Keeley Hawes: from Karaoke babe to Avenging angel
Bugger. I really liked her. I was determined to write a polite but distant piece, because the first time she was unresponsive and the second time she was late. In Keeley Hawes’ defence, the first time she’d just split with her boyfriend and was utterly distraught. So we arranged to meet for lunch the following Friday. “Choose anywhere you want,” I said. “Do you know what? I really fancy some fish and chips,” she said. Bugger again, “Fine,” I smiled grimly, thoughts of expensive wine and crisp table linen disappearing to be replaced by the prospects of eating food wrapped in some earlier piece of my work.
I got there at two as arranged. It wasn’t actually Keeley’s fault that the restaurant shut at 2.30 sharp (the time at which she showed up). We got in Keeley’s car to go for coffee. Her father and brothers are taxi drivers, and the spirit of hackney cabs past and present is very much evident in her somewhat random driving style.
She went to stage school. She’s been a model and then a fashion assistant, first for She and then Cosmopolitan. “I really wanted to be a journalist, but while I was at Cosmo, someone offered me a part in Dannis Potter’s Karaoke, and I thought I’d give it a stab… Alas, she didn’t get to meet Potter: “He died about a month before I was cast.” She has racked up a remarkable series of successes since: The Moonstone, Heartbeat, Pie in the Sky and The Beggar Bride. She is soon to appear with Anna Friel in an adaption of Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, which also stars Paul McGann. “I had to snog him, and I snogged Richard E Grant in Karaoke, so you could say I’ve had Withnail and I,” she giggles.
We got to the coffee shop and it took me about 10 seconds to decide that she was 100 per cent honey. She’s a genuine star in the old movie mould, a reincarnation of the young Audrey Hepburn. Her speaking voice makes you think of monochrome and long white gloves, the reuslt of years of elocution lessons and a diet of afternoon movies. She’s joyous to be with and has an infectious, pealing laugh that she uses all the time.
But she’s strange mixture, because in another way she’s down to earth and doesn’t really seem to notice all the fuss going on around her. She’s hopelessly disorganised, she’s always late and her car was right on the point of running out of petrol. She once missed her own birthday party — you just know that she lives in a completely different space-time continuum to the rest of us.
She draws you in, though. She told me about her grandmother who’s 86 but pretends that she’s 68 to her 70-year-old boyfriend. The whole family meets up every Saturday at a café on the Edgware Road and when she describes it you actually want to be there with them. Her father’s dead proud of her, naturally.
So, how does she find the whole fame thing? “It’s all up. The minute you stand in front of a camera you know that’s part of it.” The only bad experience she had was one guy who decided he loved her and somehow managed to get her mobile number. In trying to persuade her to meet him he said, “I’m not stalker. I’m a plumber.”
1. What skills do you have?
She learnt the piano for The Moonstone. She can play trumpet and teach drama. She knows London really well and she can do all the tap dancing, luvvy-stage school stuff. 9/10
2. What accents do you do?
American and Cockney. 7/10
3a) Do a Welsh accent.
Not bad, actually. 9/10
3b) Do an Indian accent.
Probably the best one so far, but she remarks that she thinks this is a fairly odd set of questions. 10/10 (for insight)
4) Can you cry to order? Do it .
She bloody does it. She just sits there and cries. She must be hell to argue with. 10/10
5) What’s the worst things you’ve ever been asked to do by a director?
“The worst job I ever had in acting terms was a Clearasil commercial. But the worst job ever was working in McDonald’s when I was 15.” Her: 6/10. Director: 8/10 (He was only obeying orders)
6) What was your best job?
“The Beggar Bride was an incredible part for me.” She’s just finished filming a part in The Avengers, playing Sean Connery’s secretary Tamara. “When Sean Connery walked in, everybody went really quiet — he has more presence than anyone I’ve ever worked with. I felt like I was about to wet myself. I said ‘Hello there,’ I think I just made a complete arse of myself.” 9/10
7) Which female lead in any film would you have liked to have played?
“Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She practically lives the part anyway and recently bought the original film poster as a present to herself. 10/10
8a) Would you appear naked if the part demanded it?
“I’m naked in most things. I don’t actually think about it that much and actors don’t really take that much notice of it when it’s demanded in the part. It’s sort of part of the job.” 9/10
8b) Would you appear naked if Esquire demanded it?
“I already did.” 10/10
9) Personality
I’m with the plumber: she’s a babe and I’ll fight all of you individually if you say any different. And before you say, “You and whose army?” look out of the window. See those black cabs? 10/10
10) Star quality/Who do you know?
I was going to say here that she’s in a class of her own but she isn’t. She went to acting school with Denise Van Outen, Samantha Janus, Daniella Westbrook and Kelly Bright. She shares a flat with Kelly who was the daughter in The Upper Hand (where Joe McGann is the housekeeper and Honor Blackman plays the glamorous granny).
She was best friends with Baby Spice, Emma Bunton, and lived in her parents’ house for a while. Emma came back from Bournemouth where she was living during Spice Girls rehearsals. She didn’t really want to go back and played Keeley the album, Keeley gave her a fabulous piece of advice: “Don’t go back down there. Stay here with us — we’ll take care of you.”
“I’ve got Tatler and Harpers & Queen coming up to visit me tomorrow,” she says, laughing again. “I think they think I’m posh.” 11/10
Overall score: 9.1666/10
(Source: keeley-hawes.co.uk)