Читать книгу Behind the Laughter - Sherrie Hewson - Страница 9

Chapter Four

Three years after winning the Laurence Olivier Shield, I was offered a scholarship to RADA in London. Words cannot describe how thrilled I was: it was the realisation of all my childhood dreams, but I couldn’t have done it without the support of my mother and Miss Albrecht. Mum always believed I had it in me to become a successful actress, and she kept me focused. Whenever I was reminiscing about Robbie she would say to me: ‘There are thousands of Robbies in the world but you belong on the stage.’ And when I decided that I wanted to go to drama school, she told me: ‘Then you might as well go to the best one in the world.’

As for Miss Albrecht – well, she taught me to believe in myself. She would say: ‘You’re a special girl and you’re going to be a great actress.’ So, although I wasn’t at all academic and had got nowhere at school, I didn’t feel like a failure because acting was something that seemed to come naturally to me and I loved it.

RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) was regarded as the best school in the world. Its very name commands respect and fuels ambition in young would-be actors and actresses (and I was no exception). And so my audition, in which I had to perform three pieces, was nerve-racking to say the least. I had to wait six weeks afterwards to hear whether I’d made it, and when the letter arrived, telling me that I’d got in, there was huge excitement at home. For the next few weeks life was a frenzy of packing, planning and trepidation, bearing in mind I’d never lived away from home.

For me, the only sad part was that fulfilling my dreams meant leaving my boyfriend behind. After parting from Robbie, I had fallen for a lovely boy called Arthur Moseley. He was gorgeous and looked like a cross between a very young Tony Blackburn and a young Paul McCartney so he became responsible for what became a lifelong obsession with Paul.

Arthur was a few years older than me and already ran a very successful textile business with a partner. He also had a bright yellow E-type Jaguar and used to drive me around in it, which I thought was fab, but what really mattered was that we got on so well. We had great fun and he was kind and tender. Later I came to believe he was the true love of my life, the one I should have married but the one I was foolish enough to let go. Arthur made it very clear that he really didn’t want me to leave to go to London, and, although torn, I was far too immature to handle the situation and so I left, dazzled by the bright lights of RADA and the even brighter ones of London. The world was about to become my oyster, or so I believed.

My relationship with Arthur didn’t end there, though. We stayed in touch for many years and although nobody, least of all my first husband, knew about it, we remained deeply fond of each other and continued to speak on the telephone on a regular basis. That said, we were very mindful of not hurting other people, so the telephone was as far as it went.

Our relationship was a strange and enduring one. Sometimes we’d be on the phone for several hours and we’d talk until he eventually fell fast asleep. Much later, after we’d both had beautiful children in our respective marriages, we finally realised what we had lost in each other, but before we could do anything about it Arthur very suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of 42. Afterwards I was bereft, yet somehow I realised he was one of those people, like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, who can never grow any older. I know that sounds strange but I genuinely believe some of us are destined to die while still in our prime, still young and beautiful.

I missed Arthur very much and thought of him often, but many years later the most wonderful thing happened. Having learned we had once been close friends, his daughter got in contact with me and we still write to each other, which is such a comfort after losing the true love of my life.

In January 1969 I started at RADA. The September before I had turned 18, but I was in so many ways far younger. I think my true age at that time was probably closer to 16. As I’d never before been away from home, my mother decided that I should live at the Bourne and Hollingsworth Hostel for Girls in Gower Street, two doors down from RADA. On arrival the day before the course started, suitcase in hand, I was distinctly unim-pressed. The rooms were sparsely furnished like nuns’ cells, with two iron beds in each one (both covered in puce green bedspreads); there were two sinks and two small chests of drawers apiece. Downstairs was an area where you could get a cup of tea and a few communal tables to sit at while drinking it.

