Alex Kingston: ‘Me and Prince were both wallflowers at the same Hollywood party’
The Best and Worst of is a regular interview in which a celebrity reflects on the highs and lows of their life.
Born in Epsom in 1963 Alex Kingston joined the Royal Shakespeare Company after three years at RADA. She made her big screen breakthrough in 1989’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, followed by her starring role as Moll Flanders opposite Daniel Craig. In 1997 she relocated to LA to play Doctor Elizabeth Corday in the globally successful medical drama ER, where she stayed for 14 years. Film roles since include Croupier and Alpha Dog, with small-screen parts on Doctor Who, Arrow and The Widow. Twice divorced – from Ralph Fiennes and Florian Haertel, with whom she has a 23-year-old daughter Salome – she married third husband Jonathan Stamp in 2015.
Best childhood memory?
Every year we would go to stay with my maternal grandmother in a small village near Frankfurt. One Christmas when I was about five, it was snowy outside, and my mum said, “I can hear bells outside, that’s Christkind.” Christkind was an angel who brought you a present if you were good. I went to the back door and saw this angelic vision with beautiful, long silver hair in a long dress and bare feet and was totally transfixed. Christkind asked me to sing a Christmas song, then she gave me a gift and I literally blew my circuit. It was only years later that I discovered it was my mum’s friend dressed in a carnival wig. I tried to pull the same ruse on my own daughter years later, but she didn’t buy it.
Best day of your life?
I’m sure my daughter would like me to say it was her birth, but the reality is it wasn’t. I was in labour for 36 hours and she had a knot in her umbilical cord, and we didn’t even know if she was going to survive. I was so exhausted there was just relief rather than elation. The most joyful day was my wedding day in Rome to my third husband, which was just extraordinary. It was a bacchanalian experience. We were both so happy to have found each other and we really went for it.
Best leading man?
I learned so much from Kenneth Branagh. He was so open and there was this amazing trust. It was an unspoken thing that we were both making ourselves extremely vulnerable and we both trusted each other not to take advantage of that vulnerability.
Best Hollywood party?
When I was married to Ralph, we went to the 1994 Oscars as he was nominated for Schindler’s List. We went to the Vanity Fair party, which I had no idea was such a big deal. Ralph was whisked off and I found myself standing against a wall alone, just observing people, then I realised that standing next to me, slightly lower down from me, but also observing people, was Prince, who I have an obsession with. I didn’t dare say a word and I don’t even think that he clocked me, but we were both similarly disengaged from the whole party and just standing there like wallflowers.
Best personality trait?
I’m practical. I’ve always been a dreamer and I’ve always been artless and na?ve, but I think I’ve toughened over the years. Domestically I’m good at sorting things out. I’m a good cook and, if the dishwasher breaks, I’ll go in and fiddle around until I figure it out.
Best decision?
Moving back to England after ER. And probably moving there in the first place when I was offered ER. I was in two minds as to whether I should do it or not as I had no idea what a big show it was. I thought I might move over, do one episode and they’d realise they’d made a mistake and I’ll be sacked, but I gave myself a talking to and took it. Then again in 2017 it just felt right to return. Most of my work at that time was in England, and I just felt I couldn’t deal with the long commute anymore.
Best life lesson?
When you miss an opportunity there’s always something else. Not necessarily better, but there’s always an alternative that is just as good or satisfactory.
Best sibling memory?
One of my younger sisters, Susie, is profoundly physically and mentally handicapped. She was born several years after me so there’s not been a conscious moment where I thought, “oh no, that’s so sad”; her disability was there from day one, as she was deprived of oxygen when she was born. And actually – this is actually a really positive memory – but when she was young, she couldn’t walk and had to drag herself across the floor on her bottom. My mum sewed leather patches on the bottom of her trousers as she’d wear away the cloth. When my youngest sister Nicola was born when I was eight, the family gathered at home after the christening and Susie was at the other end of the living room and suddenly pulled herself up at the table and walked – for the very first time – over to my mum and her new sister. Everybody burst into tears and that was it. From that moment onwards she was walking and running, and has done so ever since.
