Frank, funny and not in the least bit “fancy-schmancy”, actress Miriam Margolyes talks falling in love and what it was like to lose her mother to a stroke
“My mother had a stroke in 1968 and it was one of the most terrible experiences of my life,” remembers Miriam Margolyes baldly. “It took away her speech and her mind, and I understand why it’s called a stroke, because in one second, all our lives were devastated.
“The person we most loved in the world, the centre and engine of our family, was destroyed.”
For seven and a half years after that, the actress – along with her father – took care of her mother without external support. “We got on with it, but it was, without question, the worst time of my life,” she admits.
Nowadays, however, so much more can be done for patients and their families, and Margolyes, 74, is hoping to raise awareness of that fact with the Stroke Association.
“Early treatment is absolutely vital. If people can understand that, the quicker they can get to hospital, the better the outcome; paralysis can often be reversed and speech can come back,” she says, adding how great it is to also have the support of an organisation like SA “because the isolation of those who are paralysed and cannot speak is awful”.
Does she worry about experiencing a stroke herself, given that her mother died when she was younger than Margolyes is now?
“I don’t worry hugely because I’m doing what I can not to have one. But I’m very much the sort of character that does have a stroke, because I’m hyperactive and overweight and anxious, and over-achieving – I try to do too much in the day.
“I have a terrible temper and I do try to manage that. Everything sets me off – generally people not doing what I want!” she adds, laughing.
In the past the Blackadder and Romeo + Juliet actress has said that revealing her sexuality might have triggered her mother’s stroke. “I’ve forgiven myself,” she says, but adds: “There is no way I can know one way or the other.”
Born in Oxford, Margolyes now retains dual British and Australian citizenship and has been with her Australian partner for 48 years.
“I’ve been very lucky to have found, reasonably early in life, someone that I knew I wanted to be with for the rest of my life,” she confides. “The amazing thing is, she thought the same.”
For Margolyes it was even love at first sight: “I looked at her and thought ’Yes, that’s the one’,” but it was a slower realisation on the other end…
“She is a much less impulsive kind of person than me, she is a very different kind of person, she is a scholar, and the world she lives is universities and libraries and books,” says Margolyes.
“I think she would have been amazed absolutely to think it would have panned out the way it did.”
Everything worked out though. “It’s a huge happiness. She is the most important thing in my life and I’m incredibly grateful that it happened. I haven’t had children, and I haven’t made a huge amount of money and I’m still fat and plain, but somebody wonderful loves me and nothing else really matters after that, does it?”
In fact, Margolyes never wanted children (“Definitely not. I’m not at all maternal“), and had a hysterectomy due to fibroids aged 34 and “didn’t mind a bit”.
She rarely minds a bit when it comes to saying what she thinks either, regardless of the reaction she might earn. She is notoriously outspoken: “If someone asks me for my opinion, I will give it – and I might give it before they ask!”
Born into a secular Jewish family, she is well known for speaking out about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, loudly stating her belief that Israelis have wrongly treated Palestinians in the name of Jews.
“I most passionately believe in what I say about Israel and I know that what I say has made me very unpopular in the Jewish community, and of course I feel very sad about that, but I’m afraid I believe that I am right and they are wrong,” she says passionately.
Margolyes has visited the West Bank to see the effects of the conflict first-hand, but says her remarks on the situation have been “taken in very bad spirit” by many of her fellow Jews.
“It doesn’t surprise me, but it does hurt,” she admits. “A cousin of mine met someone who told her: ’Miriam Margolyes is a very dangerous woman’. I don’t know how they came to that conclusion! I’m actually a slightly crippled, little old fat lady trying to make my fellow Jews understand that the way forward for Israel is not to be lousy to the Arabs and to kill them, and to hurt the Palestinians, but to come to some kind of agreement.
“That is what grown-ups do, so it makes me incredibly sad because I don’t want to be ashamed of my people; I am with my people and I’m part of that community. But they don’t want me at the moment, they want me out.”
Despite garnering an OBE for services to drama, travelling the world with her one-woman show, Dickens’ Women, and appearing on broadway in the musical Wicked, Margolyes is frank about her success – or lack of it.
“Professionally speaking, I think I’m a little bit disappointed in the stage that I am at at the moment,” she says, noting how much she’d have enjoyed being the star of a TV series or doing stints at National and the RSC (“That’s my love, theatre“).
But then, she’s rather pleased with her film career, having played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film franchise and winning a BAFTA for 1993’s The Age Of Innocence.
“I think I’ve done reasonably well,” she says wryly – and the public does have such affection for her.
“It’s most extraordinary,” she says, faintly gobsmacked. “In the street people rush up to me and say, ’Oh, I just love you’, and when I’m at an airport complete strangers will be adorable.
“I honestly think it’s because I tell it like it is,” she muses. “I don’t try to be posh or fancy-schmancy or give myself airs as a celebrity. I’m not interested in that. I just try to do good work, and if I can do good work, I will, and that makes me happy.”
And there’s nothing she’d rather do than act and entertain. “I’ve asked someone what it’s like when you take heroin and they told me it’s the most marvellous thing in the world, and well, for me it’s actually performing on the stage and feeling that you are reaching people – that’s my fix.”
So no, she won’t be retiring anytime soon. “I believe we have a responsibility to feed the soul and imagination of the nation,” she says determinedly, “and that’s what I want to keep on doing.”
:: Miriam Margolyes is supporting the Act FAST campaign from Public Health England and The Stroke Association to help raise awareness of the symptoms of stroke. For more information, visit nhs.uk/actfast.