Dianne Pilkington

Dianne Pilkington

Age : 32

Currently: Bringing beauty and sparkle to the Land of Oz as Glinda the Good Witch in the musical Wicked at London’s Victoria Apollo theatre. Although she has featured in major London shows before, including Les Miserables and Taboo, and also in tours of Cats and Beauty and the Beast, Pilkington’s role as Glinda in Wicked opposite Kerry Ellis’ Elphaba marks her ascendancy to the West End big league in a starring role.

Hometown: Billings, near Wigan, Lancashire. For such an accomplished performer, it’s a surprise to find out that the acting game was little more than a hobby for Pilkington until comparatively late on. In a voice that’s always on the edge of bursting into good-natured laughter, she explains how she eventually came to the stage. “I went to an am dram in Stockport when I was 13 or 14—quite a good one—but I wasn’t one of those people who knew that they wanted to do it,” she says. “I was quite academic as a young girl. A few years later there were quite a few people who came back from drama school and did the summer school at the am dram place, and one of the guys said to me, I really think you should think about going to drama college. So I thought about it and mulled it over for about a year. I think I was about 18 when I suddenly turned ‘round and said I wanted to go to drama college, and my parents nearly had a heart attack. But it’s all right—I think they’re quite happy now!”

A Spell in School: A pleasing hint of Lancashire occasionally slips through Pilkington’s otherwise beautifully modulated RP tones. It’s touching to hear her imply her presumed terrors of London when discussing her move south to study at the Guilford School of Acting. “It was amazing,” she says. “It was a big departure for me, completely different to anything I’d done before. I don’t know what it’s like now, but then it was pretty tough—you know, if you don’t turn up on time you get sent home, that sort of thing. It was enough of a traditional school environment that it suited me, and it wasn’t too much of a shock, but the grounding that you get in all aspects of theatre was perfect for me. And it was close enough to London that you could go and see things, but not be terrified by the whole big city life.”

Dianne Pilkington as Glinda in Wicked

Watching and Waiting: On leaving drama school, she went straight into her first professional role in the West End. “I was very lucky,” she recalls. “I got into the ensemble of Les Mis and I was covering Fantine and that was fantastic. Again, a really good grounding. It’s so valuable to be able to go into something like that, which is a bit of an institution. You can learn so much from the people that you’re working with without being immediately thrown into a spotlight where everybody’s staring at you, and it gives you the chance to learn your craft in private—almost.”

Breaking Through with Taboo: In 2002, she received positive attention for her portrayal of Kim in Boy George’s off-beat musical Taboo, which caused a stir at the time for its frank depictions of sexual polymorphism, drug taking and more. “It was fantastic,” she says. “I think the thing that I liked about it was that it was very different to anything I’d done before. In fact, a lot of things I‘ve done are very different from each other, and I think that’s why I still really love what I do, because I’ve gone from one extreme to another. Kim was a mad punk with a terrible chip on her shoulder and a big PVC wig. And yeah, it was very far-out and a little bit pushing the boundaries—and I think my mum might have been a bit shocked by that. But it was good fun, and it was so much fun working with Boy George.”

Musical Magpie: Pilkington’s boyfriend is a member of rock band The Vinyl Stitches. Suggest to her however that’s she might just be putting up a musical theatre front to conceal the fact that she’s secretly a “rock ‘n’ roll gal” and she breaks into a tinkle of laughter. “Is that because my boyfriend’s a rock ‘n’ roll guy?" she smiles. "I do tend to like a lot of different types of music, and before I really got into musical theatre, I didn’t really listen to it that much. I grew up listening to bands like The Verve—they’re from Wigan, so I listened to them. And of course my boyfriend’s in a band, so I do have that side of my personality but I wouldn’t say I was massively rock ‘n’ roll—I just embrace whatever scene is around.”

Dianne Pilkington and Kerry Ellis in Wicked

Over the Rainbow: It turns out that there’s a satisfying resolution for the star regards her casting in Wicked. Ask her if she had a creative role model when younger, and she’s quick to reply. “Oh, absolutely. Judy Garland. I loved her,” she exclaims. “I still do. She just embodied for me everything that a singer should be. She’s got a beautiful voice—she’s got a great tone to it, but she doesn’t just rely on that. She put so much heart into what she did; it was amazing.”

Your Dreams Come True: So being in Wicked really is something of a dream come true? “Absolutely! One of my favourite films, obviously, would have been The Wizard of Oz, and so I knew that inside out,” she says. “I loved the book of Wicked when I first read it, which was before the musical was even talked about. Glinda is a slightly nastier person in that than she is in the show—she has very few redeeming qualities. And I love the music of Stephen Schwartz, so for me it is absolutely an ideal musical to be a part of.”

Good Girl Glinda: Glinda’s journey in the show takes her from being basically a rather spoilt and quite bitchy little girl to someone rather more compassionate and mature. From the audience, it looks like Pilkington absolutely revels in the sheer deliciousness of her early scenes. “Oh, thank you!” she says, but goes on to qualify the assumption. “The thing is, I don’t think she means to be nasty. I think she has moments of bitchiness—every young girl does. And I don’t think that she’s any nastier or any nicer than any young girl. It just happens that she has advantages that she uses, like the hair and the money and the clothes and everything, and that could make anybody oblivious to the plight of other people. But eventually, she finds her way.”