TRUDIE Goodwin is in reflective mood as she talks about her thirteen year stint in ITV drama series, The Bill. Her overview reveals the demands, the constraints and the plusses which a stint on a serial can bring.
But to begin, the actress focuses on the positive. As well as showcasing her acting talent, her role as serious cop June Ackland put Goodwin back on the radar of theatre producers.
Now she’s set to star in All My Sons, the Arthur Miller classic. Set just after the Second World War, the story sees Joe and Kate Keller try to keep alive the memory of their son Larry, who disappeared in battle.
But Larry’s disappearance is not the only part of the family’s past that they can’t put behind them.
“It’s quite an emotional role,” says the London-born actress, who stars alongside Paul Shelley and Robbie Jack. “There’s an awful lot going on beneath the surface. In fact, every character in the play has a huge emotional journey to make. And I’m beginning to realise each of us has a mountain to climb every night.”
All My Sons was written in the late 1940s. “It was at a time when people really wanted a story to distract them and that’s why it was so successful on Broadway. But it’s also a rattling good tale, with a big surprise at the end. And of course, it’s still relevant today. People still have to deal with a sense of loss, and there are other themes being played out here such as conscience and greed.”
Goodwin knows about loss, having nursed her mum, Joan, who died from motor neurone disease.
“I was just talking about my mother as I came out of rehearsals,” she says, her eyes flickering.”
Goodwin, who worked a range of odd jobs while trying to land an acting break (“cleaning toilets in a grotty pub was probably the worst”) strikes as being an actor who appreciates every positive life has given her.
Although she became a famous face on TV thanks to the Bill (and more recently Emmerdale) Goodwin thought there was more chance of the Kray Twins being rehabilitated back into society than of landing the role of a TV cop.
“I went in for the audition thinking it was such as waste of time,” she recalls, grinning. “I was still breast feeding my first daughter at the time and I reckoned I’d driven all the way across London for nothing.
“You see, I didn’t think I was right for the part of a copper at all. I’d previously played lots of gangsters wives and I actually told the producers this. Afterwards, I called my husband and told him it had been a complete waste of time.”
But the producers liked what they saw.
“I’m sure I was helped because I didn’t expect to get it. I guess I was relaxed.” Goodwin adds, grinning; “But June wasn’t me at all. She had a bit of a humour bypass whereas I can certainly have a laugh. She was a bit lonely and didn’t have a family. Or at least I didn’t know she had a family until fifteen years in when the writers decided to give me a son I’d had adopted.”
Was that tricky?
“Oh yes,” she says laughing. “If you look too closely at TV scripts you can open a can of worms. Suddenly things don’t make any sense, but part of the reason for this is things have to be filmed so quickly.”
Goodwin knew she wanted to act since the age of seven when she saw Shakespeare being performed, too young to understand all the words, but spellbound by magic of the performance.
At high school, she declared her intent to go to drama school (the first pupil ever in her school) and teachers’ chins dropped to the height of the janny’s bucket.
But she stuck to her dream and it paid off. However, as an actor you want to play different characters? Was taking the role on the Bill a compromise?
“Yes, you take the Devil’s Shilling in a way. You have to accept early on that you may become typecast, and try to go in with your eyes open.
“But on the other hand . . . who knows if I’d still be acting if TV hadn’t come along because trying to stay alive on theatre jobs is next to impossible. You can’t do it with a family and a mortgage. I don’t know any actor, whoever well known, who could survive.
“What you end up doing is subsidizing theatre companies. And that’s why you really need to do television, if you get the chance.”
The actress, who has travelled the world with charity work, is delighted to be back in theatre.
“Doing a play like this reminds you why you became an actor in the first place,” she maintains, in serious voice. “And as I get older I always think every job will be my last, especially because the powers that be so often don’t really want to know older women.”
Her face lights up, in a way June Ackland rarely revealed.
“I’m working, in Glasgow, and in a great play. And I’m planning to make the most of every moment. It couldn’t be better.”
• All My Sons, the Theatre Royal, September 1-5.
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