Woman's Journal

March 1997

"A man in his thirties is a grown-up, not a toy boy"

Ralph Fiennes is 34. Francesca Annis is 50. Will their relationship last?
Jennifer Selway meets the beautiful actress

This is the first time we have met, but she calls me immediately by my first
name, and quite often. The effect is warm, intimate and confiding. You sense
an upbringing where manners were important - not for their own sake, but
because they put other people at ease. When she comes into the room, she
shakes my hand, holding it for an instant to breathe "Francesca" in that
lovely, resonant voice which somehow goes with the chestnut hair. The nasty
person inside me says "Francesca? Are you really? Good heavens, I was
expecting Glenn Close." But the nice part of me is, somehow, flattered.

If it were possible, she is even more beautiful in person than on screen. "A
good wash," she says, when asked to outline her beauty regime. "A good wash
every night with soap and water, and some ordinary moisturiser." I wasn't
sure I wanted to hear this. All these years I've spend money on must-have
cosmetics, simply so I could look something like Francesca Annis. And now I
learn I could achieve the same effect with a flannel, a bar of Wright's Coal
Tar and a pot of Pond's cream. I think NOT.

She will be 51 in May. Fiftysomething is becoming a good age for women to
be: like Jane Asher and Helen Mirren and those other swinging chicks who
have weathered well and done well. She was there at the beginning of the
Sixties, playing Elizabeth Taylor's handmaiden in Cleopatra. "I was quite
close to Richard Burton and Elizabeth. I was very young and they took me
under their wing. They taught me a lot about publicity and valuing your
privacy. In the end they didn't manage themselves too well. But at the time
they didn't really reveal much to the outside. I hate to be gossiped about
but, like anyone, I am interested in other people."

I've been told that we can't talk about her relationship with Ralph Fiennes,
one of the most gifted actors of his generation. He was lately the husband
of Alex Kingston, TV's Moll Flanders. Annis and Kingston are rather similar
physically, something about the skin tones. Men do tend to fall for the same
type over and over; though normally they trade in the present model for a
younger one. Fiennes has done the opposite. When he and Annis acted together
in a production of Hamlet (first in Hackney, then on Broadway) she played
Gertrude - the mother of Fiennes' Danish prince.

As we can't talk about Ralph, and she knows I know we can't talk about
Ralph, I sense we are talking about him in some sort of complicated code
when we discuss Annis's latest role in the TV series Reckless. It's a
romantic hospital drama, where she plays a management consultant who falls
in love with a younger man. Michael Kitchen (who lived with Joanna Lumley
for a decade) is her husband, a top surgeon. And Robson Green plays her
lover. "I suppose "reckless" applies to all three of them. My character
isn't looking for an affair, because she has invested so much in the
marriage. It just happens through force of circumstances," she says.
Reckless is written by Paul Abbott (who has scripted Cracker) and when
Francesca Annis first heard about the part, the lover was to be a man in his
mid-twenties. "I had a lot of reservations about that. Men in their twenties
are like my daughter's friends. There are wonderful and sweet but you only
have to spend thirty seconds with them to know that you have no point of
reference. But when I was offered the same part some time later, the
character was in his thirties and to be played by Robson Green. To me that
is quite different. A professional man in his thirties is a grown-up, not a
toy boy."

Ralph Fiennes is 34. According to his estranged wife Alex Kingston, Fiennes
announced he was coming to see her while she was filming Moll Flanders last
spring. "He arrived, all bright and breezy, and said he was in love with
Francesca Annis." Kingston, 33, was not surprisingly shocked. "I thought
he was going to suggest we went away together," she says.

By now Annis is drinking tea and eating a croissant. We are sitting in a
Kensington hotel on luxurious sofas. She is straight-backed (that ballet
training will out) with a damask napkin. No plate, but no mess: rather like
a metaphor for for her life. She doesn't play by the rules exactly, but she
keeps her poise. She licks her teaspoon girlishly. "Sorry," she says, for no
particular reason.

She's had many memorable roles: as Lillie Langtry, Edward VII's mistress in
the LWT series Lillie; as Kitty O'Shea in BBC2's Parnell and the
Englishwoman (tongues wagged over her relationship with co-star Trevor Eve,
but she's always denied an affair); as a high-flying siren in Between the
Lines with Neil Pearson. But one of her most extraordinary performances was
in 1971 as Lady Macbeth in Roman Polanski's Macbeth. Jon Finch played
Macbeth. The film made the couple young and ruthlessly ambitious. However it
was the nude scenes that stuck in the audience's mind. But when Hugh Hefner,
who financed the film, asked Annis to pose for a Playboy centrefold, to
everyone's amazement she refused.

She has a way of slowly lowering her lids when she delivers some
particularly telling line. It is both graceful and indomitable. It was that
quality in her young Lady Macbeth which made her so memorable, and which has
clung to her over the years, fuelling her performances as a succession of
remarkable and passionate women. After making Macbeth, she cut her hair
short, went on about feminism the bit, and held out against marriage. "I
decided not to exploit my sexuality when I was young, which I suppose was
quite strong of me. I suppose it was a bit of left-over Catholicism. I think
at the time the marriage thing was a bit of a stand. But by the time I met
Patrick [Wiseman, a photographer and, until recently, her partner] I was in
my early thirties, so I wasn't young. And I had a professional identity for
so long that the idea of giving away any part of that seemed ludicrous.
Marriage has never been an issue. Though I always wanted family life and
family rituals. And even if marriage didn't matter I never envisaged a life
without children."

Her own parents were unconventional. Her mother Marquita (half French and
half Brazilian) eloped with her father (an English film-maker). After the
war they went to Brazil where they opened a nightclub. They returned to
England when she was five. She's close to her parents, though she's never
found out what they thought of her decision never to marry. She and Patrick
have three children: Charlotte, 18, Taran, 16 and her son, Andreas, 12. They
were together for 20 years. Their break-up has been painful, but at least
there was no divorce and the children live with Patrick. "I believe that in
a divorce solicitors can do as much damage as good. At least we have not
have to confront the legal system as well as the end of our relationship."
Had she initiated the split? Had she just felt that something had to give?
"It would seem so," she said tartly, insinuating I was overstepping the mark
in enquiring the reasons for the break-up (most people assume it was the
rumours about the affair with Trevor Eve). "I am not afraid of change, and I
am very decisive, which is not necessarily a good thing. I expect I am
reckless," she added, laughing at the neat plug for the new TV series.

Before I left, I asked the old question about the lack of parts for older
women. She was fairly dismissive - not whingeing seems to be a governing
principle. "There will always be fewer roles for older women because all art
forms are interested in the metamorphosis of young people." Her love of
youth's beauty and even its narcissism is obvious when she talks about her
children, even people she's seen in the street. "This girl had hair
sprouting from all angles, nose rings and geisha make-up. I thought: go for
it! Do it now. You won't have time later." As far as lovers are concerned,
we might conclude that twentysomething is pushing it a bit, whereas
thirtysomething is just fine.

(Submitted by Tara)