It all began with a copy of that grandfather of self-help books, Dale
Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, picked off the
bookshelves of a Chelsea family’s home in the Seventies by their Mancunian
nanny. Much parodied, a victim of changing times and its own success, the
title was already close to 40 years old by then. Nonetheless, it altered the
course of that young woman’s life, in time leading to her being
invited to help run London workshops promoting its teachings. Along to one
of them came (late, apologetic) a handsome American, “this gorgeous man who
looked a bit like Tom Selleck in his prime, causing Mum to fall completely
in love”. The couple soon married but would divorce after ten years
together, and it is their only child who speaks. She herself never got
beyond Carnegie’s first few pages. She didn’t need to.
Actress Hayley Atwell absorbed his words as if by osmosis during an
unconventional childhood. And though she says of the book, “It’s not
something I’d ever use as a reference point in my own life,” she finds
herself anything but short of friends or influence just three years out of
drama school. Already she has worked in theatre, TV and on film for
directors Nicholas Hytner, Andrew Davies and Woody Allen. Currently she’s to
be seen in cinemas opposite Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes in Saul Dibb’s
sumptuous The Duchess, about scandalous 18th-century society figure
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. But it’s her performance in Julian
Jarrold’s screen version of Brideshead Revisited, arriving
shortly and based on the Evelyn Waugh novel, that best explains why she’s
now being talked of as our Next Big Export to the US.
The film has already opened there and all manner of superlatives have been
used to describe her performance as brittle, buttoned-up Julia Flyte, sister
of dissolute Sebastian (Ben Whishaw at his luminous best) and the romantic
draw for incomer Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), in love as he is with them
both, what they represent and especially the titular great house in which
their family has always lived. Viewers who take as their only yardstick the
nearly 14 hours of 1981’s TV serialisation will inevitably find fault with
the 135-minute film, in particular for the liberties that relative brevity
forces it to take with character and plot development. Yet there is a very
great deal to enjoy, not least a superlative turn by Emma Thompson as the
all-controlling matriach Lady Marchmain. That Atwell shines in such starry
company is remarkable in itself.
Now 26, she finds herself as a result with an American agent, Hilda Crealey,
who represents but a handful of young British talent and who is best known
for guiding the careers of A-listers such as Cate Blanchett. “Whenever we’ve
been out together, I feel like I should be representing her,” says Atwell.
“She’s Superwoman, stunning, immaculate, a wife and mother and
yet pretty much rules Hollywood. The English part of me finds it daunting,
the way it’s so no-holds-barred over there and ambition is seen as a
requisite, not vulgar. She said to me, ‘The only limits are those in your
head, the self-imposed ones.’ I came back from the publicity trip for Brideshead
thinking, ‘OK, any opportunities that come my way I shall take by the horns.
I will not be intimidated.’ That was definitely the American part of me
talking.”
Atwell’s parents parted when she was two, her father returning to live in the
US, first with his family in Kansas City, latterly outside San Francisco.
She was raised in a single-parent household in Ladbroke Grove, West London,
by her mother Alison, who these days makes her living both by importing
motivational speakers for corporate clients and by helping to house and
settle the families of US businessmen relocating to London. When I remark
that she must be highly organised and capable to manage such a joint
enterprise, Atwell gives a low whistle of admiration. “I know. She totally
comes across like that and has always striven to do things on her own.”
She describes their life together during her early childhood as having been “a
little like a love affair. We were very, very close, me being this mini
version of her.” Home was near to edgy All Saints Road and money was tight.
Atwell says that, as a result, she herself retains a poverty mentality:
“Even though I’m doing well and know what my next job is, I worry about the
bills. Which is good. I have a survival instinct. I work harder than I might
otherwise and appreciate things more.” But her mother always made life seem
like an adventure. “Every Saturday there’d be an outing somewhere. And for
example, once when I was 11 and rang in the lunch break to say I was being
bullied, she called the school claiming she’d forgotten I had a dental
appointment, arrived by car bearing ice-cream and whisked me off to the
cinema. She believed in things being fun.”
