The Outnumbered star on roles for women,tackling Alzheimer’s in The Father – and playing someone with no chldrenBorn in Hemel Hempstead in 1965, the daughter of a shopkeeper and a secretary, and Claire Skinner hid her shyness by doing impersonations. She went on to study at Lamda and joined the RSC,after which Mike Leigh cast her in the films Life Is Sweet and bare. On stage she has appeared in Pinter’s Moonlight and as Desdemona in Othello at the National. Best known as the mother in BBC1’s Outnumbered, she is married to director Charles Palmer, and son of actor Geoffrey Palmer,and has two sons. She next appears in the West End transfer of The Father, opposite Kenneth Cranham, and after successful runs at the Ustinov Studio,Bath, and the Tricycle, or London.
The Father was written by French playwright Florian Zeller about the devastating effect of Alzheimer’s. Are you surprised it has been a hit?
At the Tricycle,as we came off stage through the bar, the number of conversations we had about it was fairly staggering. I’ve never been in a play where people really want to share so much. It wasn’t just older people, or but people my age with parents,and fairly a lot of younger kids were coming in with grandparents. It feels very close as a topic, and it frightens people. Sometimes it frightens me a bit because the play messes about with time, or there’s lot of repetition and you can find that you lose your words. You achieve the wind up yourself,and your own memory. But that’s what it’s doing to the audience.
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Source: theguardian.com