Showing posts with label Life and style. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Neil Gaiman / ‘In your 60s, any sex is good sex. It’s like: Oh my gosh, I can still do this thing’

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman: ‘In your 60s, any sex is good sex. It’s like: Oh my gosh, I can still do this thing’

Rosanna Greenstreet

Saturday 21 October 2023

Born in Portchester, Hampshire, Neil Gaiman, 62, started out as a journalist. In the 1980s, he wrote the Sandman comic-book series, which became a multimillion-selling graphic novel, and was adapted for Netflix last year. His books Coraline and Stardust have become films, and Neverwhere, American Gods and Good Omens are TV series. His latest book, What You Need to Be Warm, which supports the work of UNHCR, is released on 26 October. Gaiman lives in Woodstock, New York.

Julia Ormond / ‘What do I dislike about my appearance? That my career is at all dependent on it’

Julia Ormond

The Q&ALife and style

Interview

Julia Ormond: ‘What do I dislike about my appearance? That my career is at all dependent on it’

Rosanna Greenstreet

The actor on her love of dogs, granting wishes and Ryan Gosling

Julia Ormond / Didn't you used to be famous?

Reunion review / Julia Ormond wows in slow-burn Kiwi horror

Rosanna Greenstreet

Saturday 27 March 2021

orn in Surrey, Julia Ormond, 56, starred in Peter Greenaway’s 1993 film The Baby Of Mâcon. She went on to appear in Legends Of The Fall, First Knight and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button; her latest film, Reunion, is available on digital platforms. She has a daughter and lives in Malibu, California.

What is your greatest fear?

Heights.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Being scatty and late.

Bob Mortimer: ‘I’m comfortable with getting older, but I try not to look in the mirror’

‘Going on stage and being in the public eye ended my shyness’: Bob Mortimer. Photograph: Richard Grassie

This much I know

Life and style

Interview

Bob Mortimer: ‘I’m comfortable with getting older, but I try not to look in the mirror’

The comedian, 62, on growing up shy in Middlesbrough, losing his dad, meeting Vic Reeves, and the deep contentment of fishing

Katherine Hassell
Sat 9 Oct 2021 14.00 BST

I was quite a shy boy. Growing up in Middlesbrough, I felt a bit of an outsider. My three elder brothers are funny and boisterous and I was in awe of them. I felt like an appendage. It’s probably the curse of being a younger kid. I’ve seen some become the loudest because they fight for their place, and others retreat to the fringes. I was in the latter group.

From the archive / Joan Collins and the Oxford don, 1990

Joan Collins

LIFE AND STYLE
From the archive: Joan Collins and the Oxford don, 1990

Peter Conrad meets the Dynasty star as she prepares to return to London

Chris Hall

Sunday 19 September 2021

Peter Conrad’s interview with Joan Collins was presented as a meeting between low and high culture (‘Joan Collins and the Don from Oxford’, 29 April 1990), which rather sold Collins’s obvious intelligence and sense of humour some way short.

‘It was presented as a meeting between low and high culture, which rather sold Collins short’:
Joan Collins meets Peter Conrad. Photograph: Terry O'Neill/

Having recently finished her decade-long stint as Alexis Carrington Colby in Dynasty, Collins was returning to England to be in two Coward plays, Easy Virtue on TV and Private Lives in the West End. ‘You don’t dare make jokes here,’ she said. ‘They all take everything so seriously. I’m too cynical, and too incendiary. That’s why I long to get back to the theatre, where everyone sends everyone up all the time.’

This much I know / Gloria Steinem/ ‘Go too far, or you’re not going far enough’

‘I’m so excited by young women now’: Gloria Steinem at her apartment in New York.
Photograph: Christopher Lane/The Observer

THIS MUCH I KNOW

LIFE AND STYLE

Interview

Gloria Steinem: ‘Go too far, or you’re not going far enough’

The feminist activist, 86, on worldwide sisterhood, Spaceship Earth, sexual harrassment in the 1970s and being bitten by rats

Britt Collins

Saturday 4 July 2020

One of my lowest points was waking up on a summer night with a pool of blood on the floor. My hand had been extended over the bed and I’d been bitten by a rat. My mother got me to a local hospital for a tetanus shot, but when we came home the pool of blood had been licked up. I remember longing for a cage to sleep in. I say this because in cities around the world, there are people living with the same fear right now.

The boys in my neighbourhood dreamed of getting out through sports, but the only place I saw women leading free lives was in the movies. So I had the dream of becoming a dancer and literally dancing my way into a better life and world. In high school, I answered an ad and became a magician’s assistant. Briefly, because he left town with the money he was supposed to pay me and a young couple who sang with his act.

The women’s movement feels like a big chosen family. From New York to New Delhi, I can find women friends I trust as family. We are communal animals, so it’s important to have the support of others: friends, colleagues, lovers for company and laughter, a rescuer if I’m in trouble, a will to help if they need it.

