Upfront
Annie Whittle
by Alistair Bone
Actress.
Annie Whittle is Kiwiana. As familiar as Buzzy-Bee, as perennially fresh and welcome as summer. She sang folk music. She was a regular on The Billy T James Show and A Week of It. She spent four years on Shortland Street, has recently done a Hollywood movie about legendary Kiwi motorcyclist Burt Munro, and now she has just opened in an Auckland Theatre Company production of Roger Hall’s latest comedy Taking Off, playing a Lotto-winning teacher. It really doesn’t get much more down-home.
Your horse bit you? I saved him from the knacker’s yard. He thinks I’m one of his mares and he was just trying to nudge me into line. I went to give him a kiss goodbye after I’d fed them, and he bit me. I was on the ground for about five minutes, my eye swelled up and I had a yellow and blue bruise on my face.
Do you consider yourself an icon? No! I would find that so inhibiting. I think I am quite crafty. And I am a good bullshit artist. I have often bullshitted my way into jobs by saying, “Oh, I can do this.” When I was working as an au pair in Germany, I was walking down the road and I heard this music coming up through a grille, so on a whim I opened the door, went down these steps and followed the music along a corridor. They opened the door and I said, “Oh, I hear you’re looking for singers.” And they said, “What? Oh? Are we? Well, what can you sing?” I desperately thought of what I knew in that style and I said “San Francisco Bay Blues”. So we did that and they said come to rehearsal on Thursday.
How long have you been in the entertainment business? As a fulltime professional? I came back from overseas and joined a rock band in 1973.
What’s with the longevity? I’ve tried only to do the things that I thought I would enjoy. There have been periods of drought, you know, when I haven’t worked. Before I got the job on Shortland Street I even did six months selling real estate. I was just appalling. I was so bad. I sold two houses in that time – and one belonged to my now husband. And I didn’t get him what I should have got him.
Why did you leave Shortland Street? I had a bit of a meltdown. You have to be prepared to accept that it is just a really glossy sausage factory. It’s fast turnaround television and they do very good work, but they have to treat you like a number. Your humanity is not really considered much. I asked to leave. And I went away and had a holiday in Fiji and thought, “I don’t want to leave, what are you talking about? I love my job.” And came back and said, “Can I stay?”, and they said, “No, we’ve already written you out.”
And it was straight into the movie The World’s Fastest Indian? My agent rang and asked how would I feel about auditioning for a movie role playing Anthony Hopkins’s girlfriend. I nearly passed out. I’m, ooooooh! It was just enough to be asked, just to entertain the thought. I did the audition, and it’s not often that it happens, but I walked out of there and thought, “Ooh, I did a really good audition!” When I’d written it off about six weeks later, they rang back and said, “We need you down in Invercargill.”
What’s Hopkins like? He was absolutely not what I expected him to be. I thought he would be a little remote, a little superior and very aware of his own greatness. Which he is absolutely not. He is a lovely, accessible, slightly shy man with a wonderful ability to tell stories. Because I was often marooned on some set with him, he told me all about growing up in Wales and all the wonderful goss about working with Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith and how they hated each other.
Are you still flying planes? I got a pilot’s licence and I had a Cessna 310. It was on lease out at Ardmore and a young pilot leased it to go down to the South Island. I was in the supermarket and I got this cellphone call and I just went completely to pieces. There was an accident and all on board perished. We were absolutely devastated. To tell you the truth, I haven’t felt the same about flying since.
What has been your best performance? When I was at university I sang in Christchurch in front of a huge audience. It was a song about the Ku Klux Klan. And I remember letting go and it was almost like someone else was inside me singing that song. And when I finished, you could have heard a pin drop. I can’t really take credit for that because it was almost as if I wasn’t singing. I had given myself over to the song. Which is kind of what you are aiming to do. You try to recreate that environment, and in theatre – rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing and working, working, working -– that’s sowing the seeds. And by the end of it, there are just so many more flowers in the garden than there were at the start.
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