A family affair

It’s unusual – if not unheard
of – for actors to job-share
a role. But that’s the situation
for Samantha Bond and Zoë
Wanamaker in Peter Nichol’s
Passion Play. Well, sort of.
Wanamaker plays Eleanor,
a wife reeling in the wake of
her husband’s infidelity; Bond
plays Eleanor’s subconscious,
named Nell. “We tend to use
terms like ‘inner voice’ or
‘heart’ actually,” explains
Bond. “Nell says what Eleanor
would like to say but doesn’t.”
It makes sense that Wanamaker
and Bond have been
tasked with playing the same
woman. The vocal similarity
alone is striking: husky, with an
underlying briskness that suggests
a strong aversion to fools.
Even if you’d never come
across Bond – had missed her as
Pierce Brosnan’s Moneypenny,
overlooked her as Outnumbered’s
Auntie Angela, never
seen her as Lady Rosamund
in Downton Abbey – the voice
would leave you in no doubt
about her profession.
It’s the first time she’s worked
with Wanamaker – although,
of course, they’ve known each
other socially “for years” – and
she’s quick to heap praise on
her co-star with rather luvvieish
declarations about how
marvellous it is to go through
the “emotional rollercoaster”
of the play with her.
“It’s a tricky old play and we
both had to agree on what we
thought the character felt, which
is a very unusual situation for an
actor. We had to make decisions
on what marriage is all about
and what infidelity means and
what impact it has.”
It’s fortunately not a situation
Bond has had to go through
herself. She has been happily
married to fellow actor
Alexander Hanson for 20-odd
years; although starring in the
same play – An Ideal Husband
– in 2010 proved something of
a challenge.
“It was tricky because he’d
been in America for a year
and had become my romantic
liaison. I used to get flights
across the Atlantic and have
glamorous weekends in New
York and then, overnight, he
reappeared and was in my
kitchen, in my bedroom and at
my work. It was a bit… odd.”
Far from leaving work at the
front door, the couple are each
other’s “most honest” critics,
according to Bond, and she
admits she gets “incredibly
nervous” when she knows he
will be in the audience watching
her. “It’s not always what
you want to hear but I do
think it’s good for you. Not
everyone is as honest and it
doesn’t really do you any
favours when they’re not.”
To their parents’ horror, both
of the couple’s two children,
Molly and Tom, are now
training to be actors. “Oh God,
I was appalled,” laughs Bond.
“You kind of hope they’ll
choose something sensible and
secure but they’ve chosen this.
All we can do now is offer
what support we can.”
It can’t really have come as
much surprise though. Bond
herself is the child of actor
Philip Bond and TV producer
Pat Sandys and recalls Sunday
lunches when she was growing
up full of jolly thespians. It
wasn’t strictly a “normal” life
and Bond admits part of her
reason for choosing to become
an actor was simply because
she’d never really come across
any other professions. Now,
she thinks she might have
made a good infant school
teacher – “I just adore children
and I think I’d have been quite
good in the classroom.”
But neither was theirs a
“silly, glamorous” existence,
she says. “Sometimes life was
very jolly and other times it
wasn’t. My mum would put
us on the train to Scotland to
our grandfather’s to get winter
shoes for example, because
there were three of us and
they were expensive. We never
holidayed abroad. It was a
very real upbringing, very
down-to-earth.”
She has been acting now for
more than three decades after
starting out in the original
production of boarding school
parody Daisy Pulls It Off. What
is the most valuable lesson
she’s learnt in that time?
“Patience,” she replies without
the hesitations that have
peppered the rest of the
conversation. “You have to
be patient between jobs –
because if you’re not patient
then you go insane – and on
jobs because there’s an awful
lot of waiting around.”
Although, like many
actresses, she laments the lack of high-profile roles for
middle-aged women like herself
– most of her juiciest parts
now are on stage rather than
TV – she’ll admit she’s been
“hugely lucky” in her work.
After clocking up wellreceived
roles on stage and TV,
winning the part of Moneypenny
only made her star rise
further. Actually, she confesses,
she had worried it would swing
the other way. Both Lois
Maxwell (also Moneypenny)
and Desmond Llewellyn (Q)
had talked of their careers
being stalled by the James
Bond films, and Bond says
she feels lucky she “survived”
Moneypenny. Some might have
regretted missing out on the
chance to star opposite Daniel
Craig but she always said she
would leave as soon as Pierce
Brosnan did and she “was very
happy to leave when he went”.
It seems somewhat at odds
with Bond’s fear of being
typecast that she was last year
reported to have said she was
sick of her role “just flitting in
and out” of the phenomenally
successful Downton Abbey, in
which she stars with her good
friend Dame Maggie Smith,
and was going to ditch it.
Misreported, she says now,
and actually, she’s just finished
filming for the next series, which
is set to air in the autumn.
After more than 30 years
in the business, is there still
a role Bond is longing to play,
I wonder? If there is, she’s not
telling me. In her experience,
talking about something she’d
like to do seems to jinx it.
“Suddenly, someone else is
doing it and I’m far too
superstitious to risk that!”
But more than that, some of
her best roles are ones that have
taken her entirely by surprise –
Amy’s View, for example, David
Hare’s 1997 play in which she
ended up starring with Judi
Dench and Ronald Pickup.
“The first thing I knew about
it was a brown envelope arriving
through my door. I read it and
realised what an extraordinary
play it is, but a week before I
didn’t even know it existed. I’m
sure there’s an even more wonderful
part I’m longing to play
– I’m just waiting to meet it.”