It’s a privilege to feel like the barriers are down.” It’s funny; these words may come from Anna Chancellor’s mouth, but I feel as though she’s plucked them directly from my brain. We’ve been talking for half an hour or so, in which time the Four Weddings and a Funeral actor has cried, shared the details of her late daughter’s sensational-sounding wake, and comforted me about my own deceased father. The barriers aren’t just down – they’re non-existent.
In an ironic twist, we’d kicked off our conversation discussing decidedly more guarded interview styles. “What do you think of actresses as a whole?” Chancellor fires at me with genuine curiosity – she keeps asking questions in return, more interested in opening a dialogue than performing a soliloquy – and I mutter that I’ve never met any of the shiny Hollywood kinds.
