Chancellor. Once upon a time a little girl lived in a far away place – well, Lincolnshire, actually, but let’s not spoil the story – and life was normal, if a bit dull. Then she was given piano lessons and went to singing, recitation and dance classes and was mesmerised by it all. The point of no return came when she was taken to London to see Where the Rainbow Ends with Anton Dolin as St. George. There was pageantry and romance and excitement and the little girl was hooked, her ambition firmly set on the stage. The rest, as they say, is history and the little girl, now Patricia Hodge, is one of our most accomplished actors.
But before she realised that ambition there was just one small deviation when she came here to train to be a teacher. This is a transcript of her award. I won’t tell you the year – you wouldn’t believe it anyway – just that she got a merit in drama and a distinction in the practice of education. She must have been a wonderful teacher during her year’s teaching in Chorley Wood but the acting bug could not be denied so she joined the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art where she graduated with the Eveline Evans Award for best actress.
Her first break came at the Travers Theatre and she then rose fairly quickly to play the leads in the West End, often in musicals. With characteristic modesty she claims that this was only because she was young and could sing. Changing tack from musicals was a bit hard but television beckoned in the form of the Naked Civil Servant. Since then she’s been in constant demand in television, film and the theatre, winning an Olivier award last year for Money at the Royal National Theatre.
She’s quite sure that luck plays a part in anyone’s career. One bit of hers came in the form of a part in a Bush Theatre production in which Harold Evans, the editor of the Times had a personal interest because of his relationship with the play’s author, Tina Brown. So everyone came to see the production, including John Mortimore of Rumpole of the Bailey fame and that led to the long-standing part of Phillida, the person Rumpole called the Portia of the chambers.
One of my favourite productions of hers was a television series, Fay Weldon’s the Life and Loves of a She Devil where she played Mary Fisher, a woman who lost everything – money, a career, relationships – just because she stole Denis Waterman (Bobbo) from Ruth, his wife. It was a vicious portrayal of revenge and Patricia Hodge was superb, playing it absolutely straight – I can still remember the faintly bemused expression she wore as her life disintegrated about her.
Incidentally it coincided with Dennis Potter’s Singing Detective. Life and Loves was on BBC2 while the Singing Detective was on BBC1. Having read for the Singing Detective, she admits that Life and Loves seemed like a consolation prize until, that is, it won the BAFTA award, beating the Singing Detective into second place.
Her most recent appearance has been in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off in which she toured with the National Theatre. It’s a farce in which the characters are actors, rehearsing and performing Nothing On, another farce involving sardines. She played Dotty Otley in Noises Off and, simultaneously, Mrs Clackett, a housekeeper of character, in Nothing On. She revelled in the wacky humour – it was, she says, a wonderful relief from all those upper class English women – and she’s proud of the fact that people didn’t realise she was in it.
So what has she distilled about acting, drama and the theatre from her experience? Amongst the things she values is the classical theatre – she believes that you need the theatre to learn how to get better. Television makes you famous but it’s only the theatre that gives you the grounding, the self-improvement. Her pet hate – acting by numbers. She can remember quite clearly the total despair she felt sitting ‘round a table at Chester rep, preparing for Pinter’s The Birthday Party and reading from the script with a director who insisted that every time it said ‘pause’ you had to count to three and every ‘beat’ meant counting one, missing the whole point of Pinter.
There are, of course, many different kinds of actors. There’s John Barrymore who said – ‘One of my chief regrets during my years in the theatre is that I couldn’t sit in the audience and watch me’. And then there’s Sir Ralph Richardson. ‘Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing’. Patricia Hodge belongs in the middle. She is aware of the limitations of what she does for a living and knows it is only part of life. But she also believes in the craft of acting, understands its fascination and is one of its most distinguished exponents.
Chancellor, I have great pleasure in presenting to you Patricia Ann Hodge for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.
DLitt - July 2001
