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Annette Crosbie - Actor
Annette is a popular stage, television and screen actor. She was awarded an OBE in 1998. Annette was born in Gorebridge, Midlothian and was a Brownie."The Scots are territorial animals and wherever we "belong" is the best place in the world."
My favourite dog walk in Scotland doesn't exist any more. When I was growing up in Gilmerton,
it was still a small mining village outside Edinburgh and our house was one of a small development
by a local builder, which was surrounded by farm land.
A burn ran through some woods from the Gilmerton Road across to the Dalkeith Road and there
was a track that ran from the bottom of our road, between the fields and the woods where my
Dad used to take our Staffie and me for a walk when he came back from work.
Those woods were our playground - all the children from
the street - and I regret that, for so many children now, that it is not a natural part of their
childhood. Gilmerton is now a suburb and the fields are long gone with the woods.
The best thing about the Scots is that they're my "ain folk". We are territorial animals and wherever we "belong" is the best place in the world. We would do well to remember that this is a sentimental response and not shared by people born and raised elsewhere!
I think I enjoyed making the television series 'Henry VIII and His Six Wives' the most. It
was a very ambitious project in those days (1969), and everything about it was exciting.
The director was someone I had worked with before, when he had just given up being a cameraman
and was doing the lowly job of assistant floor manager on his way to becoming a director, and
it was great to find out how good he was - again because he gave you such confidence in what
you were doing.
I learned a valuable lesson during that job. It called for Catherine of Aragon to break down
completely when Henry tells her that he is going to divorce her. The author, Rosemary Sissons,
had written stage directions that said that Catherine stood and sobbed from her roots.
As we were playing the scene in Catherine's bedroom I thought that she would have thrown herself
onto it but, thankfully, I tried to do it the way Rosemary had suggested.
The effect was extraordinary
- just standing there sobbing your heart out - and when the whole thing was done and shown,
I congratulated Rosemary on her instinct. The she told me that actually the conversation was
witnessed by courtiers and Catherine's reaction had been recorded in letters of that time.
Drama is much easier to do than comedy. You can experiment with drama while you are doing it. You can change your timing, your inflection, and all sorts of things.
Comedy is a craft that is polished and honed with one aim - to get a laugh. A good writer will have phrased a line perfectly but if you don't get the timing right, you won't get a laugh. It's a fascinating business and Ronnie Corbett is a master at it. It demands a discipline and concentration that drama doesn't. I loved One Foot in the Grave, and the writing was wonderful and it was the most "testing" thing I have ever done. I miss it.
Every part you play is a challenge I think. It's either a classic or a gift in a new writer's treasured play when you hope you can fill the expectations, or it's the sow's ear that you try to turn into a silk purse. You tend to get more of these in television than in theatre.
Working with a cast of mainly women in Calendar Girls was great in one way and not so great
in another. Women talk far more than men while they are working.
There are long stretches of waiting time in films, waiting for the set to be re-lit, waiting
for the camera to be replaced, a fresh film loaded into the camera, just waiting for the word
"action" and women seem impelled to fill the silence.
There is far more chatter on set than when the men are there!
I expect it goes back to the days when we were all living in the same cave and had to get on
with everyone else there, while the men were all sitting behind a boulder waiting for lunch
to come along, and keeping as quiet as possible.
I have a huge admiration for women like Gwyneth Dunwoody MP. How any woman can find the determination and tenacity to function, let alone make any kind of mark, in that establishment, should be a lesson and inspiration to all young women.
The woman who had the most impact on my life, apart from my mother, was my piano teacher Miss Pentland. She was a really gifted teacher who made you feel good about yourself, not just as a pianist but as a person. In my teens, when I needed someone to talk to, she would listen patiently and sympathetically for almost the whole lesson.
My parents wanted me to make music my career but Chrissie Pentland knew how much I longed to be an actor and was responsible for finding out how I could do it, and how we could apply to get the money to make it possible.
One of the things that makes me angry and had kept me occupied for the least ten
years or so is the treatment of racing greyhounds by a gambling industry that makes millions
of pounds from their efforts, and feels no responsibility for their welfare.
Not only when they are discarded, but during their racing careers. 10,000 dogs every year become
surplus to requirements and hostages to fortune. Most of them will be killed.
The Animal Welfare Bill, which is being drawn up now, proposes to do nothing about this. Even argueing that self-regulating, which is how the industry currently operates, is the best option.
This could be because independent inspections of kennels would certainly close some of them,
and local authority licensing would demand higher standards all round, but we probably need
to look no further than the fact that the government takes fifteen percent of the profits, and
this year that came to about £20 million; the bookmakers having made a net profit of £92
million on greyhounds.
The hound is the oldest breed of dog, and I've lived with six now. They are the easiest, most docile, laid back dogs you could imagine. They turn into house dogs in no time and there is nothing to beat watching a dog that has been treated as a machine, blossom into a dog that knows it is safe in a pack it belongs to.
There are all kinds of information now about them on the internet such as Grey Hound Rescue. Most re-homing kennels have a website.
To find out more about greyhounds please see www.greyhoundrescue.co.uk
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