Interviews

On January 5th 2002, Helen gave an exclusive interview to this site. This lengthly interview covers all sorts of ground, from details of Helen’s earliest performances at university, right up to her then-most recent projects and her hopes for the future.

In a quiet bar in Soho on a Saturday evening, an elderly couple are exchanging knowing looks at each other, and at Helen Grace, who is sitting a few feet away. When they forwardly ask to be put out of their misery and have her confirm that she appears on TV “on occasion,” she politely dictates a short list of her TV credits for their benefit. She gets as far as Brookside before their enthusiastic acknowledgement slightly drowns out the remainder of the list.
For Helen, the last six years have been about working hard, driven by the desire to build on the reputation she earned herself through that most controversial of roles in Brookside, at a time when it could still achieve viewing figures of up to 7 or 8 million per episode. During that year, she was modelling for Vogue, and her storyline was being discussed in The New Statesman.
For someone with the drive and ambition that she displayed at the time of her television debut, it might appear that she has had little to say about her subsequent work. But Helen is not intentionally shying away from the spotlight.
“There is less press interest when you move away from doing something like a soap,” she explains. “When you’re not on the television every single day, the media aren’t as interested, and they only become interested again when you start doing major movies or you do a series.”
Her overall approach to publicity is, in today’s climate of indulgent outpourings by celebrities relating to every good and bad aspect of their personal life, very refreshing.
“I’m very happy to do interviews based on the work I’m doing,” she says, adding that she prefers to refrain from interviews discussing her life beyond work because, she admits: “they scare me.”
Whatever the reason, Helen comes across as someone who prefers to let her work speak for itself and is not interested in doing publicity for the sake of it.
Now she has the first chance in a number of years to talk freely about her career, with the promise of not a single question relating to taste in underwear or favourite sandwich filling, nor any attempt to dig for a non-existent scoop about drug addictions and eating disorders. Neither will her answers be converted into a bizarre Sloane Ranger dialect where she is quoted describing things as “A tad difficult.”. (a favourite of tabloid newspapers during her Brookside years, ever-inventive in their ways of presenting her).
Looking back on those years, she appears largely content:
“The periods where I haven’t been working have been difficult and painful,” she admits. “Everyone tells that whoever you are and whatever you do there will be periods when you don’t work, and then they come along - and they hurt. But overall I think I’ve had a really good time.”
Arguably one of her finest post-Brookside achievements was the role she landed soon after leaving. She played Chrissie, the wife of a cab-driver, in the BBC1 sitcom “Roger Roger”, written by Only Fools And Horses creator John Sullivan. It was warmly received by critics, who praised Sullivan’s writing, and its strong cast. The first series in January 1998 gained enough viewers to warrant a second. That series was better still, but it was not shown until nearly two years after the first. A further two years on, John Sullivan has been busy with other projects, and speculation about a third series has been just that.
Another series is, Helen says, still possible. “It’s still out there. I very much hope we do one because I really enjoyed it. Great people were working on it and it’s a lot of fun to do. I still think that is a project that could take off.
A lot of sitcoms don’t work until they get their 3rd series. I liked (John Sullivan’s) writing for it and I hope it will become as popular as I think it deserves to be.”
No matter how deserving a programme may be, quality alone cannot guarantee its success. Helen notes the lack of continuity in the two series’, having been shown so far apart.
“They need to show the first two series’ again and then run into the third so that it’s present rather than something that appears on TV screens and is finished by the time anyone realises it’s going on.”

In the mean time, Helen could not be much more fortunate in the people she has been sharing sets with lately. Through her TV, theatre, and most recently film work, she has had the chance to work with some of the most established actors in the business. Appearing in the gangster movie “Shiner” with Michael Caine and Martin Landau wasn’t necessarily daunting for her, so much as a rewarding opportunity.
“I felt excited and very privileged to meet them and hoped to God that I wouldn’t let the side down.”
She admits that: “When it came to Michael Caine I did just stand there most of the time gazing gooily at him and grinning inanely. I was working with Martin Landau all the time as well, and when we weren’t shooting we were chatting about the weather and God knows what else. I couldn’t quite believe that it was real. But it was great.”
Working in film has also allowed Helen to experience a whole new atmosphere.
“It’s completely different. Less pressurised, strangely. You would think with the amount of money resting on a film that the pressure would be more, but you have more time to do things. Certainly compared with most of the television I’ve done, the pressure is less and you’re treated so much better on a film set than in television. Television can be a bit of a cattle roll.”

Whilst television and film may be satisfying enough for most actors, in bringing them the bulk of their recognition, Helen very much enjoys the chance to do theatre. Despite initial doubts, she was ultimately thrilled by the experience of working with Honor Blackman in “The Glass Menagerie.”
“Honor’s a fantastic woman,” enthuses Helen. “I thought it was a fabulous production, I was very proud of it and I also really enjoyed working with the director.”

