![]() ![]() Suddenly you’re having to change yourself a little to fit this ideal.” She lost confidence and grew angry. I’d prided myself on being me – take me as I am! But the reality is that you’re there to serve the material. “It was the first time I had to lose weight. Here she was debuting in a leading role requiring considerable nudity. At 21, she hadn’t trained for film nor grown up on movies. Nair was impressed by her “wilful gaze and imperiousness” and the film, shot in central India, was a “baptism of fire” says Varma. She graduated in 1995 and Mira Nair cast her as a servant turned courtesan in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, inspired by the ancient Hindu text. I’m not useful to that world yet.’ To begin with, I felt like that.” I don’t fit into what I think the theatre world is. “We all go through moments of self-doubt and going, ‘I’m the mistake.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’m not right for this. How was that? After a slight sigh, she talks instead about the fun of acting as a child: “There’s something so pure about being able to mess about, where there are no expectations.” She then remembers Rada as “great but quite intimidating”. I was crap at science.” She went off to Rada. He’d just throw at me, ‘You should be a doctor.’ Utterly ludicrous. Were they keen on her having an acting career? “My dad wasn’t. Varma, who is 45, was raised in an arty home by her Swiss mother (a graphic designer) and Indian father (an illustrator). She might find a way back in, she insists – “a cat flap into that world”.įrom dragons to dressing gowns … Andrew Scott and Varma rehearse Present Laughter. I picture Varma shutting out Marcel Marceau in a sad little mime. I feel sad because I’ve kind of let it go.” Her career took her through different doors, she says. It blew my mind.” What else excited her? “People laugh but I love mime. I saw Lettice and Lovage with Maggie Smith. “But I used to queue up for the Theatre Royal because they did £1 standing room tickets. I presume she saw his plays growing up in well-heeled Bath? Apparently not. This is Varma’s second Coward – she did The Vortex at the Donmar in 2002. The thing about Liz that I love is she walked away from the marriage. He is pulled in every direction by flattery and adulation. “Liz is the one person who is direct with Garry, so he values that relationship. This involves navigating his dalliances with debutantes and, in a fresh gender-switch, with predatory male actor Joe (Joanna in Coward’s original).Ĭoolheaded, elegant, shrewd: there’s a hint of Liz to Varma, who illustrates points with gestures placed as carefully as her words are chosen. Varma is Liz, who never got round to divorcing Garry and manages his career with utmost pragmatism. ![]() In Matthew Warchus’s production of Coward’s 1939 comedy, Andrew Scott dons theatre’s most famous dressing gown to play the tousled matinee idol Garry Essendine. Usually writhing … with Pedro Pascal as Oberyn in Game of Thrones. ![]()
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