Kathryn Hunter is riding high. She’s just played all three witches in a scene-stealing performance in Joel Coen’s bravura film of Macbeth, which is being talked up for major awards. A genuine theatrical star has suddenly made an impact on the big screen and is finding a wider audience – to her obvious pleasure. “I’d love to do more film,” she says, with a huge smile. “It’s like going to a new country. You get all the Alice in Wonderland excitement of that.”
In the meantime, however, the 64-year-old is busy with her first love: the stage. As a result, we’re sitting in an untidy meeting room in the upstairs office of London’s Almeida Theatre, where she is rehearsing opposite her husband Marcello Magni in a new version of Ionesco’s absurdist drama The Chairs. It’s familiar territory for her – a place where her remarkable shape-shifting qualities, her ability to become somebody quite different in front of your eyes, will find full scope.
