This Much Is True

However many times people scorn awards and say they’re nonsense (as I have done myself), when you get one it’s a gorgeous feeling. I was amazed I’d been nominated, as I’d certainly never expected it and had not mounted any sort of campaign — unlike Winona, who had written personally to every member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who nominate the Golden Globe awards. I admit to being irritated because she’d been nominated as a Supporting Artist and therefore in competition with me, and she should have been put in the Leading Actress category. So, she got the Golden Globes and the Oscar as a Supporting Artist. The studio didn’t nominate me for the Oscars, but I won a BAFTA and I’m terribly proud of it.

The ceremony was held at Drury Lane Theatre. I hired a smart ballgown for the occasion and took Stella Wilson, my dear friend and publicist, to hold my hand. It was enormous fun. I knew I wouldn’t win (Maggie Smith was another nominee), so I just enjoyed being there, seeing famous people. When my category came up, I thought I heard my name, but knew it was probably because I’d hoped so much to win. I didn’t get up. Stella dug me in the ribs and said, ‘Go on, Miriam, you’ve won!’ I was in a daze as I tottered down the auditorium. Tony Hopkins, in an aisle seat, clutched my arm as I went past and said, ‘I voted for you.’ I got myself onto the stage and Sam Neill was there to present me with the surprisingly heavy trophy. I made a silly speech of which I’ve thankfully no memory; I was totally unprepared and wobbly with happiness. I’m sure it was thanks to the LA branch of BAFTA for voting for me en masse, but when Maggie Smith came up to me later and said, ‘I’m delighted you won. You deserved to,’ it was one of the crowning moments of my career. I only wished Mummy had been alive to see it, but Daddy was. He was proud of me enough for two.

Romeo + Juliet

Susan arranged the interview with Baz Luhrmann. The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s most Dickensian character: energetic and chaotic, funny and tragic all at once. She is the tragedy’s alternative comic heart. While the studio wanted Kathy Bates, Susan and I both knew this was the part I was born to play.

But Baz threw me a real purler when he said, ‘Look, Miriam, [Australians always begin their sentences with the word ‘look’], I’ve got a particular vision for this film; it has to be set in a totally corrupt society; I want it to have the brutality and viciousness of a vendetta. That’s what I want to show, so for my purposes, it’s got to be South American. Do you think you could play the role in a Cuban accent?’

My jaw dropped, ‘Cuban? What do you mean «Cuban»? She was written in Warwickshire!’

He said, ‘Yes, but I want her Cuban. Can you do Cuban?’

I quickly said, ‘Of course I can!’ No actor is ever going to say they can’t do something if they really want the part. And I really wanted the part, and it turned out Baz wanted me. And despite the studio’s strongly expressed preference otherwise, he fought for me and won.

Of course, I didn’t have a clue what a Cuban accent was like — Yorkshire I can do off the top of my head, but who knows Cuban, for God’s sake? I went to the brilliant dialect coach Joan Washington (Richard E. Grant’s wife by the way — he’s a clever lad) and got my Cuban accent up to speed. It was quite a gear-shift to say these lines — ‘Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave!’ — so that they sounded straight out of Havana, but Joan made it work.^[20]

Baz was riding high on the success of Strictly Ballroom, his wonderful first picture. But this was a film on an entirely different scale: the budget was over $14 million. He immersed himself in the text of Romeo and Juliet. He shifted Shakespeare’s play from Renaissance Italy to an imagined Verona Beach, full of drug gangs, drag queens and ruthless warlords. As the lovers from two rival business families, he cast Leonardo DiCaprio, a beautiful young actor then aged twenty-one, as Romeo, and Claire Danes as Juliet. Claire’s great quality was her innocence. She wasn’t, apparently, Baz’s first choice, but her vulnerability was heart-rending.

Romeo + Juliet was a huge and important project that became an obsession. That’s how Baz works. And he knew the play back to front. I remember his saying to me when we started: ‘The play is a comedy until the death of Tybalt.’ So he used the brilliant computer guys, who were given their own section in the studio, to shade the tones of the sky in different scenes, to reflect the changing, darkening mood as the play develops. Baz would often leave the set to go to the computers and be shown the various options available.