Penelope Wilton on Pinter... and fighting zombies

Penelope Wilton is a seriously impressive woman. It’s not just her endless theatre credits, or the fact that she has worked with some of British drama’s great names.

It’s not just the fact that she’s been directed by Sir Peter Hall, has worked with Harold Pinter (she was the originator of the role of Emma in Betrayal) or that she appeared in the original Norman Conquests in the West End (and the television adaptation made of the wildly- successful Alan Ayckbourn play).

It’s not just that she starred in one of British television’s most-loved sitcoms, opposite Richard Briers in Ever Decreasing Circles.

Nor is it the fact that her on-screen credits have gathered apace in the last few years and that she brings decades worth of experience to every role.

Her sense of comic timing is impeccable and she has an ability to infuse a character with pathos, humour and oceans worth of depth – whether that’s as an OAP stripper in Calendar Girls, or a slightly scatty mother in cult comedy Shaun of the Dead.

No, the CV is to be admired, but it is not that that makes Wilton create such a lasting impression.

She’s the sort of woman whose age you feel it would be inappropriate to reveal – although it’s relevant because, at 66, 
she carries herself with that ineffable quality – gravitas.

Firm handshake, bordering on a little too firm, eyes that hold your gaze unwaveringly and a smile that beams when she wants it to, she is, to risk a little repetition, impressive.

We meet in Scarborough, at the Spa complex on graduation day for the students of the University of Hull. She is there because the university has a campus in the seaside resort and she is to receive an honorary doctorate.

A doctor of letters for someone who, as a little girl, found reading incredibly difficult, only really mastering it in her teenage years. A little ironic, no?

“Oh that was all a very long time ago,” she says.

What she doesn’t say, but what is clear, is “let’s not talk about that”. Not rude, not difficult, but firm and fairly unequivocal. Gravitas, you see.

Wilton was invited by Hull University to collect the honour because Scarborough is her home town, something which is not immediately revealed in her perfectly cut-glass – that’s glass pronounced to rhyme with “sparse” – accent.

It turns out that, despite having lost the accent, Scarborough remains close to her heart. Indeed later in the afternoon, in her address to the class of 2012, of which she is now an honorary member, she tells the students “There is a phrase in my industry that is ‘to learn by heart’. I’ve always taken this to mean that it is your job to not just learn the words by also give them life. It is a great honour to receive a doctorate in my town of birth.”

Before the presenting the address, she tells me that, while she moved away from Scarborough many years ago, she feels a pull towards the East Coast.

“My (elder) sister Rosemary is here with me today and she lived in Scarborough for much longer than I did, so she remembers it a little more clearly. I’ve lived in the south now for many years and I haven’t that voice around me (a Yorkshire accent) which is why I speak this way,” she say.

“I do miss it and always feel very much at home when I’m here. It’s funny, but the older you get, the more familiar it seems.”

Wilton has been posing for photographers on the windy, but not too chilly balcony of the Spa complex, graciously following instructions until she decides that’s probably enough and is ready for our interview.

I ask if she would like to sit in a quiet corner but she is “fine standing here”.

She is immediately charming and, although I would prefer to sit (balancing a notebook, recorder and my bag is more easily done seated) she just isn’t the sort of woman you feel like you can disagree with.

She really is delighted to be in Scarborough, despite the fact that she hasn’t lived here for such a long time, explaining the family history of why she was born in the coastal town.

“My father was a prisoner of war, caught in the Northern Desert during the retreat from Tobruk and was handed over to the Italians,” she says.

“When he came back to England he had been a prisoner of war for nearly four years and he wasn’t at all well. My grandparents, who lived in Newcastle, had a holiday flat here in the town, where they came for holidays, so they gave that to him and his wife, my mother and his little girl, my elder sister. I was born here and my father, who was training to be a barrister before the war, completed his articles in the town.

“And that’s why I was born here. My family came back for holidays for many years, so this part of the world is very familiar to us.”

Wilton has an old-fashioned, peculiarly British way of speaking that matches her demeanour.

A comment on the beauty of the northern landscape is met with another story.

“My younger sister and I did a walk from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Seahouses and it was one of the most wonderfully fulfilling holidays. The North East coastline and this part here along to Whitby feature some of the best walking routes in the whole country.”

The thing about Wilton is that she is also an enthusiast, the sort who likes to discuss the things about which she is passionate.

Fortunately, after several decades in showbusiness, she remains as passionate about it as she ever was.

Her West End debut was opposite Ralph Richardson. Which is all you really need to know about where she stands as one of our finest actors.

“I’ve worked with some wonderful actors and with lots of great playwrights,” she says. “You keep your love because you are working with the playwright’s language and you get to go into their world. Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, Pinter, Rattigan, Ayckbourn, I’ve done all of their plays and been into all of their worlds and that is what keeps me fascinated.

“You never get to the bottom of these geniuses and I have tried to get as near as I can to what it is they wanted.”

As she mentions Ayckbourn and we are in his “manor”, I mention the Scarborough- based writer, Wilton jumps in immediately.

“Last time I saw Alan’s work was last autumn when I was here for his play Neighbourhood Watch, but of course I was first in his work when I was in the first West End production of The Norman Conquests. That was back in 1974, or something like that,” she says.

“I was very lucky when I started in theatre – I did premieres of the work of writers like Christopher Hampton and David Hare and doing the very first production of Betrayal was a real highlight,” she says.

“But then, whenever you are originating a role and finding a character for the first time it’s a highlight. Each role I have ever played I have found fascinating because you get to go into these other worlds.

“Anyhow, they’re all lovely to do.”

With a career that has taken in genuinely great British theatre roles over the second half of the last century, Wilton has been enjoying a career renaissance which, it is fair to say, is unusual for a female actor of her age.

In the 1980s she was selected to star opposite Richard Briers in Ever Decreasing Circles, the follow-up to the Good Life from creators John Esmonde and Bob Larbey. Not quite a hit on the same scale as The Good Life, it nonetheless brought Wilton to a the attention of a wider audience, with viewing figures regularly reaching 12 million.

“It was such a wonderful time, such a fantastically popular show and it 
was wonderful to work with a great, 
great comedian like Richard Briers.

“I learnt so much from him, so 
much about comic timing – he was extraordinary – he still is an extraordinary actor and such a gifted comedian,” she says.

Those comedy skills she witnessed while working with Briers were used to good effect in recent years.

Roles in Calendar Girls, Shaun of the Dead and recently The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in which she starred alongside the ensemble cast of Judi Dench, Celia Imrie and Maggie Smith, have established Wilton as a comic actor and introduced her to a generation that might otherwise not know about her many decades of experience on the stage.

Surely, however, doing work that might be politely called less serious – Shaun of the Dead, for example – compared to all the demanding stage work for which she is known and respected, is regarded by Wilton as something fairly light?

Is, essentially, some of her career the silly stuff mixed with the Pinters?

“Oh no, not at all. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright (the creative team behind Shaun of the Dead) are brilliant and imaginative young men,” she says.

“Theatre and films are there to entertain, apart from anything else. Nothing is more important than the work I’m doing and no one thing is better than another. Some things are more serious than others, not better, just different.”

She tells me that she has “just done a film called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” as though it were something that I might not have heard about. When I say I know and that I took my mum to see it, she says: “Oh how lovely. It does seem to be doing very well, which is so nice and, well, it’s nice to keep working.”

Lovely attitude, lovely woman, really very... impressive.