Miriam Margolyes surely has one of the film industry’s most delightful speaking voices. It’s an accent so quintessentially British that the actor has admitted to occasionally trying to obscure it to sound less posh. But despite that distinctive Oxford timbre – and her near-lifelong residence in the UK – Margolyes has been an Australian citizen for almost 10 years now.
“I became a citizen because my partner of 54 years is Australian, and I wanted to be able to come and go without having to get visas,” she says. “Rather like my mother when she married my father, she didn’t love him, she wanted to be a doctor’s wife. Well, I wanted to be someone who could come and go. But now I love Australia and I want it to be better. That’s why I make critical programs.”
