From Autumn Issue 59
Glass sits down with veteran British actor Lesley Manville as she reflects on her career that has spanned screen and stage for the past 50 years
LESLEY Manville is taking the London Overground to work this week. At 9am, she joins the quiet hum of commuters heading into the centre of town, returning at 5pm with the same understated ease. There’s a particular satisfaction in this new mundane routine.
“I’m enjoying it,” she reflects. “It’s a quiet time where I know I can’t be distracted by going and putting some laundry on. I can just sit there for half an hour with my script and I can’t interrupt myself by thinking of things to do in my house.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
The 68-year-old British actor has just begun rehearsals for Oedipus, a bold new adaption of the classic Greek tragedy reimagined by Robert Icke at Wyndham’s Theatre. It’s the first time in two years she has managed to align work with living in London.
“The great thing about this period is that I am home and I don’t have to go away to work until next March. So I am just very happy I am here.” After more than five decades since her West End debut, one might expect Manville to be easing off the gas. But that’s far from the case – she’s very much in the driving seat and still gaining speed.
Before Oedipus opens on 4 October, she’s heading to Venice Film Festival to premiere Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, followed by the September release of The Critic in cinemas. Then Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer will launch on Apple TV+, followed swiftly by Ryan Murphy’s Grotesquerie on FX and Moonflower Murders on the BBC – and that’s only the plan for the Autumn. But as of right now, Manville is keen to get back to talking about her commute.
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
“I wore a leather jacket to work yesterday and everyone was saying, God, that’s an amazing jacket – I have had it for 30 years at least!” Unbeknownst to her fellow passengers, the woman in the Armani jacket was the Academy-award nominated actor who thoroughly enjoys wading through her expansive wardrobe each morning.
With no stage costume to put on, Manville is savouring the chance to express herself through fashion. “I’ve always loved clothes, ever since I was a teenager,” she says enthusiastically, recalling the days she used to scavenge for hidden gems in charity shops as a youngster in her home town of Brighton.
That early passion has come full circle. Earlier this year the fashion designer Jonathan Anderson asked her to star in a Loewe campaign, marking a striking addition to her already expansive resume and a significant leap from those youthful forays.
“I absolutely loved it,” she tells me. “His designs are quite extraordinary. It is a whole new world for me, but he’s got his finger on the pulse for getting somebody of my age to keep the balance.” Far from feeling out of place, she revelled in the opportunity. “It is a completely new branch of my career but I secretly hope it’s a mainstay.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
Manville grew up in Brighton with three older sisters to a taxi-driver father and a former ballerina mother. From a very young age, the daughters were introduced to a musical education, which turned out to be very fruitful for Manville. By eight years old, her voice proved far more mature than her years and she began training as a soprano singer. “It became quite clear my voice was quite classical,” she explains, outlining how she would compete at music festivals in East Sussex with her sister, balancing duets with solos. “It was performing of sorts, but it was competitive.”
At just 15, standing at 5 ‘2 with a voice capable of transcending genres, she secured a place at the prestigious Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, where she embarked on training in singing, dancing and acting. “It was there where I first got interested in acting,” she pinpoints. “My first job was in a musical in the West End called I and Albert by the legendary film director, John Schlesinger. I suppose it was then that I felt like a performer. I was suddenly earning a living at 16 and I have earned my own ever since. It was when I felt like this is what I do now.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
What came next was a natural progression through the ranks – small stage roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Warehouse and the Royal Court Theatre, a supporting role in ITV’s Emmerdale Farm, a stint on Broadway and a film debut in 1985 with Dance with a Stranger. Yet, it’s the enduring creative partnership she forged during these years with filmmaker Mike Leigh that is testament to what comes next. “We could write the whole piece about Mike,” answers Manville when I ask about the past four decades of working with him.
Leigh’s unconventional approach – eschewing traditional scripts in favour of a process driven by improvisation and collaborative character development – became the crucible in which Manville honed her craft. “This kind of involvement is very, very demanding,” she explains. “Every single character we have created of mine together is different from the last and very different to me. I think it’s crucially influenced my career as I have never been typecast. I have never been stuck in a rut of being a one-trick pony and I do credit him with opening those doors for me.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
Nine films and two television series later, the pair have endured a significant creative partnership that has pushed and pulled them into formidable individuals. But instinct seems to be at the very heart of Manville’s ability to continually subvert expectation – as well as dedication: “I spend a lot of time with a script on my own before I go to work. Every job is different but I like to be prepared and I always am.”
