People were scared of me

Thanks to his Oscar-winning performance in Moonlight, Mahershala Ali is feted in Hollywood, says Tom Lamont in The Guardian. But the actor, 44, is painfully aware that as a “large, fairly muscular, dark-skinned black man”, he can make people uncomfortable. When he lived in NYC, “women would cross the street [to avoid me], day or night. Or turn their ring over on the subway – turn the diamond inward! These were little things I would catch all the time... I would be so conscious of it and it would upset me. It would affect my energy for the rest of the day. So to protect myself from having to manage other people’s fear, I would do things to pre-empt that. And so many black people do this. Because there’s an idea that we’re something to be feared. You develop this habit of addressing a situation by communicating how safe you are.” When Fay Ripley was cast in the TV drama Cold Feet, she was a struggling actress, flogging timeshares and appearing as a clown at children’s parties to make ends meet, says Louise Gannon in The Sunday Telegraph. “The first time in my life I was ever recognised was when Cold Feet had just come on the telly and a woman came up to me in a supermarket and asked me if I was Fay Ripley. I was so stunned I invited her back to mine for dinner. Of course, she then had me pegged as a nutter and politely declined.” The show, written by Mike Bullen, was a massive hit; but after four years Ripley decided to leave. “I had other TV work I wanted to commit to, and I wanted to be with my husband [the actor Daniel Lapaine] and have a family. I remember begging Mike to kill me off: I wanted a long, painful death that would have the nation weeping and win me a Bafta.” Instead, he simply arranged for her character, Jen, to move to New York – which meant that in 2016, she was able to rejoin the cast. Now in her 50s, Jen struggles with aspects of ageing, but Ripley, 52, is glad to have moved on. “Being a young actress is just too hard: you will be paid less money than your male counterparts, you will be scrutinised physically, you will want to be thin. It’s why I enjoy being older. It’s harder to look at myself on screen, but I do actually like my life. I’m a happy woman.”