Olivia Williams

Olivia Williams: ’It can be unnerving working for Polanski’

Olivia Williams got her big break as Bruce Willis’s wife in The Sixth Sense. Now, in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost, she steals the show as the bruised, though vulnerable wife of a disgraced former prime minister holed up with his ghost-writer in Martha’s Vineyard, writes Euan Ferguson

Nice, wouldn’t it be, to have your life begin at 41? You’d have gone through the whole cliched begins-at-40 thing, wondering when, exactly, it was going to start, justifiably hating cliches, and then, suddenly, in it kicks at 41. Hurrah. Olivia Williams, smart and vaguely leftie child of Camden barristers, wasn’t in any hurry: she just wanted to be a terribly good actress. She managed that, although too few of us noticed, and quietly managed along the way to marry American actor/playwright Rhashan Stone, have a couple of happy daughters, cherry-pick her parts… and now, suddenly, at that glorious age, will find herself this year feted, deservedly but tardily, for her performance as an ex-PM’s wife. I’m in two minds over whether Tony Blair should watch this film. He would hate himself, but he would also fall in love with his wife all over again.

I can’t quite tell, in retrospect, whether Williams would appreciate the comparison, but meeting her is like meeting Kristin Scott Thomas – not the actress, but, possibly even better, the Four Weddings character made real: suave, charming, wryly self-knowing, not above the odd cut-glass four-letter word. She has just flown in from Los Angeles, where she has her other, non-London, home, to begin promoting The Ghost, Roman Polanski’s take on the Robert Harris bestseller, which is called The Ghost Writer in America so they don’t confuse it with someone getting fruity over wobbly pottery. No, this is the one about a recent British ex-PM for whom the hand of history has turned into a claw of recriminations, over war crimes and misdemeanours, now holed up in Martha’s Vineyard with his wife, his mistress, his memories and a hapless everyman of a ghost-writer, winningly played by Ewan McGregor.

But it’s Williams, as the wife of PM "Adam Lang", who steals the show. Brighter than all around her, but bruised as so many have been by the years of collateral damage, she simply grips the screen with her wit, with the way in which her refusal to forgive herself for anything has carapaced into a refusal to extend forgiveness to anyone else; and then with her sudden, shocking vulnerability.

"I wanted to be involved ever since I heard about it, but got that slight out-of-your-league message from my representatives. But my best jobs have come along when someone has dropped out or they haven’t found the right person by the last minute, and I see no shame in that. My father, who’s a barrister, always said his best cases were ’returns’. My best jobs have all been returns and thank you very much for them all."

There was, she explains, "obviously a huge interest in working for one of the greatest and most interesting directors alive today", but there was also slight trepidation. Not over Polanski, whose recent travails she is not going to talk about, although she’s not going to talk about them with many soft and sincere apologies.

No, the trepidation was over the obvious Blair parallel. "If someone had been looking for a sort of Stephen Frears-style impersonation, I couldn’t have bettered Helen McCrory’s astonishing Cherie Blair and wouldn’t have tried. But it was made obvious to me very early on that nobody was looking for that: it’s not an impersonation, or a pastiche, just a character." In fact, moments into the film, despite the easy parallels on paper, Pierce Brosnan as Lang is so different – ebullient, and aggressive-aggressive rather than the passive- kind – from Blair that you forget the link.

"If you attempt for the moment to clear your mind of the modern parallels," adds Williams, "the character on the page is just a fucking gift. They just don’t come along that often, women of that, of my, age. And, without giving away too much, to have Roman Polanski create your denouement for two hours – again, thank you Lord."

On whom, then, did she base such a memorably real character? "With all due respect to her, my mum is quite like the description. The way Robert Harris described the character is a very interesting type of woman who I think I know, which is a woman who has succeeded in her field – my mother’s a barrister as well – and become an interesting character in the eyes of people who are not looking for someone who’s always trying to please. And this character… unable to hide her irritation, can’t ask for something without making it sound like an order, and all those things are sort of… traits in my family."

What was her take on the Blair years? "More than anything, I now just find the whole business profoundly embarrassing. The non-existent weapons, the cosying up to Bush. I would like to believe that Blair had good intentions, thought he would be able to control the situation. And then the arrogance just bit him on the arse. But please at least let his original intentions have been good."

Williams, perhaps best known for years as Bruce Willis’s wife in The Sixth Sense (or for stand-out performances in such varied fare as Rushmore and The Postman) and more recently as Ian Dury’s wife in the Andy Serkis triumph Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, knew very few of the other actors when she arrived on the German island of Sylt which stood in for Martha’s Vineyard. "Of course I knew Roman’s work, but also knew his reputation as being very tough on actors. Fortunately, the day before I went on set, Ewan did an impersonation of him doing his screaming fit, so when it first happened it wasn’t quite the stab to the heart.

"Roman first shouted at me when I was doing the weeping shagging scene, which is always a nightmare combination, and he came at me when I was naked in the bed, shouting,’ No, no, no’, head in his hands. It can be unnerving. And then he just moved the pillow. About three inches. In his shots, it can be as much about the vase as the acting. It was for all of us I think a hard but rewarding experience, to be looked back on with smiles. And for me, always hoping to look for an interesting role… at my age, to be able to say something other than, ’Dinner’s ready, honey’ was an absolute gift."

Did she ever feel, as the last five years began, that she had a limited time to "make it"? That, despite being plucked for a few plum Hollywood roles, and acclaimed theatre work, if she hadn’t somehow impinged further on the public consciousness it might be time to jack it in?

"Never. My career’s almost been the opposite, time-wise. I couldn’t get any of the ingenue roles when younger because at 5ft 9in with a deep voice I was always too… genue. My career has completely happened since I was 29. And with an astonishing range. I’ve been on a submarine, I’ve been in post-apocalyptic America, I’ve run a sinister organisation that imprints people’s brains… I couldn’t ask for any more fun.

"And times are getting unquestionably better for older actors. A terrible thing happened in the in-between years, this girl-power, boob-job fest. I was just there for the last of hairy-legged feminism, when we could parody those adverts that used big-knockered women to sell bulldozer equipment or whatever, and yet now it’s all over the place again! I’m a bit shocked still. But there’s a generation in between for whom that’s all now utterly acceptable.

"I have many debates now with friends on the changes, and the continuing confusion over bringing up your children, instilling values, letting them make the right choices. I sometimes cross-examine my parents about it – what did you say or do to me that meant I didn’t end up face down in the gutter with a needle in my arm? I think the answer was communicating their enjoyment in things, including their children in the things which they themselves love. " She plans this year to "reintroduce myself to my children [aged three and six]. That’s the theory. But if the right thing comes along I will always jump up and down."

Unforgivably, after too short a conversation covering everything else from US healthcare to the nuances of Chinatown, I find myself asking a breathtakingly embarrassing final question, just because I love his films. What was it like, then? Working with Bruce?

She smiles lazily, almost conspiratorially, terrified by nothing, hindered only by the courtesy of the intelligent. "As a man, I don’t think he’d be offended if I said… oh, just a big kid, really. And when you turn your tape off I’ll tell you the rest." And she does.