Younger viewers are abandoning television in favour of the internet and mobile phones, the BBC says. In the corporation’s annual report, published yesterday, the governors warned: “Younger viewers have been lost in disproportionately large numbers. Is she really playing a Black Panther opposite Mos Def? “I might be tempted if they get the money together,” she concedes “That’s the thing about Imdb; they do get things wrong. Gina [McKee] says they have her as four years older than she is.
On mine it says I’m a year younger and that I went to Cambridge. “I hope I’m not supposed to have learnt it all, because it’s a long story!”I ask about an intriguing project listed on the Internet Movie Database ( www.imdb ). Up until two days ago I thought I was going on a plane to spend two months in Chicago Now it’s fallen through. But you know,” she confides, “sometimes I get quite a sense of relief because it means I don’t have to go to work.
I can do my usual reclusive routine.”What she would get out of bed for is a juicy film lead No more girlfriends or secretaries or supporting roles “I’d like to do a really big part I’ve never actually played the full-on lead Maybe Paul [Abbott] could write me one Tomorrow, I’m doing Jackanory,” she hoots. “In the old days I’d be the last thing cast, so they might even have started filming. But now that I’m at the beginning of it all, there are a million things that can go wrong. “So no money there, then!”She’s keen to work on more documentary-based drama. Last year she appeared in Channel 4’s Born with Two Mothers, about an embryo mix-up between a black and a white couple, and earlier this year she filmed the verbatim piece, The True Voice of.. Rape, based on real-life testimony. “What I’m interested in is pushing the boundaries of storytelling.
That’s why I like the Dogme stuff because you make these little rules, to which you have to try to stick.”Ironically, her new status means that life is far more uncertain. I find it hard even to read another script; I’m very focused on it. Any other time that I’ve got, I spend with my daughter; I don’t have room for much else I wish I could make more room,” she says wistfully But, as she acknowledges, it’s still an unequal world. “No one ever asks any of the male actors I know, ‘What are you doing with the children?’ but I’m asked all the time.”She has a passion for new writing and sits on the board of directors of the Royal Court theatre.
