The Big Interview: Tara Fitzgerald

Miriam Margolyes, Mariella Frostrup, Tara Fitzgerald. She absolutely belongs on the list of women whose names conjure up an immediate aural memory that makes grown men go weak at the knees.

“Ah yes, The Voice,” laughs Fitzgerald, a throaty, deep laugh from another era. “It’s funny, The Voice. When I was younger it was really very embarrassing. You know a lot of models say that when they were at school they had the mickey taken out of them because they were tall and skinny, well, that was me with my voice.

“I spoke like this when I was a very little girl. It was very incongruous, this little girl with this voice that was sort of (Fitzgerald then lowers her voice an octave more and it feels like the building shakes as she says), ‘Hello there’. I was very self-conscious about it growing up. When I was in my teens I got an agent and I was hoping they would do some work on my voice with me, but they said I would just have to grow into it.”

She grew into it. And how. Fitzgerald, who is, frankly, something of a flirt, knows exactly how to use the voice.

“Everyone says it’s a gift. It can be useful. I guess it’s fairly strong.”

It is strong – and it’s a good job it is so. When we first meet it is at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and Fitzgerald has just powered her way through a matinee performance of The Winter’s Tale, in which she plays, rather brilliantly, the falsely-wronged queen Hermione. She has another performance later that evening and appears tired and distracted meeting journalists in the few spare hours between the shows. She also appears fully aware of the star power she has just sitting there and that she doesn’t need to play the game. With the stage make-up wiped from her face, although traces of it are still pasted behind her ears, she is strikingly beautiful.

We speak again a week later, when she calls on a non-matinee day and appears much brighter, breezier, relaxed – and a whole lot funnier. Playing such an emotional role, twice a day, in The Winter’s Tale, clearly takes a lot out of her.

It’s little wonder. Best known for her screen work, Fitzgerald hasn’t done a huge amount of stage time – this is her second Shakespeare stage role – and The Winter’s Tale, directed by one of British theatre’s great directing talents Lucy Bailey, is her RSC debut.

It is a debut, it’s fair to say, that has gone well. She has enormous stage presence and the emotion of the scene in which she prepares herself for death at the hands of an executioner, despite knowing she is innocent, pours off the stage. She also holds the RSC’s main theatre, a huge space, in thrall with her voice.

Why do the role? She is better versed in acting for the screen and might surely continue happily along in that milieu. At 45 she’s getting closer to that age where good roles for women actors start to look thin on the ground, yet despite that she still has the clout and profile to find decent roles in film and television, where she has much more experience.

In Stratford, where we meet, she treats the question of why come to the RSC to make her debut in her 40s, with some amount of disdain.

“It’s Shakespeare,” she says. “You can’t do better and the RSC is an amazing place to work.”

Okay. Why has it taken so long to get to the RSC if she loves it so much then?

“Why’s it taken so long, I don’t know, ask them.”

A week later on the phone, she is far more garrulous in her answers. She says: “It seemed a really good time. The idea came up, I re-read the play and then met with Lucy and was absolutely intrigued by her ideas. So she was a big part of it, I thought her ideas for doing the play were really interesting.

“Then the big thing for me was the RSC. It’s always been something of a Holy Grail for me – my stepfather was an associate artist here, so I sort of grew up in the belly of the beast and as a child it had this almost mythical quality to it. When I was in my 20s I came for a very bad, very unsuccessful audition. I did the same with RADA, so it’s something that has always been on my radar as something I wanted to do. This really was the first time the opportunity had come up in the intervening 20 years, so the chance doesn’t come round all that often.”

Fitzgerald has clearly fallen for the stage.

There is, however, the fact that she remains much better known for her work on screens big and small.

She really came to our attention with the story of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band in the Yorkshire set and filmed movie Brassed Off, where she starred opposite Ewan MacGregor. While she appeared with some notable leading men in film roles through the 90s – Hugh Grant in Sirens, Ralph Fiennes, Rufus Sewell – Fitzgerald was imprinting herself on our filmic and televisual memories. “If you look at the things I’ve done, then it does sort of appear that I have chosen for my career to go in certain directions and now it could now look like I’m turning my back on TV and film in favour of theatre,” she says.

“But it’s not that, it’s just that theatre gives you a sense of something different, something else. I do love film, but you really don’t get this same feeling I’m experiencing working with the RSC, which is the sense of the company, of the community of it.”

If she thinks there’s a sense of community now, just wait until she hits the road. In the ancient tradition of acting troupes, Fitzgerald is currently on the road with the RSC show, bringing it to York’s Grand Opera House next week.

It’s been quite a journey. After failing the RADA audition, she landed a place at the Drama Centre in London, whose alumni include Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth. While still at the school she then secured a role in her first movie, Hear My Song, which brought her to the attention of critics, filmmakers and the public.

It wasn’t long before she landed the role that would become a defining moment, as a bolshy, strong-backboned daughter of a miner in Brassed Off. Shot in Yorkshire, starring Fitzgerald alongside Pete Postlethwaite as well as MacGregor, it became a hit around the world.

“It’s amazing that film. An absolute gem that follows me everywhere,” she says. “The fact that it touched people in such a strong way is, I think, because it had such enormous heart and the thing it spoke about, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, was such an emotional thing for so many people.

“I do think about the film because I loved it so much. I think the reason it was so successful is because it had enormous integrity. I think people can tell the difference between something written from the heart and something written to make money.

“And of course the music. Oh that music. It was something special.”

While it is the film that really launched Fitzgerald internationally, many actors might shy away from talking about former glories. Not Fitzgerald.

Like the film, it’s clear she has heart and integrity. She does sound still very loving towards the film.

“Absolutely and I hope those things never go. I couldn’t be cool about all these things, I’m not cool, never have been. I think it’s actually really important, as an actor, that you maintain that sense of childlike wonder. I think you have to, to do what we do.”

She maintains the wonder, but is also clearly very grounded. She explains that “because I’m in my 40s” her eyesight is beginning to fail her, so she needs glasses. A couple of days previously, in Stratford, it was quite cold. To combat the cold she pulled on a hat as she left the house and was later using a cashpoint.

“I had my glasses on and my hat and was peering quite closely at the screen because I couldn’t see it very well,” she says. “A man made a comment that he could see through my disguise and knew who I was. I had no idea I was wearing a disguise. It really doesn’t occur to me to do something like that. I take the Tube, I live my life. Sometimes if I am out with my parents or my partner for dinner, say, they will say ‘didn’t you see those people looking at you?’ but it’s really not something I see.

“If you’ve been on the telly the night before, you might stay in the following day, because that really does make a difference, but apart from that, I just get on with life.”

A life which might now see a little more of it played out on stage?

“Touring the show to places like York was a part of the deal, part of the package and I’m delighted about that. Things can get very safe in London, it’s good to get out of your comfort zone now and then,” she says.

“It’s going to be fun, I’m really looking forward to seeing what Yorkshire audiences make of it, seeing how it makes it different for us.

“It’s going to be fun.”

She laughs again. It’s quite something.

The Winter’s Tale, Grand Opera House, York, March 19 to 12, tickets 0844 8713024. Hull New Theatre, April 9 to 13, tickets 01482 300300.