I’m so excited by young women now. Remember, I was a 50s person, so I feel as if I just had to wait for some of my friends to be born. We’ve always been accused of “going too far”. That’s why Robin Morgan wrote a brilliant book with that title. Unless you’re accused of that, you haven’t gone far enough!

What we now call the #MeToo movement started in the early 1970s, when women college students first coined the term “sexual harassment” to describe what happened to them on summer jobs. Then the great legal mind, Catharine MacKinnon, wrote this into sex discrimination law. Several cases were brought, all by black women, and there were the Anita Hill hearings that educated the nation. Recently, women have begun to feel OK about coming forward to say that our bodies belong to ourselves. We have yet to explain that there’s no democracy without power over our own bodies.

Seeing New York shut down is sad and frightening, yet there’s also a new sense of concern and connection between and among us. People hang out of their windows to sing and shout together, and even on television you see news anchors at home with their books and dogs and children. I think we have a chance for positive change.

The virus knows that race, gender, class and national boundaries are all fictions. This could help us realise we are all passengers on Spaceship Earth. I’m hoping that this crisis not only exposes inequalities, but helps us learn what movements have been trying to teach us: we are linked, not ranked.

The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! Thoughts on Life, Love and Rebellion by Gloria Steinem (Murdoch Books, £9.99) is out now.

THE GUARDIAN

Saturday, August 8, 2020

This much I Know / Jonathan Pryce / ‘Love is the most important thing’

‘In lockdown, we all looked out for each other’: Jonathan Pryce. Photograph: Karen Robinson/

Interview
This much I know

Life and style

Jonathan Pryce: ‘Love is the most important thing’

Michael Hogan
Saturday 8 August 2020

The actor, 73, on surviving coronavirus, being Pope for a few weeks, and a smouldering Warren Beatty

Michael Hogan

My father had a nervous breakdown. My parents opened a small grocery shop and he always let customers put things on tick. He was a town councillor, on the housing committee, very caring. People ended up owing him a lot of money. When I was 11, he walked out of the house and went missing for days. When he was found, he’d lost his memory. It’s why I’ve never got into debt.

The Welsh countryside was one big adventure playground. When we weren’t at school, we ran wild. There was a local paedophile but everyone knew to avoid him.

My art teacher, Ifor Jones, was an early role model. He had wonderful italic handwriting – as did I soon after, because I copied it. Aged 17, I got in trouble for driving without insurance and the clerk of the court congratulated me on my handwriting. Ifor’s son came to see me in The Merchant of Venice at the Globe in 2015 and gave me a letter from his father. I welled up when I saw the handwriting on the envelope.

Theatre can still change the world. A live experience goes deeper and stays with people longer. Film is more fleeting. It can have social impact, but there’s only one Ken Loach, sadly.

Warren Beatty looked every inch a film star. I met him a few times and I went to supper in New York in 1976. I watched women take the scenic route to the toilet so they walked past him. Every time, he’d take off his glasses and smoulder.

Work is my therapy. My father was violently attacked and died when I was 28. Five years later, I played Hamlet at the Royal Court. It helped me work out a lot of things about our relationship.

Bill Nighy always fetches a high price. I used to organise charity cabarets and auctioning off Bill invariably raised the most money. He’s stopped agreeing to it now. I think he got tired of being propositioned by ladies of a certain age.

Love is the most important thing. Giving and receiving love. I’ve been with my wife Kate [Fahy] for 48 years and it’s flown by. Where did the time go?

I got starstruck meeting Morecambe and Wise. I was a huge fan, then Eric Morecambe came up to me at this event and said: “Hello, Jon. How are you?” He chatted away like we were old pals. I was dumbfounded. It turned out a mutual friend had put him up to it.

Whenever I get depressed by our appalling leadership, I gain comfort from the fact that we’re not as bad as America.

The High Sparrow in Game Of Thrones got compared to Jeremy Corbyn, but I actually based him on Pope Francis. Three years later, I ended up playing him, too. I’m a lifelong Labour supporter and a lot of his instincts were right, but he shouldn’t have been leader. I protested side by side with Corbyn twice during the 70s. He hasn’t moved on since.

I didn’t want to do The Two Popes. I thought playing Pope Francis was a hiding to nothing. A living Pope? I wasn’t going to please anybody. But it ended up being a joyous experience. One of my best jobs ever. We screened it in Rome for members of the Vatican and they seemed to think I’d got him right.

One comfort of being in lockdown was that everyone else was, too. Well, apart from Dominic Cummings. I live in an area of east London with a lovely community feel. We all looked out for each other, dropping off home-made bread and cakes. I’ve secretly enjoyed being cocooned at home.

I had coronavirus in late March. I was hospitalised for eight days with Covid pneumonia. It left me tired and anxious for a long time, but I’m over that. I’ve now got high levels of antibodies so I’m secretly rather pleased with myself.

