Since scandalising BBC viewers more than 20 years ago in Tipping the Velvet, Rachael Stirling has become one of our most sought-after actors on stage and screen. Other TV credits include The Bletchley Circle, Women in Love and Mackenzie Crook’s Detectorists. She’s now in rehearsals for the Donmar Warehouse’s new production of Noël Coward’s comedy Private Lives, in which she and Stephen Mangan will play Amanda Prynne and Elyot Chase, a divorced couple who can’t resist one last hurrah. The 45-year-old Stirling – whose mother was the late Diana Rigg – is married to Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, with whom she has a six-year-old son.
How are preparations for Private Lives?
They are full of joy. It is one of the most pleasurable parts to play and story to tell – this very passionate, narcissistic, combustive, dangerous, costly and hilarious relationship. And to be able to do it in the Donmar, where no audience member is more than four rows away… They are in your armpit, they can smell the sweat and see up your nostrils, so you’ve got to be on your game or you will be exposed.
