Geraldine James
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2004
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is one of Britain's best known actresses - Geraldine James. Geraldine James became a household name 20 years ago for her performance as Sarah Layton in the epic, lavish series The Jewel in the Crown. But she is also used to far more earthy roles - one of her first television performances was portraying the real-life story of a deaf/mute prostitute from Bradford for which she won a TV Critics' award. The TV role she took after Jewel in the Crown was as the redoubtable and beefy Lady Maud in Blott on the Landscape and, later, more northern prostitutes in Band of Gold.
She is a well respected stage actress - key roles include Portia in the Merchant of Venice opposite Dustin Hoffman and When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout. Her most recent screen work was as the prim and disapproving Women's Institute leader in the hugely successful film Calendar Girls. After school she studied drama at the Drama Centre, London, and spent three years in repertory theatre and school theatre before embarking on her television career; most recently as Lady Rowley in Trollope's He Knew He was Right. She was made an OBE in 2003.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actress. She became a household name 20 years ago when in the television |
| 0:35.2 | series Jewel in the Crown, she played the part of the restrained boarding school girl who discovers |
| 0:40.4 | seeds of rebellion within her. The part suited her perfectly. She was born. of her and dummy. Since then she's starred in the I TV series Band of Gold, played Porsche, opposite |
| 1:05.6 | Dustin Hoffman in Peter Hall's production of the Merchant of Venice, and has been seen most recently |
| 1:10.2 | in the film, Calendar Girls, and on television in He Knee television in he knew he was right. |
| 1:15.0 | The characters she plays, she says, are separate from me, so I'll never be a star. |
| 1:20.0 | A star is someone who makes all their characters into themselves. |
| 1:24.3 | She is Geraldine James. |
| 1:26.4 | What do you mean by that Geraldine? |
| 1:28.1 | Give me example of a Star who makes all the characters into him or herself? |
| 1:33.6 | I think Hollywood does that with people. |
| 1:35.6 | I think it wants you're asked to. |
| 1:37.8 | People see you do something and they say you did that in that program, in that film, whatever |
| 1:42.4 | it is, come back and do that for us |
| 1:44.0 | because we know you can do it. |
| 1:45.0 | And I think what I've tried to do is to go, |
| 1:48.0 | and I've done that, so I don't want to do it again. |
| 1:50.0 | People don't recognize me, or they think they know me, they think I work in the library or I'm you know I'm at the |
| 1:55.9 | Parent at the school or whatever but doesn't that make you a very very good character actress isn't that exactly what you are? I suppose I'm more, yes, I think I'm a character actress. |
| 2:06.0 | Because you know, you can play something like Lady Maud in Blot on the landscape, and you're really quite young then I think you based it on your head mistress |
... |
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