer, but she was turned down for being too big. Crushed by the rejection, she became anorexic and was later admitted to hospital, where she was subjected to electro-convulsion therapy.
She went on to study at the Guildford School of Acting before taking parts in minor films and the television classics Upstairs, Downstairs, To The Manor Born and Bergerac.
‘I spent an awful lot of time in my early career pretending I wasn’t posh,’ she says, but as she grew up and came to terms with her accent, it became a trademark.
She must have had a lot of admirers, but did anyone ever ask her to marry them? ‘Of course. But I honestly think, having got this far, I don’t necessarily think I would be very good at it.’ Is she seeing anyone?
‘No, not really, I’d say.’
That’s another reason she had the freedom to come to Hollywood and try her luck, and Imrie really is open to anything. ‘I would love to play a murderer,’ she says – then reveals a startling secret about herself that will put fans of the
newly revived Star Wars in a spin. She was actually asked to consider being the mother of Darth Vader in the first of the three pre
quels made by George Lucas, The
Phantom Menace.
The part of Shmi Skywalker went to Swedish actor Pernilla August. ‘So they asked if I would like to be a fighter pilot instead, which is a very silly question. Angus was about eight years old and it was great for him to say at school that his mum was in Star
Wars. I’m immensely proud to say that I’m Bravo Five and I love it when people spot me underneath my helmet and goggles.’
The truth is that Imrie would love to embrace the Dark Side now. ‘I want to surprise people. Go darker. I want to kick that image that people might have of me right out of the window and do something quite shocking.’
What does she think our image of her is? ‘That I’m really nice. But I’m really not!’
She’s joking, I think. ‘I’m glad you can see the twinkle in my eye. People often miss it. Don’t make me into a pompous a***, will you?’ I couldn’t if I tried.
Nice Work (If You Can Get It) is out now, priced at €20 published by Bloomsbury
I say, “I’m surprised you recognise me with my clothes on.” I make them really
embarassed’