JUDI: I’d never have thought of being an actress if it wasn’t for Jeff. He only ever wanted to be an actor, and after I was taken to see him in Shakespeare at his boys’ school, acting was all I wanted to do. I was bewitched when I saw him playing Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. Then he played Cassius, and he’d come home from school and say his lines. I can recite those lines to this day.
For me, acting was like catching measles. I caught it off Jeff. That’s why I hate it when somebody says to him: “Are you anything to do with Judi?” Because acting was his idea in the first place, so I think that kind of comment is very unkind. I’ve never seen any resentment in Jeff. And that tells you the kind of person he is — he’s hugely good fun, and someone who hides his feelings a lot. But he’s a very present help in trouble.
Jeff and I grew up in York. We had a very Swallows and Amazons childhood. We rode bikes and roller-skated, and I was always dressing up. We’d play in other people’s gardens and rig up phones with soup tins. And Mummy would play the piano and we would sing. We didn’t have a TV until the coronation; now I think how lucky we were. Daddy had studied to be a doctor, and Mummy was Irish and quite fiery. When Daddy bought her an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, and the man came to see if it was working, she stood at the top of the stairs and threw the pieces at him, saying: “I’ll tell you what I think of your Electrolux! Give me back my Hoover!” I think Jeff was more like Mummy. I was more like Daddy.
The boys went to St Peter’s School and I went to The Mount, a Quaker boarding school. Our parents were madly keen on the theatre. When I was quite young I was taken to see Ben Travers’s Cuckoo in the Nest, and I laughed so much I made myself ill. My first real taste of acting, and my first experience of being part of a company, was when we all became involved in the York Mystery Plays. The first couple of years we children played angels and citizens; Mummy was the wardrobe mistress. And then Daddy was Joseph the year I played Mary. We had huge fun.
I love acting, the whole business of being with lots of people. I couldn’t do a one-woman show because I wouldn’t know how to get ready on my own. It’s like being part of a family: you have such a wonderful time because you have such wonderful jokes. After Jeff left drama school he went into the army, and when they saw him acting he was put into a company of actors. So he didn’t do any square-bashing at all!
In the early 1970s, Jeff and I were both in the Royal Shakespeare Company. By that time I’d met Michael [Williams], who was also in the RSC, but there was nothing more to it than that. Then, just before I went on tour with the RSC, he came up to Stratford to recuperate after an injured knee. A small explosion erupted between us! But then Jeff and I went off on tour to Japan and Australia. Back in England, Michael decided he had to come out to Australia. And for me that was it! He’d said he was coming for a week, and at the end of that week he said goodbye. But when we arrived back from the theatre, Mikey was still sitting there in the hotel. He did that every week for six weeks. Then he came home with me. When Trevor [Nunn] saw Mike and me together he cast us in London Assurance, with Jeff too. That play was such a happy time. Mike and I got married, then I got larger and larger, with Finty. Over the years I’ve done some terrific plays. I was very, very lucky.
But in 1999 I was in New York doing David Hare’s play Amy’s View when Michael became very ill. It was cancer.
I had to go home, of course. Finty and I brought Mikey back to our house in Surrey so we could look after him. The build-up to his death was ghastly. We watched him getting weaker and weaker.
Yet now I think that time was also rather extraordinary. We could say everything we wanted to each other. Michael was Catholic and shortly before he died he was made a papal knight.
I thought it would be wonderful to invite all his friends and family to be with him, and Finty had a brilliant idea that made it possible. She reversed the baby alarm so everyone downstairs could hear Michael being made a knight upstairs.
The following day, January 11, 2001, he died. I’m sure he hung on for that day. A year later to the day, Jeff’s wife, Betty, died. He had come home to find the door locked. She was dead in bed after a heart attack. The shock of it. Golly! At least we had time to say goodbye to Michael. Poor Jeff wandered around afterwards, totally bewildered.
Today I’m delighted because Jeff has remarried, to someone who knows him very well. And I have lots of really good friends. And then there’s work. That’s been essential. Since Michael died, more of me goes into work. And acting is my social life as well. Just over a year ago, Greg [Doran, associate director of the RSC] said to me he wanted to do a musical of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Greg came to my house and we sang the songs. “What larks!” we said. “What larks!” Then Jeff rang me and said: “They’ve asked me to play Shallow in Merry Wives.” Well! To work with my brother — how lovely and lucky.
JEFFERY: Putting my nose out of joint. That’s how I first remember Judi. First as a little girl — and she’s been doing it ever since. I might try doing something, like going into the theatre, and then she comes along and goes not one, not two, but three better! As a little girl she was sweet, but for a boy of seven like me, she was “Yuk!” Our mother had a great sense of fun — and a temper — which Judi and I have both inherited. I was at drama school by the time Judi played Mary and our father played Joseph. Even then she had that very special spark. I then went into rep, which was fantastically hard work. Meanwhile, Zeffirelli directed Judi as Juliet. She was staggeringly good. She went on to do all the Shakespeares.
In 1971, when I played Ratty in Toad of Toad Hall, Michael Williams was Toad and Judi a very pregnant rabbit, and there was a spark between them. Then Judi and I went out to Australia with the RSC, playing Twelfth Night. I was Aguecheek and she was Viola. We were very naughty, trying to make each other laugh on stage.
But then something terrible happened. There was this chap in the company who was playing some leading roles, who I think was madly in love with Judi. She was fond of him, but not in that way. Then he committed suicide just before we opened. We were all terribly upset. Mike Williams flew out. I liked him. He was good for Judi. He was a northerner and quite religious. He would cross himself when he walked past Roman Catholic churches. There’d been something between him and Judi before, but now there was far more. When we came back to England, we were all in London Assurance, and Judi and Michael got married during the run.
When Michael became very ill, Judi kept it all very much to herself. I don’t think anyone apart from Finty knew what she was going through. Michael died in 2001, which was terrible, and very bad for Finty. Judi had to go on working, and it was fortunate for her to have that. But then Judi has never not worked. She not only enjoys working, she needs to work.
A year after Michael died, to the day, I found my wife dead in bed. I’d come home from a job to find the door was locked. It was terrifying. But I was glad she didn’t suffer any pain.
Now I’ve remarried and I’m very happy. And Judi lives with Finty and Sammy, Finty’s son, in this lovely big house in Surrey. Judi is much loved and she still has that special sparkle. But she’s somebody you wouldn’t cross. There’s that much of my mother in her. I mustn’t err beyond the erring limit.
She is still a workaholic, and I wish she’d give herself a little more time between jobs. Our father would have said: “Come on, Judi. Slow down a bit.” She’s never listened to most people, but she’d have listened to him
Interviews: Ann McFerran.
Portrait: Sebastian Meyer
