Born in Oxford, England in 1941 and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, Miriam Margolyes is an award-winning veteran of the stage and screen, and an internationally acclaimed voice-artist and documentarian. She is currently starring in the comedy drama Holy Days, also starring Judy Davis and Jacki Weaver, which is out now in theaters through Blue Fox Entertainment. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award for The Age of Innocence, she received an OBE in 2002 for Services to Drama. This Much is True, her long-awaited award-winning autobiography, was in the top 10 for over a year.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the current theatrical release of the comedy drama Holy Days, starring Miriam Margolyes, Jacki Weaver and Judy Davis, the beloved English actress and bestselling memoirist shared some of the things she loves most in life. — N.D.
Genealogy
I’m a passionate genealogist and I love tracing my family, so nearly every moment that I’m not actually doing something that earns me money, I’m doing genealogy. About 35 or 40 years ago, my cousin, Selwyn Torrance, who has since died (as indeed has almost everybody I know) sent me a family tree, and it just excited me so much. I thought, I share something that these people went through, because we’re Jewish, and so I was fascinated by where they came from. Eventually, I went out to Grodno in Belarus; no-one had survived. I then started tracing and found so many members of my family. I’ve now got 17,000 people in my family tree, and the most exciting one was when I found the descendants of my great-aunt Fanny. They had gone to Boston and become Catholics. We had a reunion which was wonderful. They’re all working class and I’m not now, although my family came from what I call “pedlar poverty,” like a lot of immigrants. I’m always on the side of immigrants and poor people. I don’t like rich people. (I love money, but I don’t trust rich people!)
I discovered that my great-grandfather was a criminal. He came to the U.K. with nothing and couldn’t speak the language, so he became a “fence,” someone who sells stolen goods, like Fagin, and he went to prison for seven years’ hard labour. It was an anti-Semitic sentence. And then in 1877, he went to South Africa, where he founded a big family. So I went out to South Africa and found all my relatives there. Of course, they didn’t know their origins were quite so murky, and they were rather discomforted by it, but I just think it’s fascinating. I’m thrilled to know about it and to delve into it. And through genealogy, I’ve met many people who profoundly disagree with me. And it’s always good to meet people who disagree with me, because I think I’m right all the time, and I’m not, obviously. But it gives me a sense of proportion, and I realize that there are other people in the world besides myself. The problem with the people on the right wing of the Republican Party is they don’t meet anybody else. They just meet their own kind, and I think we all need to be mixed up a bit.
Charles Dickens
The second thing I love, I’ve loved since I was 11, is the writer Charles Dickens. He’s a real person to me, not just a wonderful writer. And he was a bit of a shit, as well, because people are manifold and complicated. Dickens wrote more than 2,000 characters, and Sonia Fraser and I devised a show in which we explained his life using some of the characters in the books. It’s been very successful and I’ve done it all over the world, so he’s been another connection with life, with people, with different people. And I think the thing that’s energized my life is connection with different people; it’s part of being an actress. I suppose travel is the other thing that energizes me, and Dickens opened the world to me, because I was able to go around the world with my show. I went all around India with it, and I found such excitement there meeting different people. It was just thrilling.
My empathy for the poor and disadvantaged was probably always there, because I’m a kind-hearted person and have a sweet nature, but reading Dickens sharpened my perspective about the injustice that poor people everywhere face. He had a strong moral sense, although he was a disgraceful adulterer, but most men are disgraceful adulterers, because they are led by their dicks.
Fundamentally, though, life is a choice. You can choose to be good or bad. You can choose to be a liar. These are choices. And increasingly, people are making the wrong choice, in my view, and I think that’s a shame. I still care about my Jewishness, but not about Judaism. Religion is absolutely unimportant to me now. Previously, I’d tell everybody almost immediately on meeting them that I was Jewish and gay, because I think it’s important to let people know who they’re dealing with. I don’t want them to have to flounder with me and usually they either come toward me, or they run a mile.
Getting the Most Out of Life
I care a lot about traveling, animals, nature and politics. And I’m conscious that I haven’t got long (I’m 85) and I want to crowd as much as I can into the time I have left. So I write to a lot of people, including His Majesty King Charles III. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that, because I’m on the left politically, but I’ve known him for some years now, and he’s a wonderful man. He’s a thoughtful, caring man, and I love and respect him and Camilla. I think they’re a cracking pair.
I’m trying to get to know as many people as I can now, and reunions are a big item, because so many people in my life have died. I’m on the older side of old. I’m not 90 yet, I doubt I’ll make it to 90, but I want to know what my life has been, and I forget so much. So I go round the country to meet my friends and ask them, What did you witness of my life and can you share it with me? And I’m very pleased with how I’ve turned out, I must say. I’m proud of the work I’ve done, though I never thought I would be, particularly. It’s a bit of a surprise, but I like what I’ve become and I’m happy in myself.
I wish I had more time, because there’s still so much to do – to learn, to try to change. And I won’t be able to do it all. There will be a stop. I call it “the next big thing.” It’s death. If I could ‘cease upon the midnight with no pain’, I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t want to die a pissing, incontinent wreck, screaming and sniveling. I want to still be a human being and not a disaster. But I don’t know what’s going to happen – none of us knows – and I have no faith to comfort me. I don’t believe in God, and I don’t understand people who do. I mean, look at the horrors going on in the world right now. We’re taking the last giant leap. I used to have a therapist when I was much younger, and when we talked about death, she said, “Well, maybe it’ll be a party. And all the people that we love and know will be there having a drink and it’ll be lovely.” I hope that’s what it’ll be. I doubt it, but I’m hopeful. It would be fun, wouldn’t it?
Featured image, showing Judy Davis, Elijah Tamati, Miriam Margolyes and Jacki Weaver in Holy Days, is courtesy Blue Fox Entertainment.
