We moved countries every year and a half when I was little. My dad worked for British Airways. I was born in Hong Kong, lived in Zambia and Borneo, and was evacuated when the war started in Beirut.There are photos of me in Abu Dhabi in a little cotton dress made by my mother, watching the camel races with all these women in veils and long black dresses.
When I got to Oxford, my mind exploded. I remember the dangerous sports society abseiling down to rescue a pig’s head from outside the Dean’s room. I was in a one-woman show – The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy – in which she gives herself stigmata. I said: “Can I have real blood?” so the stage manager went to the abattoir, got a bucket of sheep’s blood and poured it all over me. It stank and turned me vegetarian for quite a while.
I was quite a swot. I thought: “If I do well in my finals, I’ll do a PhD. If I don’t, I’ll be an actor.” I’d seen a talk at the BFI on Italian cinema and was quite taken with sword and sandal movies and spaghetti westerns and thought I could do my PhD on them. Then I thought: “Why do I want to watch people being dragged through dirt and lassoed for four years?” So it made much more sense to me – but devastating for my parents – to run away to clown school.
When actors talk about process and comedians talk about jokes, they’re always a failure. That is one thing I’ve learned: never try to explain your process, because you will sound like a wanker.
The absurd makes me laugh. People still come up to me in cinema toilets and ask me to sign photos of Renée Zellweger, because there was a period when I looked a bit like her.
When my husband left me [in 2017], I was in a massive panic and decided to do a singing show at the Palladium with Michael Crawford. My list went: go to Sainsbury’s, get meatballs, buy socks, go to Palladium, school run… I think I’m recovering from my divorce because I’m no longer crying at Christmas adverts or swans who mate for life.
I don’t really mind what I see in the mirror. I feel relatively attractive and friendly. But I find it completely horrifying when I see myself on screen. I just see a fat old lady.
My son Olly was born with Down’s syndrome. Your consciousness is changed by whatever flavour of disability you have in your family. Mums with autistic children know everything; they’re just amazing. Families with Down’s syndrome children tend to be quite relaxed, because there’s no point planning ahead.
I spent nine Edinburgh festivals playing prostitutes who died from syphilis. It was quite hard to get an agent to see me dying of syphilis, but far easier when I was guesting in other people’s comedy.
For my first telly job, I was in bed with Mel Smith. He says: “I’m terribly sorry, love, it must have been the drink” and it pans over to me covered in vomit, which was cold, chunky vegetable soup that gave me a skin rash.
How would I survive a zombie attack? I would probably go into deep denial and get another puppy. That’s the way I cope with everything challenging.
Sally Phillips has teamed with Anywhere Works to place people ahead of AI (anywhere works.com/pledge-people-not-bots)
