Rebecca Humphries rarely drinks, but she knows what dependence feels like. So she felt an instant connection with her latest character in the play Blackout Songs: an alcoholic barfly called Alice, who falls in love at an AA meeting.
“I know what it is to look outside of yourself for some kind of intoxicating substance, to help you either escape your reality or validate your low opinion of yourself,” she says, her pool-sized eyes looking out from under a fringe so thick it would make Claudia Winkleman do a double take. “I was in this really heady, toxic relationship with another person, and when I look back on it now, I realise that, actually, so much of my staying in something that I knew was hurting me, and draining me of who I was, was feeding my own insecurities. Just like alcohol does. Just like drugs do.”
