Mother's Pride (From Oxford Mail)

Mother's Pride

2:30pm Thursday 18th February 2010 in

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Susan Hampshire always remembers her advice from Sir Laurence Olivier just before she goes on stage. “The important thing is to believe in yourself,” he told her during filming of David Copperfield in 1969. “Ninety per cent of it is about confidence.”

And now Susan finds herself heading up the cast for Pride and Prejudice in which she plays Mrs Bennet and recalls his words every night. Because Susan is having to keep her wits about her, as her husband, Eddie, is terribly ill at home.

“When I’m on stage I give 100 per cent. You have to because people are paying good money to come and
watch you, but there is a lot of travelling involved with this tour, up to six hours a day, and that can be difficult.

“I always try to get home at night to see Eddie and when I left for Aberdeen he was having a really bad day and I knew that if anything happened I was too far away to return quickly, although he is being looked after around the clock.”

Susan is, however, a professional through and through, and knows the show, coming to the Oxford Playhouse all next week, must go on. Helped enormously by a young, fun cast, she’s enjoying playing Mrs Bennet, and mothering her stage daughters both on and off stage.

“Well, I never had a daughter and now I’ve got five” she laughs. Susan adds that the cast is such fun that they try to keep her mind off things. So is she mum to them both on and off stage? “Yes, I suppose I am,” the 72-year-old says. “It’s life-enhancing because this is their first time and there is so much young talent here on stage.

“This could even be where their careers rocket, the beginnings if you like, so that’s lovely. But they are far less deferential and more confident than I ever was. It’s
a different world now.”

So was Susan terribly awe-struck then, playing opposite the likes of Kirk Douglas or Tony Curtis? “Oh yes, I just wanted to sit at their feet and learn all I could from
them,” she remembers, “and it has been phenomenally valuable.

”Then she recalls: “I remember when Dame Edith Evans told me to make sure my domestic affairs were in order and that my husband had a nice meal to eat when he came home. She said if things were OK at home they would be OK at work, which was very enriching to hear.”

So does Susan pass on these words of wisdom? “Only if I’m asked,” she smiles. “I don’t walk around handing them out. I just try to move with the times.”

But, despite her fame and fortune, Susan says the happiest years of her life were spent in rep in Oxford when she didn’t have a care in the world – before she began gracing our screens with the Hollywood greats, before she was married or had children, and of course before her TV roles in The Forsyte Saga and Monarch Of The Glen.

“It was so exciting and enjoyable, and entirely lacking in responsibility,” she says, “and I had no experience of anything. It was definitely the happiest time. I would be a walk-on in a crowd scene at the Oxford Playhouse or have a small part in the Christmas show, so you didn’t get worried, or anxious, or nervous or tortured.”

Perhaps that’s why Susan chose Oxfordshire to buy her country home, sharing her time between Little Haseley and London for 25 years. But since her husband of 20 years, theatre impresario Sir Eddie Kulukundis, developed dementia, they moved back to London where it is easier to get care. So despite her new worries, is Susan still able to enjoy Pride and Prejudice? “Oh yes, because it’s such a beautiful love story isn’t it?

And this is a very fresh production about a couple who are the perfect match for each other, despite the social conventions of the time. And that’s the wonderful thing about it.” Pride and
Prejudice is at Oxford Playhouse Monday-Saturday. Call the box office on 01865 305305 or at www.oxford playhouse.com