HANNAH: I can’t wait to return to television... but I just dread being back in the limelight!
HANNAH Gordon will for ever be remembered as the elegant Lady Virginia Bellamy in one of the biggest period dramas ever on British television, Upstairs Downstairs. At its peak, the 1970s series was watched by a billion viewers in 70 countries around the world every week – and established the actress as a household name.
Now 74, she returns to prime time television this week in ITV’s new crime drama Unforgotten, which has been tipped to be the biggest hit since Broadchurch.
Almost unrecognisable with short, thick grey hair replacing her familiar honey-blonde locks, she could perhaps be forgiven – after a 50-year career – for finally embracing old age and throwing away the hair dye.
But tempting as it might be, she laughs at the idea. The transformation is only temporary – for her role as a vicar’s wife in the new six-part series, which also stars Nicola Walker, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Trevor Eve, Cherie Lunghi and Bernard Hill.
She says: ‘Our job requires us to turn into many different parts and, with being older, I think you get more challenging parts.
‘It’s a good time for older female actresses. Just look at Helen Mirren or Judi Dench. I think age brings confidence.’
Given the pressure on those in the profession to preserve their looks, has she ever been tempted to have cosmetic surgery?
‘Good God, no!’ she laughs. ‘I’ve e never had anything “done”. Youu have to look your age and you have e to deal with that. That doesn’t mean I don’t look at some photographs of me now, however, and go, “Oh crumbs, look at that”.
‘I couldn’t resort to cosmetic work, k, though. If you have a lot done, it’s s pretty obvious. You can see someeone on television has had a facelift. t. I really haven’t. When I looked my best when I was younger, it was as always down to a very good make-up up person and lighting. You always hadad the best people looking after you.’
The Edinburgh-born actress, who ho retains her Scottish burr, has beenen away from the our screens for a few ew years in self-imposed exile, mainly nly at a quaint cottage in Hampshire’se’s New Forest, with the wild ponies and nd a ‘good book’ or poetry for company.ny.
She admits to facing the prospect ect of being catapulted back into the limelight with mixed feelings, given ven
‘You have to look your age and deal with that’
she last appeared on television in the BBC series Hustle in February 2011.
‘I don’t want to be recognised in the street,’ she smiles. ‘If Unforgotten is as successful as people seem to think it will be, I’m not looking forward to that at all. If I’m honest, I never felt entirely comfortable with fame – though I’ve always loved doing the work.’
One of her earliest appearances on TV was in 1966 in Doctor Who. Her first BBC comedy role came in 1972 sitcom My Wife Next Door with John Alderton. At 31, she had found fame, becoming one of the nation’s best-loved actresses.
She says: ‘I remember counting the days until the show went out. Up until then, everything I had done at the BBC was completely serious.
‘I’d never done comedy and I wasn’t completely sure I should be doing it. The public are lovely and when they come up and say, “I really enjoyed that,” you can’t take exception to it. But I did find the publicity intrusive.’
It would lead to her starring in Upstairs Downstairs, as Lady Virginia Bellamy. She was one of the few stars required to play a character much older than her actual age, 33. Nowadays, she smiles, it’s the opposite – but she confesses she has found the transition from lead to supporting roles easier than she thought.
‘It’s life,’ she shrugs. ‘It’s the way. You know as you get older the parts are going to get smaller. I’ve never been ter- ribly ambitious. It can make you bitter if you are not in the running for a part, so it’s best not to be like that at all. Acting can take over your life if you let it.
‘The demands of theatre mean you have to lay down your life for it sometimes and everything else suffers in the background. I’m quite content with my life as it is and I find I don’t want to do theatre as much as I did either.
‘It doesn’t mean I could ever give up acting, however. It’s what I do, it’s the only thing I can do quite well.’
She began her career at Dundee Rep after being signed on a one-year contract when she graduated from the Glasgow College of Dramatic Art, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
It was not long before London beckoned – but for the first few years, she chose to stay in Scotland, catching the 8am train for auditions in the capital.