I always thought I’d find religion in my old age and it would be the answer to everything. It ain’t happened, apart from being Pope for a few weeks.

Jonathan Pryce is supporting Crisis’s Home for All campaign

THE GUARDIAN

Sunday, June 28, 2020

This much I know / Michel Rosen / The incredible NHS saved my life

‘I’ve contributed to Holocaust education in rural France, that I think is my greatest achievement’: Michael Rosen. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

This much I know

Life and style

Interview

Michael Rosen: ‘The incredible NHS saved my life’

The children’s author and poet, 74, talks about surviving coronavirus, enjoying getting older and moping all weekend when Arsenal lose

Donna Ferguson
Sunday 28 June 2020

I’m only alive because my wife and our friend who is a GP had a sense that I was on a downward spiral with coronavirus and got me to A&E. But I’ve got no recall of being critically ill it because I was in an induced coma. I’m only finding out now how the NHS saved my life while I was in intensive care for nearly seven weeks.

The NHS is an incredible feat of the imagination – complete strangers care for you and this means that it is social medicine and social health at its best.

My earliest memory is sitting on a beach. I was two and a half. I can remember sitting there, with my legs apart, looking at the sand. It’s hot and I’m not very happy.

I’m the child who came after. There was a baby who was born between me and my elder brother, and he died. I only found this out when I was 11. My mother was very protective of me. If my dad or my brother took the mickey out of me, she’d say: “Leave him alone, he’s tired.”

I was a massively happy child. My brother and I were given a huge amount of freedom to go off and play outside. Yet my parents were also very concerned, some might say over-concerned – they poured over every detail of our lives, our homework, our hobbies and so on. I felt total unconditional love from both of them.

The closest I ever came to death, before Covid-19, was when I was 17. I was walking along the wrong side of an unlit road and a car hit me, breaking my pelvis and my leg. A few inches to the left or right, I would have been a goner. I rolled into a ditch and the driver drove on. Later, he went to the police, who couldn’t find me. They were just about to leave when they heard me talking in the ditch. I was apparently wide awake, talking. But I’ve lost this from my memory. It’s completely gone.

Most people would be surprised to learn how much a football match can matter to me. I can watch a match and feel my heartbeat racing. And if Arsenal lose, I can feel completely devastated. It’s pathetic – it can ruin a whole weekend.

I’ve been arrested twice. Once was for demonstrating against the Vietnam War in 1968 and pushing against the police in front of the American Embassy. The second time was for occupying a hairdresser’s, because the hairdresser was operating a colour bar and refusing to cut black people’s hair. I was charged with obstruction and had to pay £2 fine.

If I could go back in time, I’d visit the period between 1900 and 1914. There was a huge revolution then in ideas and thought around psychology, literature and art. Everyone thought they’d learned from the lessons of the terrible wars of the 19th century, that war in Europe could never happen again. I’d live in the optimism and excitement of that time, just before the First World War.

I don’t mind getting older. I’m 74 now, and people keep discovering me, which is very nice. They go: “Oh my goodness, you do this or that, and you’re quite good at it.” I think to myself: “Well, I’ve been doing it for 50 years.” But I don’t say it. I keep schtum.

Be curious is the best advice I’ve ever been given. It came from my dad. He also said: be bold. I think that was quite useful.

My greatest regret is not recognising that my son had meningitis. I put him to bed with what I thought was a high temperature and flu. I didn’t know and couldn’t see that he had the beginnings of septicaemia. Then I went to bed. I was the only one in the house. I can still see that moment I said goodnight to him for the last time, I can see that just in front of me. These moments are split seconds. The fragility of life is recognisable in them.

It helps me to think about my son’s death as something that happens to living people and things. I place it in that category, as part of the inevitable biology of us. My feelings about him, my sense of loss… I’ve separated them off.

I cried when I was researching my book, The Missing – realising that if my French relatives had just had a few more hours, they would have got on the boat and been safe from the Nazis.

I discovered that a teacher in the French village where my uncle Martin was arrested is taking children to a local museum, to show them pictures of Martin. The idea that I’ve contributed to a bit of Holocaust education in rural France is, I think, my greatest achievement.

I get arrangementitis. It happens to me when I’ve got so many arrangements, so many timings, so many possibilities of trains and timetables. I can get overwhelmed by that. It’s not the rushing, so much as the thinking ahead about all the many things I’m doing over the next few days, and it just sort of piles up. It can make me feel weary, like I’ve got a mountain to climb. It gives me a funny kind of tired feeling just underneath my eyes.

I am an optimist, definitely. There’s no point in pessimism, because all that happens is you feel pessimistic – and then you die. You’ve wasted your life. So you might as well be optimistic.

These Are the Hands: Poems from the Heart of the NHS, foreword by Michael Rosen, is out now, £9.99

THE GUARDIAN