Fields of gold (From The Northern Echo)

Fields of gold

11:36am Thursday 19th November 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share

Sarah O’Meara talks to Jane Horrocks about her decision to focus on the most controversial part of Gracie Fields’ life in BBC4’s Gracie!

WHETHER you know 45-yearold Jane Horrocks as the blonde assistant Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous, the film Little Voice or simply as the daughter of Prunella Scales in those Tesco adverts, it’s unlikely you could confuse her with any other actress.

Her distinctive looks and versatile acting style mean she’s always in demand and now she’s back on our screens playing the Thirties stage star Gracie Fields.

“When I was at drama school someone said ‘You should listen to Gracie, you’ll find her really hilarious’. He bought me an album and I sang all the songs.

From then on it was an ongoing ambition to play her at some point. People would say ‘Oh what a perfect idea’ but nothing ever came of it.”

Like Horrocks, Fields was from Lancashire and could make people laugh and cry with a single song or the curve of her smile.

Born in Rochdale, the young Fields went on to become the highest paid film actress in the world. The TV drama Gracie! is part of BBC4’s series of dramas about British female icons and written by Horrocks’s real-life partner Nick Vivian.

“We chose the most important part of her life,” says Horrocks.

“When she was in her early Forties, she had to go into hospital with cervical cancer and then war broke out. She then did massive amounts of work for the war effort.”

Fields is famous as the girl who was born above a fish and chip shop and made her name on stage in revues; then went on to play to sell-out audiences, before starring in Hollywood movies.

But Gracie! focuses on a dramatic period of Fields’ life during Second World War.

“She went into the most dangerous areas to sing to the troops and the Germans saw her as a threat. A hotel in Paris was bombed after she stayed in it.”

The drama also focuses on Fields’ controversial relationship with Italian film director Monty Banks (played by Tom Hollander), which followed an unsuccessful marriage with Archie Pitt, her manager.

“I believe they were almost like soul mates,” she says. “He made her laugh, he amused her, they did have a really lovely relationship. She even tried to let go of the audience and her public life to give herself over to Monty, and that’s sort of essence of this story.”

Fields’ obsession with pleasing her fans, in spite of her own poor health, is central to Vivian’s script – and Horrocks displays a similarly tenacious approach to her own performance.

“I’m sort of doing my own version. I read something that Michael Sheen (who played David Frost in Frost/Nixon) said that I thought was very wise. He said he took an essence of himself that was similar to the character and expanded on that, which I think is a good way of going about it – rather than doing an impersonation.”

While Horrocks gained her dramatic training at RADA, and Fields’ experience came from performing on stage from an early age, there’s no doubt they share similar talents. Both can hold an audience’s attention with a song.

“Gracie’s thing was that she lampooned songs. She would be doing a serious song and then all of a sudden in the middle, start lampooning it, which lots of people didn’t like.”

Horrocks recalls a moment in Fields’s box office hit film, Sally In Our Alley, released in 1931, which gave her an insight into the star.

“She’s sort of in the middle of singing her most famous song, Sally’ but then she just starts to lampoon in the middle of the song. Yet it is really touching, because there are tears in her eyes, which is just gorgeous.”

While Horrocks and her partner live a fairly traditional life in Twickenham, with their two children Dylan and Molly, the actress explains that the British public fell out of love with Fields because she married an Italian.

“Monty had to flee the country because he was Italian and British people turned their back on Gracie because of that.

“They thought she deserted them. In a way we are setting the record straight for Gracie with this project because she didn’t run away from Britain.

She was doing a massive amount of work for the war effort and raising an enormous amount of money for ammunition and spitfires. We wanted to redress the balance because she was really unfairly treated.”

■ Gracie! BBC4, Monday, 9pm

■ Horrocks is currently strutting her stuff on stage in Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic, London

• Print
• Email
• Share