Sylvia Syms is a household name and practically a national treasure, but I
didn’t immediately recognise her as the bad tempered old trout Lilian in her
latest film Is Anybody There? And I hadn’t realised at the time that
it was she who played the late Queen Mother in Stephen Frears’s 2006 film The
Queen. “Oh, don’t worry,” she says with a wave of her hand, “It happens
all the time: some actors always look the same, I am the other kind; people
don’t know who I am from one part to the next.”
This talent for vanishing inside the skin of a role is what has earned Syms
her reputation as a character actor. “Perhaps I’d have been more successful
if I’d been instantly recognisable as me,” she says, then adds with a peal
of laughter: “I’m a failure because I look different every time.”
She is 75 now and has been consistently in work since emerging from RADA in
1953, aged 19, a career that can hardly be classed as failure, surely? “No.
Well, I do remember meeting Sybil Thorndike decades ago and thinking I’d
like to be still acting when I’m old, like her. So I’ve done that.” She
shrugs. “But I’m unemployed now, seriously unemployed. I did that film last
year, and an ITV thing called Collision, about a multiple car crash, which
is coming on soon, a new Miss Marple and Blue Murder. I think
I die rather tragically in that. I do seem to die a lot these days: do you
think they’re trying to tell me something?” More immoderate laughter.
Syms and I are talking in her invitingly sociable sitting room in West London:
spring sunshine is streaming in through tall windows, there are squishy
sofas, Jo Malone candles burning, a pot of good strong coffee with chocolate
biscuits and lots of art on the walls, including a portrait of Syms as a
young woman. A fair English belle looking out with a steady gaze, she was
much in demand then, starring with Anna Neagle in My Teenage Daughter,
playing an army nurse in the classic Ice Cold in Alex and the
anguished wife of a gay barrister played by Dirk Bogarde in Victim,
the 1961 film that was way ahead of its time in tackling the taboo of
homosexuality.
Syms approved. “I’d always been involved in politics,” she says, “And I was
appalled by the ridiculous attitude to gay people. Of course I’d met a few
by then.”
She had signed a contract with Associated British Films for a weekly fee of
£30, a decision she has always fiercely regretted. “I discovered they were
hiring me out for £1,000 a week — with no royalties. Ice Cold
in Alex was recently reissued, yet again, but I never made a penny from
it. When all those old films were collected and released under the title Great
British Greats, Dirk Bogarde sent me a postcard: “Isn’t it great to be
great? Wouldn’t it be great if they gave us a penny for each showing?”
Early on, the Hollywood offers were flowing in but she turned them down — “The
thought of having to be beautiful all the time frightened me” — and chose
marriage instead to her young sweetheart, Alan Edney. “What I wanted most of
all was a family and security.” She sighs. “But it was quite a trying time:
I was not very good at having babies.” She’d had a miscarriage and a
stillbirth and was pregnant again when she was offered Victim. “I
said I couldn’t do it, but they offered to shoot all my scenes together. As
soon as I’d finished I went to hospital and had the baby, Jessica, but she
only lived for two days. Dirk sent flowers and letters every day. I adored
working with him. I loved him really, in a strange kind of way.”
While she was still recuperating in hospital her obstetrician brought a
dark-haired baby to her bedside: “He was supposed to be adopted by a Jewish
couple but they kindly said I could have him. He was so beautiful — my
husband came in and the baby grasped his finger: two tears rolled down his
cheeks and he said, ‘Hello, son’. The baby was named Ben and two years later
they had a daughter, Beattie, an actress now, like her mother. Syms was
married to Alan Edney for more than 30 years. What did he do? “Not a lot,”
she says with a short laugh. “He was brilliant academically but he never
made much of himself. I went on tour all the time because we needed the
money. He was a good dad but it must have been hard being married to someone
famous. He was very good at putting people down.” Did he do that to her?
“Well, yes, and it got acrimonious . . .” She looks bleak for a moment.
“Doesn’t matter now.”