There was a hefty matron, who had a moustache and wore a long, ill-fitting dress with a large chain of keys around her waist. Her shoes had rubber soles and as she stomped around they made a kind of farting noise, so that was the warning she was close by. The hostel had a strict 9.30pm curfew and we were warned that if we were not in by that time we’d be locked out. Every night the farting matron would come round, rap on the doors and ask: ‘Are you in bed girls?’ I don’t doubt she made a note in her little black book if there was no answer. Of course I managed to get myself locked out on a number of occasions but as I had friends who lived in nearby Goodge Street I’d go round and sleep on their sofa. This was 1969, for God’s sake. It was meant to be sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Not Matrons, boiled cabbage and big knickers!

I only stayed at the hostel for a few months and even then I spent as little time as possible there, so I never really got to know my roommate. As soon as I got the chance I moved into a flat in a tenement block in Camden with two friends from RADA. Sharon Maughan was from Liverpool and came from a big family. She was beautiful, with dark hair and eyes – she went on to star in the ‘Gold Blend’ coffee ads and married Trevor Eve. Louise Jameson, who starred in the fourth series of Doctor Who as Leela the Doctor’s companion, had red hair and green eyes. She was the most gorgeous one of us – all the boys loved her.

We three had a great time in that flat, which was always covered in knickers and bras hanging up to dry because there wasn’t a laundrette nearby. If boys were ever coming round these offending items were shoved in drawers, cupboards and under cushions. But the place cost a whopping £30 a week, which left us flat-broke and so we relied on friends to bring us food, particularly one boy who was expert at nicking frozen chickens from the local supermarket and somehow managed to smuggle them out to us under his coat. I’d go there sometimes and emerge with a ‘pregnant’ stomach under my coat, having stuffed everything from peanuts to loo paper in there.

This was the era of bell-bottoms and miniskirts, Beatles and Bowie; also pin-ups such as teen idols David Cassidy and Marc Bolan. People often say to me it must have been great living in London in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Free love, all night parties, a mad crazy time. Well, if it was, I must have gone out that day because I don’t remember any of it. The craziest I got was to put cider into a pint of Guiness. I can’t remember anyone around me taking drugs at parties either, though it’s possible that it happened now and then but I just didn’t notice. Certainly a few of my contemporaries have since told me there were drugs about, but no one ever offered me any.

As for sex, the late sixties were supposed to have been a wild time, with everyone at it. Where was I, you ask. Again, I blinked and missed it. But don’t get me wrong: I did like boys, especially if they looked like Robbie or were carrying a guitar, and even further back than that I knew how to get an apple in the playground, or better still, a sherbet dip from a boy. It didn’t seem to take much – a few bats of my eyelashes, an interest in their marbles, even a loan of my bicycle pump or a go on my roller-skates – but when it came to sex I never really understood what all the fuss was about and I’m not at all sure I do yet. All that mess for so little, as I always say on Loose Women.

At school, I remember boys and girls disappearing behind bike sheds but I could never quite fathom what they did back there. When I eventually discovered what it was about, it seemed such a palaver, too – all that fumbling, groping, sighing and squeaking. Maybe, as Michael Bublé might say: ‘I just haven’t met you yet.’ I was much more interested in being Shirley Temple and, later, Debbie Reynolds or Doris Day. All those stars played the perfect girl-next-door – the kind of girl I wanted to be. For them there were no bedroom scenes, and if there happened to be any brief shots in a bedroom they were with Gene Kelly or Rock Hudson – which was fine by me. And so in the era of ‘free love’ when London was known as the ‘Sexiest City in the World’ I appeared to be living on another planet. Now I’m not saying that I was altogether a Miss Goody Two-Shoes – I certainly wasn’t that. Neither was I falling into bed with a different man every week or off my head on drugs, though.

In some ways, life was far simpler then. We had no mobiles so I would phone home every now and then from a payphone, and other than that my mum didn’t have much idea what I was up to. We had no computers, so no social networking websites – we just bumped into people and got together for parties. The telly still had only three channels so it was pretty boring and, being drama students, we spent our time either acting in plays or going to see them.

