Actress
Finty Williams wants to follow in her mother's footsteps. But she knows
she will be taking an enormous professional risk if she does.
Finty, who is currently starring in Alan Ayckbourn's famous comedy Bedroom Farce at Windsor's Theatre Royal, has already followed her mother Dame Judi Dench by becoming an actor.
But she admits there is one role that her mother played in the 1960s that she would love to put her own mark on.
She said: "I would love to do a musical, and if I did, it would have to be Sally Bowles in Cabaret. It would probably be professional suicide to take on a role that my mother did so brilliantly. I can just hear them lining up to say I wasn't as good as she was. But it is still something I would like to try."
Growing up with parents as talented as Dame Judi and the late Michael Williams meant that Finty was exposed to the lure of the theatre at a young age.
But her original career plan was rather different. She said: "I wanted to be a ballet dancer and I tried for years. Unfortunately, I was simply the wrong shape. Then I started to notice how much fun my mother seemed to have acting and it was that sense of fun that made me decide to be an actor. I was not after fame, I just wanted to have a bash at it."
Finty had her first stroke of luck when she won a role in a children's television show called The Torch at the age of 17.
She said: "It meant travelling to Greece, Yugoslavia and Tenerife, and unfortunately, the show was rather bizarre to say the least."
The chance was being offered to appear in a production of Pride and Prejudice at the Royal Exchange in Manchester that convinced her she had found the job for her.
She says: "I realised at once that this was the job for me and that it was the theatre I loved. I always seemed to enjoy parts that involved being in a corset."
She is not immune to the lure of the cinema though, especially when given the chance to work with a director as good as Robert Altman.
Finty played the maid Janet in Gosford Park, the latest film from the brilliant director of MASH and The Player. It was set in an English country house in the 1930s and featured the cream of British acting talent as masters and servants.
Finty said: "It was a pleasure just to be there and to see how a brilliant director like that weaves his magic. I'll always look back on that experience with gratitude."
Surprisingly, there is no corset or period clothes for Finty in Bedroom Farce, in which she plays a young married girl called Kate."She is just married, in love and slightly ditzy."
When the show ends, Finty will return to what she sees as her real full-time job, looking after her six-year-old son Sam.
Thanks so much to Jan M for sending me this article which appeared on the ic.Berkshire.co.uk website and is dated January 28, 2004.Return