She recalls: ‘I would always ask for my auditions to be in the afternoon. My accent intrigued people. But I made a pact with myself. I was really determined not to go to London and be stuck playing only Scottish parts. I remember walking into auditions speaking with a Scots accent and they would say, “She looks all right, but can she play English?”. I literally became bilingual.’
Elocution lessons from her boarding school days in Edinburgh helped a lot. Her uncle – appointed her legal guardian after her parents died when she was still young – signed her up for lessons.
She says: ‘I had no idea what that involved. In class one day, it was announced Hannah Gordon had to go for elocution lessons. I thought it was electrocution and went out with fear and trepidation. I was relieved to find
out what it was – and ended up quite good at it, getting high marks.’
She has known much tragedy in her life, but is reluctant to dwell on it. A drama school mentor would tell her losing her parents had given her ‘a dramatic centre’. She says: ‘Colin Chandler, who was college head, would say no experience was wasted. Unconsciously, I put it into my work. If you’ve gone through something in real life, you don’t have to fake the emotion. It’s built in with the bricks.’
Her father had been a complete stranger to her as a result of Parkinson’s disease. He was put into an asylum where soldiers suffering from shell shock had been sent. Children were not encouraged to visit, so she saw him just three times in her life before he died when she was 12.
Instead, the young Hannah grew up with her mother in a large Victorian house in Edinburgh’s Newhaven area owned by her grandparents. She describes herself as a ‘really plain child’, who wore glasses from the age of five and her hair in pigtails.
When she was only nine, her mother died of a heart attack, aged 45. Hannah arrived back from school to find she couldn’t get into the house. The body was found later by relatives.
In the days that followed, no one spared a thought for the daughter she had left behind. Frightened, Hannah was left to cope alone, permitted to see her mother in her coffin but not allowed to attend the funeral.
A year later, she was sent to boarding school. A flat had been left in trust for her and at 14 she was told she was going to have to live on her own. ‘I boarded in term-time, but in the holidays I looked after myself,’ she says. ‘I bought my own food and cooked for myself. The girls at school thought it was a marvellous way to live. They thought it was great I could watch television till midnight if I liked. But I used to think, “I’d rather have a mummy and daddy”.
‘I can honestly say I’ve not had a miserable life by any means. I had so much love once I grew up that that really compensated for it.’
In her late 20s, she won a part in the film Spring And Port Wine with James Mason. It would change her life. On set she met lighting cameraman Norman Warwick. He was 20 years older and had been married before. Six months later, they married and had a son, Ben, now an actor. In 1994, however, just before their silver wedding, Norman was diagnosed with cancer. After a bone marrow test, it was discovered he also had a form of leukaemia.
Within six weeks, he was dead, leaving her devastated. Ben, then 21, was reading English at Glasgow University. Miss Gordon took a year off work, trying to pick up the pieces of her life. Having had one fulfilling marriage, it never occurred to her she would meet another soulmate – but she did. She is now happily mar- ried to former company director Robert Lampitt.
In Unforgotten, which screens on Thursday at 9pm, she plays Grace Greaves, wife of one of four suspects in a reopened 40-year-old murder investigation. Her husband is played by Bernard Hill, recently seen in Wolf Hall, as vicar Robert Greaves.
She says: ‘When I read the script for Unforgotten, I thought, “Hallelujah”. It was so pleasing to do. I loved the pace of it, the plot unravels slowly – like chucking a pebble in water and watching the ripples go wider and wider. It makes you question how well you actually know people.
‘Grace is quite a strong woman, married to a man who likes to get his own way. She lives with that, they’ve been married for 39 years and have two daughters with one about to have a baby. She’s very much the lynchpin of the family. But how well does she really know her husband?’
With a small family, it is clear Miss Gordon’s friendships are something she throws a lot of energy into maintaining. To that end, she’s just spent a holiday in Orkney with some of her closest girlfriends from schooldays.
She says: ‘We lost touch for a while, but once we made contact again we’ve been close. One of the most important things in life is friendship. I believe you can make good friends at any time in life.
‘I had a friend who suffered a great family loss. I always remember him telling me, “It’s not what happens to you in life, it’s what you do with it”.’
It’s clear Hannah Gordon lives her own life by that motto.
‘I thought, I’d rather have a mummy and daddy’