The sensibility that had so readily embraced Dale Carnegie remained intact,
too. Each Thursday evening Alison Atwell would invite friends and
acquaintances round to sit and network, sharing food each had brought,
listening to philosophical tapes and holding group discussions. “I’d be in
the corner with my Game Boy, taking it all in… Descartes, Huxley, whoever
else. Because I spent so much more time with adults than other children and
was exposed to so many such conversations, it got to the point where I was
like a little adult myself, complete with a preternaturally mature
vocabulary that I didn’t really understand. So when I got picked on in
class, my response would be to say, quite seriously, ‘I’m sensing some
hostility. Do you want to talk about it?’, for which I would get a smack in
the mouth. I was 11 years old, for goodness sake.”
If that all sounds a bit Ab Fab, wait until you meet Atwell’s father,
Grant, “or Star Touches Earth, his other name – he’s part Native American”.
She describes him as being highly emotionally sensitive, crying at least
once a day, usually for other people. “Which can be slightly indulgent at
times. He’ll ‘feel’ something for hours and maybe write a poem about it.
Then he’ll go into the redwood forest, choose a tree and make a sacred
circle, appeal to the god of his understanding, light some tobacco, lay out
his crystals, maybe take off his clothes and talk to his dead ancestors…”
And is she able to take him seriously in this? Atwell’s eyes twinkle as she
leavens London cynicism with filial loyalty. “It can be very funny, even
ridiculous and at times totally inappropriate, but it’s just his way and is
always totally sincere.”
The girlhood self she describes is a misfit, a loner, shy and without any clue
as to how to stand up for herself. “I remember saying to Mum, ‘I wish I
didn’t know what I know,’ because it made it so hard for me to relate to
people my own age. I spent a lot of time on my own, dressing up my cats,
pulling funny faces in the mirror, entertaining myself.” And having switched
to vegetarianism aged eight, she then became a junior activist, “going on
anti-vivisection and Boycott Beef marches, Free the Dolphins!, anything.
Unable to connect with my peers, I think I projected my own feelings on to
animals.” But then came the intervention of a triumvirate of women teachers
at her Catholic girls secondary, Sion-Manning. “They felt if only given
confidence in myself I could fly, and they were right.”
By the time she went to the London Oratory for A levels, Atwell had finally
found friends and a social identity. Her beauty had started to be
appreciated, too. “It hadn’t counted for anything until then. It was all
about how savvy, streetwise and urban you could be. That was the only
currency. But suddenly boys started to pay me attention and I found myself
thinking, ‘This is nice…’” In fact, she says she liked the Oratory more for
the boys than for its teaching, and though flattered to receive an offer to
read philosophy and theology at Oxford, sabotaged her chances of taking it
up by underperforming in her exams. “Someone else deserved the place more.
When I didn’t get the grades, I was so relieved.”
After not one but two gap years, Atwell entered the Guildhall School of Music
& Drama instead, and has not looked back since. Now, thanks to The
Duchess and Brideshead, awareness of her is reaching critical
mass and will shortly tip over into actual fame. Does she have any idea how
her life may change as a result? “I don’t think you can ever really prepare
for it. I have no idea how I’ll deal with it, should it happen. What’s lucky
is that I have a very strong circle around me, friends who delight in taking
the p*** and telling me how rubbish I am. I don’t think it would be allowed
to go to my head.”
Atwell declares herself hugely impressed with the way Knightley deals with the
level of scrutiny she finds herself under, “which is quite unbelievable,
more so than anyone else I’ve ever met. Yet she manages somehow to rise
above it while at the same time retaining her sensitivity.” And as for her Duchess
co-star’s looks… “I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off her
when we were filming. Six in the morning and she’d be sitting reading the
paper while having her hair done, yet still I was transfixed. I love her
beauty. And if I’m honest, the experience of working with her was
interesting too, because it was the first time that I’d been cast as the
less attractive sidekick. Yet I didn’t once feel in competition or envious
or resentful. I just thought, ‘You really are a stunningly beautiful
person.’”
