Vanessa Redgrave is more at ease discussing the plight of the people in Kosovo or Iraq than her own life or acting career, Lynn Barber reports
I'VE been trying to interview Vanessa Redgrave for years, but she's an elusive beast. She used to demand copy approval - which I'd never give - and insisted that interviews should be either about her politics or her acting, but not both, and of course her private life was completely out of bounds. But now, in what I suppose must be the twilight of her career, she is willing to give an interview with no prior constraints to publicise a film, The White Countess, in which she has only a tiny part.
Journalists usually describe Redgrave's flat in Chiswick, west London, as modest, which made me expect some dismal shoe-box. Actually it is quite large and very prettily decorated with good antiques and also, when I went, dozens of fabulous flower arrangements sent for her 69th birthday. There is a big, almost country, kitchen at the back which is obviously equipped for serious cooking. The whole place feels more cheerful than I expected. But it is modest in London property price terms and therefore proof, if any were needed, that she puts her money where her mouth is: into political causes.
I am going to have to call her Vanessa in this article, though it sounds horribly matey, because there are just so many Redgraves.
Do I need to remind you of them all? Probably not, but just in case: Michael Redgrave, famous theatrical knight and a matinee idol in his youth, revealed after his death to have been a bisexual with a taste for rough trade, married well-known actor Rachel Kempson and produced three children: Vanessa, Corin and Lynn (in that order), all of whom became actors.
Vanessa, in turn, produced another two actors: Joely and Natasha Richardson, from her marriage to film director Tony Richardson, also bisexual, who died of AIDS, as well as a theatre-director son, Carlo Nero, from her affair with the Italian actor Franco Nero.
Natasha Richardson is married to yet another famous actor, Liam Neeson, so no doubt there will be another clutch of thespians down the line.
Corin also has an acting daughter, Jemma. The only one who seems not to have pulled her weight in prolonging the dynasty is Lynn: her children are a teacher, a photographer and a pilot. But clearly the day will come when all actors have to be in some way descended from Michael Redgrave.
Vanessa is the reigning matriarch, her mother having died three years ago, and I almost feel inclined to curtsy when I meet her. She's such an imposing presence: not fat, just big, 183cm tall and built like a quarterback, with that famous long face and husky voice. She moves with a slight limp because she is waiting for a second hip replacement.
The film we are meant to be talking about, The White Countess, is the last Merchant-Ivory film, producer Ismail Merchant having died before it was finished (Vanessa's eyes duly fill with tears when she mentions him). It is set in pre-war Shanghai and stars Natasha Richardson and Ralph Fiennes, with Vanessa and her sister Lynn in minor roles.
Luckily, I can say quite truthfully that I thought Natasha Richardson was brilliant. Vanessa is grateful: "It's lovely that you think that because then I can say what I really feel! I thought she was extraordinary." This saves me from having to say what I thought of her own performance (hammy), but then she only has a couple of scenes.
She accepted the tiny part because it meant working with her daughter and sister. Besides, it gave her a chance to visit China for the first time. "I had an invitation to go there [on a cultural exchange] in 1967, but I didn't get there. I thought - but it was a delusion on my part - that I could save my marriage if I went back to Italy, where my husband was. But I didn't save my marriage. But that was OK, because we loved each other to the end."
This is a very bald account of what sounds from her autobiography to have been a most unhappy period in her life: Tony Richardson had fallen in love with Jeanne Moreau and was not thrilled when Vanessa returned.
It must be terribly daunting for other people to enter this great clan. "Well, you never know, do you? I mean, from my point of view I always think how nice it must be to know us!" Seeing my raised eyebrows, she continues defiantly: "Because we're fun."
Are they? I must say it never occurred to me that the Redgraves might be fun - I always pictured them weeping and raging and arguing and making each other sign petitions - but Vanessa in the flesh seems warmer and less self-absorbed than I expected.
I keep trying to make her smile because she looks lovely when she smiles, but it is uphill work: she seems to think it is her duty to be serious. She has a great (probably deserved) mistrust of journalists and scans each question for hidden bear-traps before answering at tediously cautious length. She seems drawn to put the heaviest possible spin on everything. Even the most anodyne questions sometimes upset her. I say I gather she prefers doing theatre to films (because she is quoted as having said that in several interviews), but she responds indignantly: "No, I don't! I've never said such things in my life. I've been lucky to have worked with some great maestros - Karel Reisz, [Michelangelo] Antonioni, [Fred] Zinnemann, Tony Richardson - so I know the difference and I love the difference. I love what cinema can do."
There is more, much more, in this vein. I suspect that, like many actors, she uses press interviews to advertise her career needs and that nowadays, with her bad hip, she probably hopes to do more film work and less theatre. Her last theatrical outing, as Hecuba last year, got absolutely stinking reviews: one described her as playing Euripides's great tragedy "like a dismayed district nurse".