Prime-time drama, scripts penned by John Sullivan, Michael Caine movies and starring in a classic play with Honor Blackman. Not bad for someone who applied to RADA and “totally ballsed it up”. Having graduated from Durham University in 1992 with a Psychology BSc, and aspired to be an actress since the age of 11, Helen set about finding formal drama training. Having stated enthusiastically during her RADA interview that her best acting experience to date had been doing John Osbourne’s “Look Back In Anger” at university, nerves took over and she re-Christened him “Joe Orton”.
“It was only after I’d been rambling on for about 5 minutes in my nervous state that I realised,” she cringes. “I just bowed my head and said: ‘I’ll get my coat.’ I never heard from them again.”
But is she flattered to learn that a contingent of people mistakenly believe her to be a RADA-grad? Very. “Let them think that. Some people are more comfortable with you if you’ve been to RADA.”
Helen’s application to the London Drama Centre was rather more successful and it is there that she trained until 1996. The Drama Centre has, she reveals, a strange reputation for being “outlandish and weird - though a lot of it’s myth.” The training offered there is based on ‘The Method,’ which not all schools offer. Helen believes that: “As long you have a good training, it doesn’t really matter. There’s no one place that’s better than another but some places suit individuals more and the Drama Centre certainly suited me. It was a fabulous experience.”

Perhaps surprisingly, that training was the first formal training she had.
Though her Psychology degree remains a useful reference point for her job, her early education was not - if there is indeed such a thing - the typical education of an aspiring actress. She attended: “a standard school, where your work was the most important thing,” and took Chemistry, Biology and Maths for A Level. “Believe it or not, I loved Maths,” she smiles.”To me, it was like doing a crossword puzzle and it was easy.”
She continues: “I was told that I had to do Chemistry as well, otherwise those subjects wouldn’t lead to anything. I said: ‘I don’t want them to lead to anything. I just enjoy them. I want to act.’
Her backup plan, in the event of failing in her pursuit of stage stardom, was to become a Doctor, which presumably explains the Science A Levels, though, with hindsight, she claims she would much rather have done English.
“People said to me that if you’re interested in plays and literature, you can always read but you can’t always do Science - which isn’t strictly true. But because I was always involved in drama I did read an awful lot of plays - if not as much literature as much as I would have liked. And I was lucky in that there was a lot of drama available at my school if you wanted to participate.”
There can’t be many people around who never wanted to act at some point during their childhood. Equally, there aren’t many people around who can later say that they have successfully gone on to do that. Inevitably, Helen had trouble at first in getting those around her to take her ambition seriously.
“People just pat you on the head and go: ‘Oh, isn’t that sweet….let’s hope she’ll grow out of it.’ They’re probably still hoping that I’ll grow out of it.” she laughs.
But Helen carried on acting right through university, taking advantage of Durham’s very active drama society. Early on, she took part in the Durham Revue, which was “a load of students larking about and trying to be politically aware and satirical.”
What its participants might like to have thought was something as good as ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News was, to the average student, “just a load of in-jokes.”
For fun, she also took on the role of annoying cheerleader Patty Simcox in Grease, the highlight of which for her friends was watching her do pom-pom dancing.
It was whilst at university that Helen was also introduced to what she cites as one of her favourite plays “The Changeling” - often featured on A Level syllabuses but rarely performed professionally. The role of Beatrice Joanna in that play is, in Helen’s opinion “probably one of the best theatre roles for a woman that’s ever been written.” She adds, half-serious: “Anyone who reads this and needs a Beatrice Joanna - it’s me.”

Any member of a university debating society who reads this and needs a television personality to join their team had better not call Helen up. At least not if her performance at Cambridge University’s 1996 end-of-term debate is anything to go by. During her publicity-loaded year at Brookside (a good way to broach the subject of Brookside if ever there was one), she was invited to join their debating team, with she and former ‘Playaway’ presenter Brian Cant debating on opposite sides of the motion: ‘Nothing Matters Much and Some Things Matter Not At All’.
Helen recalls: “It was all supposed to be a very flippant, light-hearted, end of term drunken debate. I certainly participated in the drinking, but by the time I got to arguing
that I did think things matter and that I in fact found it quite offensive to say that some things matter not at all, I was probably a bit worse for wear and a little bit too vehement in my argument!”
The presence of Giles Brandreth’s son on Helen’s team compensated for her being almost unconscious during her speech, and they ultimately won.
“I think they were plying me with alcohol in the hope that I would amuse them all during the debate!”
Rumours about how exactly she had amused them were painfully specific. She is alleged to have made several derogatory comments predicting the likely demise of Brookside; an accusation that she dismisses as “Rubbish,” insisting: “I can definitely remember that I didn’t say anything of that sort.”
But at a time when several high-profile former Brookside stars have gone on the record to denounce the direction the show has taken, it is perhaps unsurprising that people are waiting expectantly for her to jump on the bandwagon. They’ll have a long wait. Diplomatically-minded, Helen is neither keen to remember, nor desperate to forget.
“I don’t particularly want to remind anyone of it, but [Brookside] did an awful lot for me. It was my launch and my big break and I’m very grateful for it. I’d never diss it.”

