Secrets & Spies
As her mobile trills for the umpteenth time, Keeley Hawes — one-time bodice-ripper, erstwhile celluloid spy, current tabloid favourite — checks the caller ID, blushes, calls time out on the photo shoot, and disappears into a shadowy corner of the studio. Her boyfriend [and co-star in this summer’s hit TV drama Spooks], Matthew Macfadyen is on the phone. Again. She murmurs conspiratorially with him for a few moments and then she’s back, ready for her close-up.
“You’re really smouldering now,” observes the photographer, sending Hawes into a fit of blushing and momentarily halting the proceedings.
“I had to do a press junket yesterday,” grimaces the 26 year old. “Everyone was asking about my marriage and new relationship…” — i.e. Macfadyen.
The couple met on the set of Spooks, fell madly in love, and before you could say Cupid, Hawes had left her partner of four years [and husband of a few months], cartoonist Spencer McCallum, with whom she has a young son, Myles. So? What did she say about her love life?
Her eyes slide sideways and she shrugs. “I made up some answers.”
Welcome to the world of Keeley Hawes, a woman forced of late to be an actress on the public stage as well as the professional.
Good thing she’s a proper Eliza Doolittle, more than up to handling the attention. Born into a family of cabbies, Keeley grew up in Marylebone, central London. She often jokes that she bought her accent; years of elecution lessons left her with the voice of a public school girl. It was the making of her career. Her roles have been, almost without exception, those of upper class young lasses with ringing cut-glass accents. After being cast as the young Diana Dors in The Blonde Bombshell, and Lizzie in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, playing Cynthia in Wives & Daughters led to film parts alongside Dame Maggie Smith and Fiona Shaw. Then came her recent breakthrough as steely MI-5 agent Zoe in Spooks. “It’s the first time I’ve ever looked how I look in real life,” she says laughing.
And that is: tall, elegant, with dewy skin and flashing almond eyes. She turns up wearing a khaki shirt open to reveal a black camisole, and black trousers — all from Joseph. “I like to keep things simple, mainly for fear of getting it wrong,” she says while whipping on Dolce & Gabbana trousers, a lacy brasserie, and chic waistcoat, and looking surprisingly at ease. She discusses clothes with logic, tries everything without complaint, and is confident on camera, a result of her pre-acting career as a model. Though successful, she didn’t enjoy the job, citing her dislike of hunger as the main cause. “I ate. I was not a waif. I am a size 12. I have never wanted to be thin. Most of the girls could get by on one Ryvita a day.”
Later Hawes did a stint as a fashion assistant on Cosmopolitan and She magazines, where she was “something in the fashion cupboard” , and was “occasionally let out to attend fashion shows, as long as I was willing to lie to get in”. Impressively, she once climbed over a wall to gain entry to an Alexander McQueen show. That was then, however. Keeley’s adult wardrobe isn’t awash with haute couture. “I wear Nicole Farhi, Jigsaw and lots of Joseph. Mostly trousers, jeans and sneakers because I have a small son to run around after. But I adore that Chloe coat,” she says pointing to a slim velvet coat, “and I love Jil Sander cashmere. My one extravagance is a pair of silver strappy sandals by Gina. But I rarely go anywhere special enough to warrant wearing a pair of silver shoes.”
Her newest role will see her dealing with a more complex array of clothing and character: she plays a lesbian in the upcoming Andrew Davies adaptation of Sarah Water’s novel, Tipping the Velvet. Set in the 1890s, it’s the story of Nan, a young girl who upon realising she is gay, embarks on a Moll Flanders-style love adventure. Hawes’s Kitty is Nan’s first love, and also happens to be a male impersonator. “It was ordinary Victorian clothes by day, and top hat and tails by night,” the actress says. Hawes also had to kiss a girl or two for the part, which did not daunt her at all.
“I’ve had to do a lot of love scenes. At my age I expect to be offered roles that involve falling in love. It’s part of what we do as actors. For Tipping the Velvet, Anna Chancellor [her co-star] said we were doing vanilla sex, whatever that is. We spent the whole time laughing and drank lots of white wine.” Playing Kitty did give her some sleepless nights, though – Hawes tossed and turned with fear because she had to sing and dance. “It was sheer terror, easily the worst days of my working life,” she says.
As for the worst day of her private life, no question: the day the news broke about her and Macfadyen [with whom she is about to start filming the second series of Spooks]. “The most difficult part was when all the tabloids reported that I had left both my husband and my son. It really upset me. I have Myles four days a week, Spencer has him three days a week. The press will show me in the pub with Matthew, they’ll never show me in the park with Myles. I had moments when I was so angry, I lay awake at night and wanted to ring the editor of whatever paper and say, ‘Tell them I am mothering my child!’… but you can’t. I spend most of my time with my son. I do deserve a certain amount of demonising. It was my doing. But I didn’t expect people to say that I had left my son. Anybody who is a mother would know that you couldn’t, you just couldn’t…”
Hawes admits she is very close to her emotions. “I have to be, I think that’s why I tend to be rather shy. My natural instinct is towards privacy.” Her idea of a good night out is dinner and a movie with her man. She doesn’t go to gym, doesn’t like posing on red carpets. “I never stop,” she observes, referring to the increasingly loud screams of the paparazzi. “I just stride right in.” On screen or in secret, this is one woman who definitely wears the trousers.
By Melanie Rickey for InStyle magazine.
(Source: keeley-hawes.co.uk)