Almost every profile of Vanessa describes her as fearless. I wonder if she'd say that of herself. "No, I wouldn't. Would you?" She quickly swerves from the personal to talk about the political. Politics seems to be her default setting: you can ask a question on almost any subject and she will soon veer off into the plight of the Chechens, the Bosnians, the Iraqis. So many people, so many plights; I lose track and occasionally wonder if she does, too. It's as if she finds it safer to talk about politics than to talk about herself.
I quote the passage from her autobiography where Natasha, aged six, begs her to stay at home and spend more time with her. (Her autobiography could almost be subtitled: A Mother's Desperate Flight from Her Children.) She writes: "I tried to explain that our political struggle was for her future, and that of all the children of her generation. She looked at me with a serious, sweet smile. 'But I need you now. I won't need you so much then."' My sympathies were all with Natasha. Vanessa surprises me by saying, "I absolutely agree with you."
So, is she admitting she was wrong? "Yes. But I did what I thought was right, as I saw it at the time."
Why did she get so embroiled in politics, even to the detriment of her children, her marriage, her career? She likes to say that it's because she grew up during World WarII: "We listened to the news every night and it was world news, it wasn't about whales in the Thames, you know?" This sounds quite plausible until I think of my parents and all their friends who have very clear memories of the war, but have never shown the slightest inclination to join the Workers Revolutionary Party. Perhaps her political involvement was a way of trying to impress her father. He was a socialist in his youth, but got his fingers burned during the war when he joined what turned out to be a communist front organisation and was briefly banned by the BBC. Thereafter he kept quiet about his politics for the sake of his career.
Vanessa was always on the Left, but the point at which she disappeared into the extreme Left was in 1973 when she joined Gerry Healy's WRP. Corin had joined two years earlier, but she resisted until a wave of London car bombings convinced her that "the British military dictatorship" was performing acts of provocation.
Healy was delighted with his new convert and got her to buy a house in the Peak District to turn into a "college of Marxism". According to later defectors, the Red House was run almost like a prison: guards patrolled the perimeter and students were not allowed contact with their families or the outside world, for fear of MI5 infiltration. Naturally, the press was suspicious and in 1978 police raided the house on a tip-off from The Observer that it contained a stockpile of arms. No arms were found; Vanessa and Corin sued The Observer for libel but lost and were left with huge costs. Then, in 1985, the tabloids mounted a huge expose of Healy based on testimony from defectors: he had sexually abused dozens of women and stolen party funds. Almost all party members then left, except the Redgraves, who stayed loyal to Healy until his death in 1989.
Vanessa does not think she was brainwashed by Healy. She is firm about this, but slightly less firm when I ask whether she regrets her involvement with him. "Hm. You really are pitching in the whole bag aren't you? I never ever regret what I have learned, and I've learned from many people.
"I learned about history from Gerry Healy to a depth and a precision that I would never have done otherwise."
Anyway, she says, she is no longer involved in domestic politics: "My main concern has not been any political party for a long time, since I first became a UNICEF ambassador." But actually this is untrue: she and Corin set up the Peace and Progress Party last year to fight three seats in the British general election; predictably, they lost their deposits. For all her hectic campaigning over the years, the only tangible result Vanessa seems to have achieved was to stop the supermarket chain Tesco building a superstore in London's Hammersmith area two years ago.
Her acting career, however - I should have said this earlier - is studded with great triumphs. Her mother went on acting until her 90s; would she like to do the same?
"No. I'd rather like not to, but I suspect I will."
Why would she like not to? "I'm not sure why, Lynn. There's a conflict because at my age I'd like to spend more time with my grandchildren and I think it would be awfully nice if I ever could have a choice. But I haven't got a choice because, apart from having to work so that I can pay the mortgage, I do believe that good theatre is essential for keeping society human and humane and sane. I came to realise that in Sarajevo: that the arts are fundamental to human existence and human resistance, and to keeping humanity and saving children."
Oh God, she's done it again: one minute we're talking about whether she wants to retire and the next minute we're in Sarajevo. It is as if she can never allow herself to say, "I do this because I like it, because I'm good at it": everything has to be for the greater good of humanity. It is infuriating but, I suppose, by now incurable.
The odd thing is that when we are saying our goodbyes, she fixes me with her beautiful eyes and says, with surprise: "I like you!" And I find myself saying, to my own surprise, "I like you, too!" But then she adds: "And I don't quite believe you don't care about peasants in Kosovo."
Wrong again: she is wrong about everything. But perhaps that is part of her charm.
The Observer
The White Countess opens next month.