In 1992, the Observer took a look at high-end on-screen nudity, talking to the young women ‘not afraid to bare all in the name of quality entertainment’.
‘Not afraid’? Maybe. Rudi Davies needed ‘a few stiff drinks’ before playing an 18-year-old involved with an older man in TV drama A Sense of Guilt. ‘There you are with three cameras and loads of people, all looking at your breasts.’ Others implied it was a necessary if not welcome career rite of passage; ‘a way to an Equity card’. For Tara Fitzgerald, star of The Camomile Lawn, ‘when you’re young and nubile you have to do these things’. After, she said, came a ‘barren period when no one wants you to undress anyway’ before eternal rest as a ‘character actress’. Jennifer Ehle agreed it was a business decision – ‘The good parts take their clothes off’ – but of her own often-unclothed role in The Camomile Lawn said: ‘I don’t particularly want to do it again.’
