3 minute read
LESLEY MANVILLE
An Enigma “They seek her here, they seek her there, they seek her almost everywhere.” The fact is five foot two, eyes of blue, ex soprano Lesley Manville, is indeed a sought out, much awarded actress who unveils her true brilliance on stage and screen. Directors like Mike Leigh, and ex-husbands like Gary Oldman were probably mesmerized by her starry aura. Gary must have insisted she give Hollywood a try; not bad advice when one ends up costarring with Angelina Jolie in movies like “Maleficent” and Daniel Day Lewis in “Phantom Thread”, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. A Multifarious Thespian When the Guardian asked her how it felt being a middle-aged Hollywood star. She replied “Extraordinary… I’m glad it happened when it did...... I was working with Paul Thomas Anderson, I was not in a fake glitzy world of Hollywood, the work was a segue from Mike Leigh. It came left of field. I did not have to compromise to do it – or get Botoxed [laughs]. But I did go hopping and skipping and giggling to the Oscars because… why wouldn’t you?
This multifarious, Piscean thespian also told an interviewer from Anglophenia, “I do a varied palette of work and characters, and I’m incredibly grateful for that – that’s what keeps me going....I feel very equipped in my career---”. Pure Piscean Genius Let's face it, hers is pure genius; after all her Sun, Moon and Mercury are all in that highly sensitive water sign. She mixes and matches a character's faults and virtues, merging and flowing into their moods as she strips their souls bare . She literally morphs into the psychotic Claire Zachanassian in the stage version of “The Visit, “a wicked creature, and for precisely that reason must not be played wicked”. Mercury in Pisces helps her to expand on a character's contradictions, she understands things about them others could not. She is a true psychic as she merges with their puzzling souls, even if her delicate character does not stand fools gladly. She told the Guardian “There’s an inherent thing in my brain that makes me work hard. I don’t take any job for granted. I learn my lines. I know what I’m doing. I come in good spirit, good faith and with humour. I don’t ever want to slow up. I work with people much younger than me who sometimes don’t turn up prepared and I
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find that aggravating and inexcusable. And then in the next sentence, they’ll say: “I hope when I’m your age, I have your career,” and I feel like saying: “Well, buck up and get your act together!" Jupiter in Leo might account for her fiery spurts of impatience. She could even be a tad over bearing when stressed, she certainly knows her worth and is not shy of her success.
One Big Stage Could that "Go for it" Leonine aspect have encouraged her to say yes to Netflix's offer to play Princess Margaret in the “Crown”. “There was never any doubt that I would say yes. ...I thought.... Margaret! That’s fabulous because she was so avant-garde. So naughty, delightful and funny. What a wonderful woman to play.” For her existence is probably one big stage, but also a bit of a circus. A Leo combo gifts her with inherent strength, an infallible self confidence, enabling her to be a rock to a sister suffering from breast cancer. She is certainly unafraid of life's challenges. Venus in Taurus ensures she is committed to her art, responsible and hard working. In her hands, the wayward Royal sister will return, larger than life, to our screens.
She told the Guardian, even if she is 63 she would never think of herself as too old for any role. “I feel at the top of my form as an actor and a woman: free, liberated, energised. I want this “feeling to stay – I’d quite like to lock it – because I know I’m not what you’d call young.”
She is a fabulous mum and wife, yet she still remains a sensitive, enigmatic Piscean whose audiences continues to “seek her here, and there”, consistently amazed at how she vanishes into her roles, never compromising, authentic, breaking the mould as she touches our souls.
Philip Garcia Celebrity Astrologer