Currently in the midst of rehearsals and four years since her last theatrical performance, this new project ticked all the criteria. “I wasn’t going to go back on stage with any old project,” she continues. The modern rendition of Oedipus is set on an election night between the time polls close and the results come in.
Playing alongside Manville is Mark Strong, who depicts a politician whose night spent at home will uncover raw, unfiltered tensions between his family, career and legacy. “It’s pertinent for sure because, yes, we are doing it in a UK and US election year, so all of those feelings from the night will be very current.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
Before the curtain draws, Manville is heading to Venice International Film Festival for the premiere Queer, a tightly-clad film based on the 1985 novel by William S Burroughs, in which she appears with Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig. With as little as two stills released – not even a trailer – there is a lingering undertone of excitement about it. “The part in Queer is quite extraordinary and that is as much as I can say about it,” she hints. “It’s not one of those run of the mill parts at all. It was certainly something I was going to jump at the chance to do.”
I ask what her experience has been like working with Guadagnino on this project. “You have to go with it and open yourself up to it,” she explains. “It’s a bit hard to overly analyse what makes a great director. It’s to do with what happens on set and how you collaborate. There isn’t a formula. It’s about something else. How do I play these characters? Sometimes you just have to say I have been doing it for 50 years, I do my thing and then get into a room with somebody else who is brilliant and they’re going to help me and do it together. Stuff happens. It’s hard to be prescriptive.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
It occurs to me that this preternatural ability was seeded from her work with Leigh. In Disclaimer, a psychological thriller based on the novel by Renée Knight, Manville plays Nancy Brigstocke, a bereaved mother whose loss of her son tears her marriage and self apart. Her performance is heartbreakingly flawless, depicting a woman shattering internally from pain. But how does she do it?
“There’s no formula. I can go there and I can go to these very dark places and I can perform all of those emotions that are required but I can absolutely walk away and have a glass of wine,” she answers truthfully.
“I couldn’t take those people home with me, it would be very unhealthy,” she continues, her voice laced with the wisdom of experience. It’s here, when she speaks of the delicate art of balance, the essential separation between self and character, that brings her back to her collaborations with Leigh.
“You go into character and do improvisations that then get distilled and edited and finalised into a script. The improvisations that inform the scene can last for hours. Once you finish, you have to discuss with Mike one-to-one what your character was thinking and why they did and said certain things. You have to always have your own antenna on the go. I couldn’t have played Mary Tyrone in [Eugene O’Neill’s] Long Day’s Journey into Night and stayed sane. You have got to let those go.”
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
Acting is ultimately about understanding the human condition. Whether it’s steeped in sadness, pain and loss, or painted in joy, love and laughter, Manville has spent the past half-century dancing between the two. Unsurprisingly, she’s embodied change at every juncture, embracing the good, the bad and the ugly and professionally outlasting many of her contemporaries.
So with a career that seems to see no end, I ask her what acting continues to give her after all of these years. “My job in really very simple terms is to depict people. People who are not me, people with different thoughts, different standards, different views, different philosophies, different politics,” she begins. “It’s why I love going to work on the train because the day I stop looking at people and live such a rarefied existence that I don’t mix with people anymore, then I probably won’t be able to do my job so well. We have to understand one another. Or at least that’s what I am trying to do. For me that’s the real pleasure of the job.”
by Imogen Clark
Photographer: Silvana Trevale
Stylist: Steph Wilson
Makeup: Amanda Grossman using TWELVE BEAUTY skincare and SAIE make up
Hair: Narad Kutowaroo using UNITE HAIR
Set Designer: Helen MacIntyre
Seamstress: Sophie Stonyer
Videographer: Donny Johnson
Producer: Lucio Martus
Photography assistant: Ollie Patterson
Styling assistant: Roz Donoghue
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