Observer Review, Sunday, 5 December 1999

The Gibson Girl
Kate Kellaway

Justine Waddell's role in the BBC's costume drama Wives and Daughters has made her a star. But now she wants to come out of the corset...

Justine Waddell has come suddenly into focus. She is Molly Gibson in the BBC's dramatisation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. On screen, she looks like an ivory doll with a quizzical oval face and a black cloud of curls. She is precise and affecting. She gives us a portrait of virtue - the hardest thing in the world to act.

It is a little shocking to meet her out of Gaskellesque costume. She is boyish and chic with not a ringlet in sight. She leads the way, rather dangerously, across the road from the RSC rehearsal rooms, where she is playing Nina in Adrian Noble's production of The Sea-gull, to a restaurant opposite.

Justine explains that she has no easy affinity with Gaskell's heroine: 'Molly is challenging because she is so ordinary. I felt vulnerable playing her. Molly's intuition is to trust and be loyal and kind, things I'd call old-fashioned or naive.' And the challenge is compounded by the fact that Molly often has to react speechlessly. Justine's face has to work hard, be a stage for sentiment.

I had wondered if she might be vain (she did not want The Observer photographer to take her picture), but it is more that she cannot trust her face to behave itself. 'I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, so when I watch myself on film, I am often surprised at what my face does.' I look at her. Modigliani would have liked her almond-shaped brown eyes. She has an intelligent face. She smiles - and frowns - a lot. Her hand swats the air, as if to see off a butterfly that has flown too close to her. It is a frequent gesture but expresses something new each time she does it. Oddly, it is never dismissive. I like her spirit and intelligence but reflect that she is an interior person, slightly removed. She can seem rapt and self-conscious at the same time.

'Molly has to learn to combine her natural openness with a degree of social restraint,' Justine says. 'There are moments in life when you think, "I have to hide this because I have to face other people". It's part of becoming an adult.' Molly has to hide feelings of rejection. Has Justine had to do the same? 'Yes' (a rueful laugh, a roll of the eyes). Parts she has wished for? 'Yes.' How did she handle rejection? 'I don't think you can. Charlotte Rampling once said to me, "It's the ones that get away that haunt you..."' This is true of life, I suggest. 'Yes.' But she accepts that such experience for an actress is emotional capital.

She has also enjoyed success. Other women must be jealous of her? She blushes: 'Maybe. I've never thought of myself as someone anyone else would want to be...' But she adds, minutes later: 'I am quite happy being me.'

Independence is important to her. She does not want to 'settle'. She has an air of self-sufficiency that makes her seem older than 25. She tells a revealing story about herself, about a scene she could not play in Wives and Daughters. 'I could not sit at Mr Gibson's feet and eat cheese. It took 24 takes. It is so difficult for a young woman to sit at a man's feet and hand him cheese.'

As an actress, she craves independence, too. She would like to break free from the restraining corset of literary costume drama (she has played Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Estella in Great Expectations, Laura in The Woman in White). 'You can lean on a book, but I would love to do a modern comedy.'

She writes herself, mainly poetry (unpublished). 'I'd love to write and direct.' She was born in Johannesburg and lived there until she was 10. Her father, a Scot, removed his children to Scotland for three years. At 13, the family moved to London. She was 'blown away' by it. 'I wanted to do everything. I wanted to be an air-hostess, a neuro surgeon...' She went to a day school in Baker Street and then to Cambridge, where she read politics.

She found Cambridge 'claustrophobic'. (It is a key word for her. Earlier, she said South Africa was claustrophobic; later that London sometimes is.) So she took a year out to act in the 'real world'. This taught her 'a degree of ruthlessness'. Acting might have proved claustrophobic too and not 'real' enough, were it not that most of her friends are not actors: 'I have a few close friends, mostly people I met at Cambridge. I think friendships are ideally non-competitive - acting is competitive.'

She had four free months after Wives and Daughters during which 'I sorted out my life'. She bought a flat in west London and was able to delight her fancy with questions such as: 'What happens if you paint all your walls grey?' She is also dancing again - ballet and jazz - which she loves.

But now she must take on Chekhov's tragic girl. It is Nina who, like a naive journalist, asks the writer Trigorin: 'What is success like?' I try her question on Justine. 'I don't think anyone ever feels successful. There is always something missing, another hill to climb. And Nina is a huge hill.'

The Seagull opens at Stratford on 26 January.