This Much Is True

My first major film role was as Elephant Ethel, a Chinese prostitute at the Golden Grape whorehouse in Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers (1977). (I did say that I’ve played a lot of tarts in my career!) The film’s tagline was: ‘England expects every man to do his duty.’ The women don’t even get a mention…! It was quite fun being in this film because my make-up made me quite unrecognisable. It was a substantial if politically incorrect stab at becoming Chinese. Ninety minutes in make-up, fish-scales at the side of my eyes to drag them upwards into an Asiatic slant, very heavy red lips and two wigs, one on top of the other. Tits corralled under my chins and the tightest of revealing costumes. When I came on set, I was greeted with piercing wolf whistles and howls of desire from the crew. When I left in the studio car to return home, I was unheralded and ignored. No one had a clue who I was.

My first brush with Hollywood, though, wasn’t until 1980 when I was called to audition for Warren Beatty for a small part as the secretary of the Communist Party. I didn’t even have a line but it wasn’t a bad role. The film was Reds, and it was about the life and career of John Reed, the American journalist and communist activist. Mr Beatty who, according to his biographer, has had sex with 12,775 women (a number he disputes), insisted that he could only meet me in his trailer at lunchtime. I knocked at the door, he said, ‘Come in.’ He then looked at me up, down, up, quite slowly and said, ‘Do you fuck?’ ‘Yes, but not you,’ I replied. ‘Why is that?’ he asked. ‘Because I am a lesbian,’ I said. He grinned and said, ‘Can I watch?’ I replied, ‘Pull yourself together and get on with the interview.’

I rather regretted what I’d said afterwards. For one thing it wasn’t accurate. We lesbians don’t do anything as simplistic as ‘fuck’, and for another thing it brought me down to his level. But he was trying to intimidate me and I wasn’t going to be intimidated. And it worked: I got the job. I’m pleased that I’ve met him and he’s in my life — he is Hollywood royalty, after all — but Warren remains a naughty boy who needs a smack.

Reds was his obsession: he co-wrote, produced and directed, whilst also starring in it. He wanted to control every aspect of the film. During the making of it, he would go around surprising people and filming them unawares. He would suddenly call out, ‘Miriam!’ and, as I turned around, startled, he would take a shot of me. He did it to everyone and they all hated it but only I was prepared to call him out on it: ‘Warren, please. I don’t like you doing that. We are actors; we should be able to simulate whatever it is that you want us to do.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t have time, and a lot of you can’t do that.’

One thing I noticed: when on screen, he would mouth the lines of the other actor or actress acting alongside him. He had written the script, so of course he knew it all off by heart. I found it extremely distracting and irritating: ‘Warren, in that scene, were you aware that you were mouthing the words of the other characters?’ ‘What do you mean?’ he snapped. ‘Well, you obviously know all the script and when the actors are speaking their lines, you’re saying them too; we can see that your lips are moving.’ He did not like my pointing that out at all. He looked at me with real rage and said between clenched teeth, ‘Thank you.’ No one else had had the balls to tell him and he was furious, but he knew it was true, so he accepted it from me though he clearly hated the fact that I’d shown him up. What a good thing I did; he’d have looked a right muffin if it had gone into cinemas like that.

I mooned at him once; he completely deserved it. I can’t remember why, but probably because he made Diane Keaton do fifty takes of a shot she did perfectly well the first time. Mooning is a powerful tool; a bottom is not threatening; it’s rude, amusing but unmistakeable. Diane had refused his marriage proposal and he took it out on her. She was completely delightful, totally without grandeur and joined us ‘contract featured extras’ (that’s what the small parts were called) for supper one night, with friendliness and a sense of fun. She’s one of my top ‘faves’.

I was busy in 1989–1990, albeit in non-starring roles: I played a realtor (an estate agent) on Pacific Heights, an American yuppie psychological horror film directed by John Schlesinger, starring Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine and Michael Keaton, shot in San Francisco and Palm Springs. In 1990, I was also, as said, a late replacement stand-in for Norma Aleandro in I Love You to Death and was delighted to fly back to London to work with Sands Films, Christine Edzard, Derek Jacobi and an amazing British cast on The Fool.