Indeed, Helen has taken the last few years in her stride. Contrary to the belief of those who doubt whether someone who can play roles of the nature she has done can feel entirely comfortable about doing it, she seems happy to rise to the challenge.
Since playing the incestuous Georgia Simpson she has played a murderer in Poirot and a paedophile in prison drama Bad Girls.
“I didn’t feel uncomfortable,” she says of her role alongside David Suchet in Poirot. “I was working with a fabulous actor and it was great to find the chance to do something a bit different. It’s just quite difficult to know that you’re the murderer and yet to be playing something that the audience can conceivably think is or isn’t the murderer. You’ve got to give enough red herrings and you have to be quite shifty.”
Much the same is true of her role in Bad Girls. Viewers were shocked when Caroline, an outwardly attractive, educated and charming inmate who claimed to be serving time for embezzlement, was revealed as a paedophile who had assisted her boyfriend in circulating child pornography. At the time, Helen avoided publicity surrounding the role but there is no need for anything to be read into that. Luckily for her, settling into the role was very easy:
“It was actually a very relaxed place to work. I had plenty of time to get to know the other actors really before we did anything. During my first day on set we didn’t film anything because they were overrunning. Mandana [Jones - alias Nikki Wade] who most of my stuff was with had been to the same drama school as me so we had lots to talk about. We broke the ice quite quickly and it was fine.”
You may wonder what roles an actress who has played an incestuous sister and a paedophile could possibly have turned down. Though she won’t elaborate on the exact nature of the work she has rejected, Helen makes clear enough that she is by no means willing to try everything: “There is a type of role I wouldn’t consider but I can’t say what it is until I see it in front of me. There have been things I’ve said no to and I’m sure there will be again.”

Right now, Helen remains focused and optimistic with regard to her future.
“I try not to have regrets because that way madness and depression lie.”.
Last year was, she says, a television-heavy year and her interests now seem to be geared towards theatre….failing that, some regular television work.
“Regular TV work is the ideal financially, regular theatre work is the ideal creatively.”
She is inspired by the work of many legendary actors and playwrights, from Judi Dench and Maggie Smith to Robert Di Niro and Al Pacino. She has never performed a Chekhov play professionally and would like to, and, naturally, she would love some more Shakespeare too.
“I really enjoyed working on the two Shakespeare plays that I’ve done. I think that it’s very disciplined. There’s something about having the meter in the language that is very freeing and also strangely enlightening.”
It is rather more difficult to pinpoint dream roles where television and film are concerned, and, just as in the case of roles she would reject, Helen refrains from being too specific about what she likes:
“You don’t know what you like till you see it,” she explains. She is guided by the sort of criteria you would expect from an educated and talented actress. First and foremost, she dreams of playing: “3 dimensional people in a good, dialogue-based piece. Often, you read telly scripts and they’re unrecognisable people you can’t relate to, who are one dimensional and no fun. ”
Given the choice, Helen would opt for even the most minor role in anything with a certain amount of prestige attached to it. Unlike many of the people plying their trade in showbiz, or so it seems a good deal of the time, the old adage that any publicity is good publicity is lost on her. She puts it bluntly: “A role in a load of rubbish is no good to anyone! It can do more harm than good. If something becomes a huge hit then it becomes a hit for a reason and you have to go with that.”
“But,” she concludes. “If you’re seen in something that’s absolutely diabolical, the larger your responsibility for that, the worse the outcome.”
By now, you and your weary eyes may be wondering if there could possibly be anything more left to ask Helen Grace. Interviewing her feels uncannily like reliving several years within the space of in an hour, but the truth is, everything she says is so engaging that it’s just hard to know where to end. Seeing as she’s not working right now, to end with her idea of perfect happiness - strictly from a careers point of view, of course - seems a nice gesture. It’s an idea that any self-respecting supporter of the British film industry will empathise with, and which will neither upset the Daily Mail, nor interest the Daily Star. A starring role in a film directed by Mike Leigh, co-starring his protege Katrin Cartlidge. ***
“It doesn’t get much better than that,” proclaims Helen with a smile.
Indeed not. And it doesn’t get much better than interviewing Helen Grace.
If, in the last six years, there is any young performer who has proved themselves so deserving of the opportunity to make their ideas of perfect happiness into some kind of reality then it is Helen. Keep watching.

This article is © helengrace.co.uk 2002.
Use with permission.
Any queries should be emailed to: feedback@helengrace.co.uk

*** Sadly, Katrin Cartlidge died of complications from pnuemonia and septicaemia on September 7th 2002, aged 41. Writing in The Guardian, September 9th, colleague Simon McBurney described her as “one of the most fearless and passionately committed performers on screen and stage to have emerged from Britain for years.” She will be sadly missed.