Syms has been prone to depression throughout her life: “I was a miserable
little toad as a child. I cried a lot.” Why? “Why in God’s name wouldn’t
you?” she snaps. “It was wartime, we were always being sent off on trains
with labels round our necks; my sister was older than me and found me
boring, my brother went into the Marines. It was bloody awful.” Her mother
had a brain tumour and committed suicide when Syms was 12. She took refuge
in acting, encouraged by her stepmother, Dorothy. “I never wanted to do
anything else. My dad was mad about the arts and took us to lots of good
things when we were young. He was also a trade-union leader and I got my
politics from him.”
When Harold Wilson was Prime Minister she was regularly on the guest list for
parties at No 10: “One got invited not just because of being a Labour
supporter but because one was fun. I remember once being at a party for a
delegation from what was then Yugoslavia. I was wearing a very low-cut dress
and Eric Morecambe introduced me: ‘And this is Sylvia Syms, one of our
finest young actresses, who is displaying some of our more tangible assets’.
” She giggles. “There were some very good times.” But she was never part of
the movie-star set: “I was too domestic, and I never felt I was grand enough
for people like Bogarde — he was quite a snob you know. Then much later we
did a radio play together and he said: ‘Why did you never get in touch?’ ”
By the end of the Sixties the big-screen roles had dried up but she plugged on
with touring — “I used to rush home at the weekend and cook the meals for
the week ahead. My daughter said to me once: ‘We were never latchkey kids’ ”
— and with TV parts, including the serial My Good Woman with
Leslie Crowther. Her marriage ended when she discovered that her husband had
a daughter with another woman: “We stuck it for 36 years but we’d been
living separate lives under the same roof for a long time. We are still
friends.” She doesn’t mourn, she says, “except when I see an old couple
walking their dog together, then I have a pang.” There are other regrets
though: “I wish I’d kept myself more beautiful, not got fat, not got
diabetes . . .”
I thought she was brilliant as the Queen Mother. “That was a great gift,” she
says. “I went to meet Stephen Frears and made him laugh and swore rather a
lot so I didn’t think I’d get the part.” She pauses. “But of course I did
have the blue eyes, those azure blue eyes the royal women have.” She was too
tall for the role — “Helen [Mirren] is tiny and I had to act the whole time
with my knees bent” — but soon after she was appointed OBE for services to
drama. “I was very cheeky,” she confides. “I wrote on the official letter
that I didn’t think people should get awards for doing their job, and could
I have it for my charity work?” (She teaches drama as a volunteer, supports
Help the Aged and is a donor to many charities.) “Then I got a handwritten
note back from Cherie Blair.” She goes to the mantelpiece and hands me a
card with a photograph of the Blairs on the front. “Dear Sylvia (if I may),”
Mrs Blair writes, “I’ve long been an admirer of your work . . .”
She was quite poorly last year; does she still enjoy working? “Oh yes, the
camaraderie and the technical stuff, I’m very interested in that. And that
last film [Is Anybody There?] was like a family party full of
familiar faces: Michael Caine (wasn’t he marvellous?), Leslie Phillips,
Thelma Barlow . . . and some of the crew were the grandchildren of people
I’ve worked with.”
The film tells the story of a boy growing up in an old people’s home run by
his parents; he is fascinated by what happens to people when they die and
makes friends with a magician played by Caine. It is beautifully acted — not
least by Syms, who sadly crashes out halfway through with a heart attack —
but a very slender vehicle for some serious theatrical talent. “I know,” she
says, “It should have been a telly play, but I mustn’t say anything.”
These days she tends to accept anything that’s offered: “Can’t afford not to,
but there’s bound to be character parts for a bit longer.” A tiny pause.
“Please God!” she adds, with another yelp of laughter.I leave her standing
in her doorway, a woman elegantly dressed in brown chiffon, blonde hair
softly waved and swept into a chignon, bravely keeping up appearances. I
think of the George Mackay Brown poem: “Things do not always turn out as you
expect,/ though not always for the worst.”
Is Anybody There? is released on May 1