Worst moment on stage?
I was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Christian Slater and on the first day of rehearsals, I walked into a lamppost and fell flat on the back of my head but carried on rehearsing. That evening we had dinner at Joe Allen’s and I suddenly felt like I was going to be sick, then I fainted and fell flat on my face and knocked my two front teeth out, bit through my lower lip and concussed myself for the second time in one day. The hospital sewed up my lip and told me not to work but I said, “the show must go on”, so went back to rehearsals the next day with a lip like a deep-dish pizza and I couldn’t retain anything. Luckily the stand-up comedians I was performing with improvised around me during all the previews, then, thank God, on the press night the veil lifted, and I remembered everything, and I was absolutely fine for the rest of the run.
Worst real-life medical moment?
Ten days after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest finished, I flew back to LA and had a transient ischaemic attack, which is essentially a mini stroke. I spent three days being investigated in hospital before they concluded that it was because of the initial concussion and that my synapses hadn’t properly reconnected. I’m fine now but for a long time I thought I had Alzheimer’s because for a few months there were certain words I couldn’t say. I knew what they were, but I just couldn’t access them. “Carrot” was one. I just couldn’t say it and I didn’t want to tell anyone, as I was so scared that they’d realise I had Alzheimer’s, so instead I’d say things like, “Let’s have some orange vegetables, what have we got in the fridge?” and my daughter would go, “Carrots?” and I’d go, “Yes!” It wasn’t until that moment that I realised the full potential of what I could have lost with that fall.
Worst TV medical moment?
In the first season of ER they had these most extraordinary, flawless prosthetics, down to every single mole and hair. We’d been doing this scene for a couple of days with this man wearing a prosthetic chest and we were using scalpels. For some reason I’d also been clamping his prosthetic nipples. Then at one point during shooting I came in as Doctor Corday and clamped his nipples and he was like, “Aaaawwwwwww! What the f--- are you doing!” as he didn’t have the prosthetic chest on. Everyone was trying really hard not to laugh, and I felt terrible.
Worst moment of your life?
I’ve been through two divorces and two failed adoptions, and those were really, really terrible low times and I thought, “life can’t get worse than this”. But actually the worst moment of my life was my mother dying. I would describe divorcing as like a death and I would describe going through the adoption process and being there with the baby that you think you will parent and the baby being taken because the mother has changed her mind, as a death too. But actually, they’re nothing like the death of my mother, which happened two years ago. For the last two weeks I was by her side, sleeping next to her the whole time. I thought I was preparing myself but when she died, I became like a child. I just wanted my mummy. That deep, deep loss has been incredibly, incredibly difficult.
Worst moment of celebrity?
Fame felt suffocating very early on in my career, especially when my marriage issues with Ralph went public. There was a time when there were paparazzi outside the house, and I felt like I was in a fishbowl being watched. I was in quite a bad way as I just felt like I was in a cage, and I just didn’t know what to do. It was awful. Then Emma Thompson, who had just gone through her split from Kenneth Branagh, called me and said, “pack your bag. I’m sending someone to get you and you can stay at my house”. Which is what I did.
Worst thing anyone’s said to you?
I was about 16 or 17 and I went to a disco at a local scout hut near Reigate, where I grew up. This guy came up to me and asked me to dance – he was probably about 19 – and he looked quite nice, so we started dancing then he said to me, “Do you know who you remind me of? Barbra Streisand”. At which point I walked off immediately, as she was so much older than me. He missed his opportunity.
Worst advice?
I’d just finished ER and my daughter was very young and I was offered a job on the series Rome, which would have meant I’d had to move to Italy, and my agent at the time dissuaded me from doing it as they said it would be too disruptive with a small child. I didn’t take the job and the show was a huge success and I kicked myself but that bad advice actually ended up being good advice as my current husband worked on that show, and if I’d met him then it would have been the wrong time in my life, and we might not have ended up together.
Alex Kingston is currently appearing in The Other Boleyn Girl at Chichester Festival Theatre, 19 April – 11 May, cft.org.uk