Anyway, I loved RADA and soaked up the knowledge passed on to us by all the brilliant teachers, actors and directors there. Early on in my first year, however, I got a bit cocky and began to stretch the rules. I was treating it like high school, taking everything for granted, often going into classes late and sometimes skipping them altogether. I wasn’t aware of how lucky I was to be there or how many hundreds of drama students would have loved to swap places with me … at least not until the day when I walked in very late and was told to go and sit outside the Principal’s office.

After leaving me to sweat for an hour and a quarter, Hugh Cruttwell called me in. By that stage I was in an abject state of terror, convinced I was about to be thrown out. With his dry wit, passion for the theatre and an eye for spotting potential, the legendary Principal was held in complete awe by us students, and as I stood in front of his desk he read me the riot act: ‘How dare you come in late! Don’t you know it’s an honour to be here? I believed in you, but you’ve let me down …’ and so on. By the end of his speech I was left in no doubt just how much trouble I was in. He finished up by saying, ‘… and if you get yourself together and work hard, I will consider keeping you next term.’

That was the kick up the bum I needed. Believing I was about to end my short time there and determined to show him how wrong he had been, I worked incredibly hard after that. I was never late, attended all my classes, took my acting very seriously and did so well that by the time I left RADA in the summer of 1971 I had won six awards, including the Ronson Award for Best Actress with a prize of 100 guineas. Of course this was exactly the response that Hugh Cruttwell was counting on. Years later he told me, ‘I would never have thrown you out – I could see how much talent you had, I just thought I’d give you a fright.’ And it worked.

One of the wonderful perks at RADA was that superstars would arrive as visiting lecturers. We met some incredibly famous people, but none more famous – or gorgeous – than heart-throb Steve McQueen, who turned up one day to talk to us about the art of acting. I can see him now. He was standing in front of the desk, and I was at the back. He had a very soft, mumbling American accent and we couldn’t understand a word he said. But no one cared, he was delicious. At that time he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. A former reform-school kid, known as the ‘King of Cool’, he had starred in some hugely successful films including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Bullitt. He was also a dirt-bike rider and racing car driver who did his own stunts. You can’t get much cooler than that. So, imagine how overwhelmed I felt after being chosen to show him around London. Of course I was in complete awe of him and fell totally in love: he was just so beautiful and I was dumbstruck.

Steve wanted to go on a London bus and so that’s exactly what we did. People must have been gob-smacked to see Steve McQueen on a bus, but I never noticed because I was far too busy staring at him and thinking, I’m sitting with Steve McQueen, little me from Nottingham in my flowery dress and homemade love beads.

That evening Steve decided to take me to the Poissonnerie, a restaurant in Chelsea. Despite my French nursery education I didn’t remember that ‘poisson’ meant fish. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this until it was too late as I’m violently allergic to seafood.

The place was exclusive and classy, all heads turned as Steve walked in and I was so proud to be his dinner companion. Sadly, the evening became memorable for all the wrong reasons. We sat at the bar on high stools, looking at the menus, and, being a gentleman, Steve offered to order for me. I was relieved as the menu was in French and I didn’t know what most of the dishes were.

He ordered a stew and it arrived with all sorts of strange-looking things floating in it. As I stared into my bowl Steve handed me a large wooden instrument shaped like a truncheon. I sat there, holding it, but after a minute Steve (realising I didn’t know what to do) gently relieved me of it with one of those wonderful Steve McQueen smiles. It turned out to be a pepper mill but I’d never seen one before and I was truly mortified when I realised my mistake.

I dutifully tried the stew and after a very short time, having eaten a rather strange rubbery ring, my stomach started to rumble like a boiler and my face began to swell and burn. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t, and as Steve turned to me, realising something was wrong, the trajectory of vomit hit him square on the chest. I stared at him in horror; knowing I was having an allergic reaction and that there was more to come, all I could do was make a run for the street to throw up in the gutter.

Next thing I knew, I was being bundled into a taxi by the restaurant manager, who gave the driver some money and told him, ‘Take her home.’ As we took off, my final image of Steve McQueen was of several staff fussing over him and wiping his shirt. Alas, I had almost certainly blown my chances of marrying this particular Hollywood superstar, I realised as I flopped in the back of the taxi.