Ready, Steadman, Go!
Alison Steadman is back doing what she does best in new family drama Love And Marriage – playing an ordinary character extraordinarily well. She talks to Sophie Herdman about life, love and leading older ladies.
“When I was at school there was only one girl in my whole class whose parents were divorced,” says Alison Steadman.
“It was shocking and we all felt sorry for her, but now it seems the norm for kids that their parents don’t stay together sadly.
“Divorce is so easy now. It wasn’t years ago, so perhaps we don’t put the value on it that we once did. Maybe for my sons’ generation there’ll be a switch again.”
Steadman, 66, often hailed as one of Britain’s best-loved comedy actresses, isn’t being judgmental. After all, she’s been through a divorce herself – she had two sons with writer and director Mike Leigh before they split after 22 years of marriage in the mid-Nineties.
She’s since been with partner Michael Elwyn, a fellow actor with whom she lives in Highgate, north London.
However, her latest role in new ITV comedy drama Love And Marriage has put her in a reflective mood about relationships.
The show tells the story of the Paradise family – Pauline (played by Steadman), her husband of 40 years Silent Ken (Duncan Preston), her three adult children and her fun-loving sister Rowan (Celia Imrie).
The title gives away the theme, and episode one ends with Pauline leaving Ken.
She’s just attended her father’s funeral and retired from her job as a lollipop lady (“I’ve never had such a flattering costume,” Steadman confides), but nobody seems to have noticed, least of all Ken, and Pauline’s fed up with feeling taken for granted.
Her decision doesn’t just impact her and Ken. The repercussions affect the whole family, who are shocked by Pauline’s bombshell.
“She’s putting on the veneer of ‘everything’s fine’, the way one does sometimes in life,” says Steadman, sitting in a large Coventry house that serves as Rowan’s home in the show.
“Pauline decides she’s got to make a change. The kids have got their own lives, her husband doesn’t take any notice of her and she’s just had enough. Sometimes marriages just tick along for years,” she adds, unravelling a tissue from the sleeve of her fluffy pink jumper as she’s nursing a cold.
The actress thinks some viewers will see elements of Pauline and Ken’s marriage in their own.
But rather than just sparking a flurry of divorces, Steadman hopes the show will make them sit up and think about their relationship.
“It might make them appreciate each other, not take each other for granted,” she says.
“Hopefully, not only will women think there’s a bit of that in me, but also, perhaps, men will think I had better take more notice of my wife. Say ‘I love you’ or ‘Thanks for the meal, it was brilliant’, rather than just eating it and going, ‘Right, I’m off to bed’. We all need a wake-up call sometimes.”
Steadman and Leigh often worked together while they were married and some of her most memorable performances were under his direction – from Abigail’s Party to Nuts In May and Life Is Sweet.
They remain friends and Steadman, despite the sniffles today, appears very content with her life.
Her own experiences have made her sympathetic to the ups and downs and challenges of marriage, but there’s one relationship in the new show that she cannot get her head around – and that’s the arrangement between her on-screen sister Rowan and Tommy (Larry Lamb, who played Steadman’s husband Mick in Gavin And Stacey).
Tommy is married – happily married, he believes. And perhaps others would agree, were it not for the fact that Rowan isn’t his wife but his mistress.
Tommy’s wife, we learn, knows of his indiscretions but allows it to carry on.
“It’s something I can’t understand. As a woman, there is no way on God’s earth I would ever do that,” says Steadman in her distinctive Liverpudlian accent. “But I suppose there are women who think that’s the only way they can hang on to their man.”
The actress admits that increasing age is making her pensive, too. “When you get to be a pensioner, you start to reflect on your life a lot more. Suddenly you look forward and think, ‘I’ve only got 20 years at the most’. You see the end in sight,” she says.
“When you’re in your twenties, thirties and forties you don’t think about dying because you’re so busy living, but it’s a time for people to reflect.”
Steadman’s life is a pretty good one to look back on. Following a highly successful stage career, she was awarded an OBE at the turn of the millennium.
On top of that, following her early TV success with Leigh, she went on to appear TV gold like Pride And Prejudice, Fat Friends, Gavin And Stacey and, more recently, The Syndicate.
She has no intentions of slowing down. On the contrary, Steadman’s delighted to see a show in which older actors have leading roles.
“Up until a few years ago it felt as though everything on television or in films stopped at 35, like no one carried on living until they were 70, 80 or 90. But I think there’s been a bit of a turning,” she says, smiling.
“People do have an interesting life beyond 35 and it’s important to chart that. It’s great that’s now happening – and we’ve all got really decent storylines. We’re not just there going, ‘All right love, see you later’. We’re part of the story.”
Steadman says the cast felt a bit like a real family on set. All staying in the same hotel, they’d spend the evenings chatting.
“You always know you’ve had a good job because while you long to get back home, when it’s over you sit there on the first morning at breakfast and think, ‘I’m missing everybody’. A little bit of me wanted to get back on the train to Coventry to all be together again,” she says.
Who knows – with a stellar cast (Ashley Jensen also features), tear-jerking storylines and a good dose of comedy, the Paradise family might well find themselves united in Coventry again.
EXTRA TIME – ALISON STEADMAN
:: Alison Steadman was born in Liverpool on August 26, 1946, the youngest of three sisters.
:: She attended Childwall Valley High School for Girls, a grammar school in the Liverpool suburb of Childwall, followed by East 15 Acting School in Essex where she first met Mike Leigh.
:: She married Leigh in 1973. They had two sons, Toby and Leo, but split in the mid-Nineties and divorced in 2001.
:: Steadman’s first key roles were as Beverly in the play Abigail’s Party, which was later televised on the BBC, and Candice Marie in TV film Nuts In May.
:: She has been nominated for many awards and was won an Olivier for Best Actress for The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice in 1993. In 2000 she received an OBE.
:: Love And Marriage starts on ITV on Wednesday, June 5
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