Brenda Blethyn

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2005

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actress Brenda Blethyn. Brenda Blethyn is one of our most versatile and talented actresses with film credits that include Secrets and Lies, Little Voice, Saving Grace and, now, Pride and Prejudice and has won a host of awards for her film and stage work. But she fell into acting by default. Born Brenda Bottle, the youngest of nine children, she had no burning desire to take to the stage. She was working as a secretary for British Rail when a friend had to pull out of an amateur-dramatic production and Brenda stood in as a favour. She discovered she loved it and went on to become the first actress to rise through the ranks of the National Theatre to play leading roles.

She came to the nation's attention in 1996 playing the careworn Cynthia Purley in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. Brenda Blethyn won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a Best Actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of a neglected woman coming to terms with the fact that the daughter she had adopted at birth had come to find her - and was black. This autumn, Brenda appears as Mrs Bennet in a new film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and in On a Clear Day, which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Brenda was awarded an OBE in 2003.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Lay Me Low by John Tams with the Albion Band Book: A dictionary Luxury: Karaoke machine

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an actress born in Ramsgate the youngest of nine children
0:35.1	Her father was a chauffeur and her mother was a parlor maid
0:38.1	Though she liked the dressing up box at infant school thoughts of the stage were her. She went to work in a bank and then
0:44.7	as a secretary for British Rail, but by the early 70s she'd had enough and she threw it all up
0:49.5	to go to drama school. A few years later she was rising through the ranks at the National
0:54.0	Theatre. It was just under 10 years ago that she got her big break, the star part in
0:59.1	Mike Lee's Secrets and Lies, a role that won her Best Actress Award in Can, a Bafter, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination.
1:08.0	Since then, she's gone from strength to strength, another Oscar nomination for her role as the sexually veracious widow in Little Voice
1:14.8	and playing the lead to great acclaim in Peter Hall's West End production of Shaw's
1:19.0	Mrs Warren's profession. This autumn she can be seen as the incorrigible Mrs. Bennett in a new film of pride and prejudice.
1:26.0	It's a constant source of amazement to me that I ever got a job at all, she says.
1:31.0	It's just happened by default. she is Brenda Blethen and now you're a
1:36.1	national treasure I think they're saying Brenda I mean I'm never quite sure
1:39.8	that's a welcome compliment now I don't know either. Sounds like an old fossil.
1:44.1	But it will. I don't know about old fossil. It means you're up there with Maggie Smith and
1:47.9	Judy Dents and so on. That's all right, isn't it? But I suppose there's part of
1:52.3	you that would always just be Bren from Bram's
1:54.7	gait from me? Yes I'm always confused on the red carpet and things like that
1:58.3	with people screaming Brenda Brenda over it I don't get it really. So it has just happened to you by default has it?
2:05.4	You just wanted to act? I'm not as a child no I was doing amateur dramatics and
	...

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