Lia Williams, 59, is an exceptional actor of questing intelligence and warmth whose award-winning performances on stage and screen have a way of staying in the mind. Her 1993 interpretation of a student accusing her professor of harassment, in David Mamet’s Oleanna, was one such role. Now, 30 years on, she is about to play a professor, in Alma Mater at the Almeida by Kendall Feaver, a tremendous new play that returns to the subject of sexual misconduct.
It seems you’ve always been drawn to political drama.
I’ve worked with Harold Pinter – who directed Oleanna – and he used to say, about his own work, that he was never consciously political yet a political strain ran through everything he wrote. I’m now beginning to wonder – I’ve been doing this job for 40 years – if there might be something similar in me. While not overtly political – I’m an idealist and eclectic in my tastes – I keep getting drawn to new writing that discusses complex issues but also has heart.
