Liz Smith

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2008

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actress Liz Smith. Her story is a triumph of talent and perseverance over circumstance. Her mother died when she was tiny, her father walked out of her life and for many years she was brought up by her grandmother who was in mourning for her only child and her own husband. For Liz, acting and making people laugh was an escape from the often harsh realities of life, but she had to wait until she was 50 for her first real break - a role in Mike Leigh's film Bleak Moments. By that time, she'd raised her two children on her own with very little money and knew that this was her opportunity to prove what she could do.

She won critical acclaim and was later awarded a Bafta for her appearance in Alan Bennett's A Private Function and finally, when she was in her 70s, she became a household name through her roles in The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family. She's now 86 years old and, although she concedes the characters she plays have a habit of dying on screen, she isn't planning to retire any time soon.

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

Favourite track: Only The Lonely by Roy Orbison Book: A very large catalogue Luxury: A complete artist's set.

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 2008. My cast away this week is the actress Liz Smith. As Nana in the Royal Family
0:32.2	she portrayed the vagaries of old age with acute comic timing and poignancy.
0:37.0	Indeed, the part was a fitting career-defining performance for someone who specialised in playing a long line of idiosyncratic old bats.
0:46.3	Her success has been a triumph of talent and perseverance over circumstance.
0:51.4	She didn't make it as an actress until she was 50, and her early family life was plagued
0:56.2	with loss, abandonment and sorrow.
0:59.2	Now 86, her characters have a habit of dying on screen it is she says an occupational
1:05.1	hazard even so acting and making people laugh has always been a way of escaping the
1:10.4	often harsh realities of her life and she isn't planning to retire anytime
1:14.8	soon. So Liz Smith let's start if you don't mind with your screen deaths. We had Lettie
1:20.5	Croppley in the Vicar of Dibley and Nana in the Royal Family.
1:23.4	Yes. You are in essence.
1:25.4	That stage.
1:27.4	You're at that stage in your career but you're also a method actor.
1:30.6	I mean how...
1:31.6	I am yes that's right I worked for years with Charles Maravitz so how difficult is it to play
1:37.3	yourself dying on screen if you're a method actor it must be quite traumatic process
1:42.1	well it is but then it's been a long life and
1:45.8	you kind of see it coming. You won best actress recently at the British Comedy Awards
1:52.4	for your final performance of Nana.
	...

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