 Once likened by journalist Maureen Paton to "a ship's figurehead with her
commanding patrician profile and Pre-Raphaelite hair", Geraldine James has been
a statuesque presence on stage and screen for over 30 years. She made her TV
debut in 1976 as Dennis Waterman's tarty croupier girlfriend in an episode of
The Sweeney (ITV, 1975-78), and followed this up a year later with a
BAFTA-nominated portrayal of real-life Sandra X, a profoundly deaf Bradford girl
who becomes a prostitute and ends up in prison for manslaughter, in the drama-
documentary Dummy (ITV, tx. 9/11/1977).
This was an astonishing beginning by any standards for the middle-class girl
from Maidenhead, Berkshire, whose family were appalled that she was going into
acting. She was born Geraldine Thomas on 6 July, 1950. Her cardiologist father
divorced her alcoholic mother and remarried when she was 14 and at boarding
school, and her adolescence was troubled and disrupted.
Before enrolling at the Drama Centre in London, she worked as a dresser at
the Royal Shakespeare Company and began learning the craft of acting by watching
Peggy Ashcroft in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance every night from the wings.
For James, seeing this total transformation into character was the 'truth' of
acting, and something to aspire to.
The sheer range of her roles shows that she learned the lesson well. Twenty
years later the two women worked together, not only in The Jewel in the Crown
(ITV, 1984) but also in Stephen Poliakoff's She's Been Away (BBC, 1989), both
winning awards at the Venice Film Festival.
She has always considered herself a character rather than a leading actor,
and many of her roles have been larger than life: vulgar, voluptuous, passionate
Emma Hamilton in I Remember Nelson (ITV, 1982); formidable Lady Maud in Blott on
the Landscape (BBC, 1985), pursuing a naked Simon Cadell through the draughty
corridors of Handyman Hall like a sex-crazed Valkyrie; the tart-with-a-heart
Rose in Band of Gold (ITV, 1995-96) and Gold (ITV, 1997). Is this really the
same actress who stormed to stardom as uptight, principled Sarah Layton in The
Jewel in the Crown, slowly rebelling against the beliefs and prejudices of her
class, while belatedly awakening to the sexual possibilities around her? Who was
so moving as Barbara Kirk, the lonely, long-suffering wife of The History Man
(BBC, 1981), pursuing a lacklustre affair in London as part of their 'open'
1970s marriage?
She was reunited with Jewel co-star Charles Dance for Rebecca (ITV, 1997),
as Max de Winter's tweedy, no-nonsense sister Beatrice, and she also starred in
the underrated Welsh western Drovers' Gold (BBC, 1997), a rare excursion into
action drama, set in 1843. A plum role opposite Pete Postlethwaite and Frank
Finlay in Sins (BBC, 2000), saw her as Gloria, the grasping wife of a reformed
criminal. Alongside her screen credits, she has always maintained a stage
career, but she is probably best known to younger audiences for her occasional
role in Little Britain (BBC, 2003-), as David Walliams' posh, grossly
overindulgent mother.
Janet Moat
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FILM & TV CREDITS
