Catherine McCormack

Catherine McCormack

Catherine McCormack was 23 when the fledgling actress, not long out of drama school, was cast as Murron, Mel Gibson's childhood sweetheart in the Oscar-winning period epic, Braveheart, the actor/director's violent, highly acclaimed account of the life of medieval Scottish patriot William Wallace. At that point, McCormack could have gone Hollywood, as they say, deciding instead to consolidate her career in her native Britain, shuttling easily between theatre, film and TV. She was Douglas Henshall's hapless wife in the Brit-flick This Years Love, set in and around Camden Lock, and inherited Catherine Byrne's theatre role in the Pat O'Connor film version of Brian Friel's beautiful play, Dancing at Lughnasa. She had her first starring role on screen opposite Rufus Sewell in Dangerous Beauty and recently starred opposite Jonathan Pryce and Alfred Molina in a film, The Moon and the Stars, which seems to perplex even herself. ("I'm a bit confused about that period," she says, laughing. "It was all a bit of a soft focus.") But it's on stage where McCormack has really shone, in a range of roles spread across the subsidised sector, from the National Theatre's erstwhile Loft space to the Cottesloe to the Donmar and the Soho; her performance in Howard Davies' superb revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons earned her a 2001 Olivier nomination for best supporting actress. One venue she hasn't played to date is northwest London's Tricycle, where McCormack is headlining a stage production of The 39 Steps that is tipped to transfer to the West End. Maria Aitken, herself no slouch as an actress, directs Patrick Barlow's adaptation of the John Buchan thriller best known from Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film, with McCormack here taking the three principal female roles filled in that movie by Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim and Peggy Ashcroft. Theatre.com spoke to McCormack during a lunch break well into rehearsals, where the actress spoke candidly about the appeal of live theatre, the elusive nature of stardom, and the sheer resistibility of making her career entirely in L.A..

This 39 Steps was previously seen at the West Yorkshire Playhouse last summer in Leeds with a mostly different cast. (Of the four performers, only Simon Gregor remains.) Did you see it there?
No, but it's the same piece: a version of the film on stage with only four actors, so it's a real challenge. I play three characters, while Charlie [leading man Charles Edwards, late of the Judi Dench Hay Fever] plays just Richard Hannay, But the other two actors [Gregor and Rupert Degas] between them play 30-40 characters each for what are essentially brief moments: it's really the two of them scrambling around.

Is this production inspired more by Buchan's novel or by the Hitchcock film?
It's really taken directly from the film. We try and create some of those Hitchcock close-ups through lighting and staging. Film buffs should enjoy spotting the references: we've got a little Hitch moment where he appears as a small cardboard cut-out, so you should keep your eyes peeled for his entrance. [Laughs.]

That movie was itself remade at least twice and I gather there's talk of yet another. I suppose in current times, the story of an innocent man on the run somewhat taps into our surveillance-driven society.
Yes, cameras everywhere, and then they go missing when it comes to Jean Charles de Menezes.

Charles Edwards & Catherine McCormack in The 39 Steps

Quite. And I gather you play all the film's main women.
What's interesting is that all the roles are quite melodramatic in the film—certainly the German spy. They're rather broad sketches of characters and larger-than-life, so it's great fun for an actor. You've just got to be brave and go over the top. The nature of the piece is that it's a comedy, really, at the end of the day with a love story attached, so you've just got to throw yourself in there. You can't be self-conscious in any way, shape, or form.

Well, it certainly sounds very different from playing Shepard or Miller or the proverbial "other woman" who breaks up the family in Joanna Murray-Smith's Honour (one of McCormack's finest performances).
[Laughs.] Very different: that was part of what drew me to the script when it arrived. I thought it would be a challenge to play three different roles, all sort of quite comedic characters either due to the characterisation or to the events that happen to them. I just thought the idea of staging the film with four actors sounded extraordinary; I was intrigued, as well, to see how one could possibly do that.

But surely the movie poses very specific challenges; it's so particularly cinematic.
This is a very physical production. It's set in Hannay's apartment at the outset and then that apartment becomes everything: the train journey to Scotland, the Highlands, the car that we take—everything gets transformed by the movement.

I've been impressed for some time at your commitment to the theatre when there must be all sorts of competing pressures not to do so much stage work.
Well, it's just so satisfying, though I enjoy doing films and TV, too. But I've found the roles more fulfilling in the plays I've been a part of, and I've worked with some wonderful directors like Wilson Milam [A Lie of the Mind] and Roger Michell [Honour] and Howard Davies [All My Sons]: people I've learned a lot from. To work in the Cottesloe, for instance: I just love that space so much, and most actors seem drawn to those intimate spaces; they're not so declamatory, I guess, and therefore much more naturalistic.

And now you're doing the Tricycle, which offers a different kind of intimacy.
Yes, and it's great for me to get to—20 minutes on the Silverlink train from Richmond.

Somewhat surprisingly, though, you've never played the West End.
No. I didn’'t transfer with Dinner, when that moved to Wyndham's from the National. But there are a couple of theatres interested in taking this in if it goes down well. I've signed a contract to do that as part of the deal.