The Sunday Express Magazine

The Sunday Express Magazine
23 January 2000

Bright Young Thing
Wives and Daughters made her a star, but Justine Waddell is still a shy girl at heart
Interview Charlotte Moore Photograph Sean Cook

Justine Waddell has just had her hair cropped. “I didn’t think people would recognize me,” she says, ruffling her shorn pixie curls. “I mean,” she mutters, staring earnestly at her glass of Diet Coke, apparently petrified that she has uttered something she shouldn’t, “it’s only that quite a lot of people watched it.” The “it” she is nervously referring to is Wives and Daughters, the BBC adaptation of Mrs. Gaskell’s unfinished novel, in which she starred as Molly, the naïve, brainy and desperately kind-hearted daughter of Mr. Gibson, the village doctor. With viewing figures that reached the 9 million mark, she might well worry.

Despite the new hair, the waiters—and just about everybody else in the restaurant—have recognized Justine and she seems unable to relax, which is hardly surprising. She is, after all, only 23 and in her brief but non-stop three-year career, she has rarely been interviewed. “I did have one very sweet proposal of marriage,” she says suddenly, telling a rare personal anecdote. “I was in the video shop near where I live and this guy standing next to me said, ‘Hey, I recognize you. Will you marry me?” I asked him what video he’d chosen and he said something like Speed II, so I said, ‘If you don’t mind, I won’t marry you,’” and she laughs in her deep and deliciously soft voice.

It’s impossible to imagine Justine Waddell ever really relishing her celebrity status. With her neat Hepburnesque figure, modish dress sense and wide smiling eyes, she seems sharp, sexy and fun. But the minute you begin talking to her, you discover she is a rather trickier mix—acutely shy and extremely guarded. It’s not that she seems meek and mousey or cool and moody—she is far from either. Nor is she unfriendly. She just seems to prefer to say less rather than more. Her answers are clipped and unfinished and, rather than verbal explanations, she’ll often opt for a little shrug or the lift of an eyebrow. Her first job was in the film version of Anna Karenina, her second, in Chekov’s Ivanov at the Old Vic with Ralph Fiennes, Bill Paterson and Harriet Walter. When quizzed about working with such luminaries, she registers the thrill of it with a school-girlish, “Wow!”, only adding politely, “They were wonderful: it was an honor to work with them.” When pushed to say what they were like as people, she admits that she was “hardly going to step forward and do huge amounts of socializing with them. I mean,” she adds carefully, “they were a lot older than me and it was London and everyone rushes off and does their own thing.” That she’s frightened of saying the wrong thing and offending her fellow actors is no big surprise, for she has worked with some impressive names. As well as Ralph and Bill, there’s Charlotte Rampling, Michael Gambon and Francesca Annis, and Justine is just about to embark on a four-month countrywide run as Nina in the Adrian Noble production of Chekov’s The Seagull, also starring Penelope Wilton and Richard Johnson. And all this before most of her friends have tossed away their college scarves.

Justine was born in Johannesburg and the family moved, via “a weeny town on the Scottish borders”, to London when she was 14. Her wealthy parents—Scottish father and South African mother—are now retired and Justine has an older sister and a younger brother, as well as two sisters from her father’s first marriage.

But it’s hard to fathom what life was like in the Waddell household. “My parents were both very busy people,” Justine shrugs. “You did your own thing and just got on with it.” She went to a girls’ private day school in Baker Street. “I was a spotty, academic teenager—there was a bit of clubbing but I guess, umm, what I’m saying is that I wasn’t an extrovert.” She stumbles over her words and it’s clear that being shy bothers her. Later, she revealingly remarks that “the great release about acting is that you’re actually saying somebody else’s words—so it takes the social pressure away”.

But although acting seems to have become her preferred method of expressing herself, she says that she “certainly didn’t have the nous to walk up to anyone at school and announce I was going to be an actress.” And although she went to Cambridge University with a vague idea that it was a good place to get involved with drama, she studied politics rather than English with a view to becoming a documentary film-maker. “I’m so glad I didn’t study literature,” she gushes, “It means I can read Dickens for fun.” More evidence of her above-average intelligence comes by way of the fact that she’s speeding through the complete works of Shakespeare. “Right now I’m reading the history plays and a wonderful book by Flaubert called Sentimental Education.” Hardly light bedtime reading. Without her being pushy or wildly ambitions, it was at Cambridge that her acting flourished. “My first play there was Romeo And Juliet—I played Juliet, which was wonderful because before, I’d only ever played men.” After her second year she took the French play L’Alouette by Jean Anouilh to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, playing the lead, Joan of Arc. And she was discovered almost by accident.

“I saw her and just thought she was terrific,” says her agent Paul Lyon-Maris (whose clients include Catherine Zeta Jones). “I can’t say exactly what it was about her, buts she had this beautiful voice and a fantastic quality.” So, despite the fact that she was just 20 and in the middle of her academic career, he suggested that he represent her.

“I think innocence is bliss,” Justine says when asked how she felt about an agent signing her so quickly. “If you didn’t know how lucky you are, you don’t go around bragging about it.”” She deferred her third year at university to do Ivanov and, with high profile projects such as The Woman In White, in which she played Tara Fitzgerald’s little sister, and Great Expectations with Ioan Gruffyd on her CV, she returned to Cambridge to complete her degree in six weeks. Indeed, she makes everything she does s sound a breeze . “I got a 2:1 and I think I had some very furious friends who thought, if she can do it in six weeks, what were we doing for three years?”

With such an action packed career, she’s had little time for a social life. “I’m terrible at organizing, particularly social organizing. In fact, I had a house-warming party the other week and became very bunny-in-the-headlights about it. My best friend arrived and had to do the vacuuming.” Nor does she spend her time furiously networking in London’s thespian hangouts, preferring to tuck herself away in Stratford. “I couldn’t think of anything worse,” she mutters. Light relief has come from purchasing and redecorating what she describes as her “haven” in west London. “I’m having great fun buying armchairs and old mirrors—you suddenly realize there’s a whole world of shopping out there that you never knew existed.”

And what of romance? “I haven’t really had time for any relationships. I mean, I don’t have any regrets about that, it has been such and exciting time. Everyone wants to meet someone, yes, but I would never go out with someone just for the sake of it—that would drive me mad.” So apart from the man in the video shop, there have been no proposals of marriage? “No,” she grins, shaking her head and at last appearing relaxed, “definitely not”.


The Seagull previews in Stratford upon Avon from January 36 and will tour nationwide for six weeks from the end of February before transferring to London. Tel 01789 403 403 for ticket details.