A Curious Career Read Online Free Page B

the end of the street. Marianne says she can’t possibly walk, so we pile into the limousine to drive 50 yards to the corner. It is a sweet, friendly, family-run Italian restaurant that has no idea what hell awaits it. No sooner have we been ushered into a private room downstairs than Marianne is muttering, ‘What do you have to do to get a drink around here?’ Order it, seems the obvious answer, but that’s too simple – François has to order it for her. Unfortunately – my huge mistake – I have let him and the PR eat downstairs with us, albeit at a separate table, and even more unfortunately I have placed Marianne against the wall, where she can see François over my shoulder. I could smack myself: what’s the use of serving all these years in the interviewing trenches if I still make such elementary mistakes?
    Suddenly, Marianne is shouting at François, ‘Get it together!’ and he is shouting back, ‘What do you want, Marianne?’ ‘I don’t know. What have they got?’ she counters, drumming her feet under the table and moaning, ‘I. Can. Hardly. Bear. It.’ François keeps asking whether she wants wine or a cocktail. I’m thinking rat poison. Eventually she tells François a bottle of rosé. The waiter brings it with commendable speed and starts pouring two glasses. She snatches mine away – ‘We don’t need that. Where’s the ice bucket?’ The waiter goes away and comes back with an ice bucket. ‘I’ll have the veal escalope,’ she tells him. He waits politely for my order. ‘Veal! Vitello! ’ she snaps – she can’t understand why he is still hanging around when he should be off escaloping veal. ‘I’ll have the same,’ I say wearily.
    I’m already fed up with her and we haven’t even started. But at this point – a tad late, in my view – she suddenly flicks the switch marked ‘Charm’ and bathes me in its glow. ‘Cheers!’ she says. ‘Sorry I yelled. A slight crise there. It’s been a long day.’ (Really? She was still in bed at one, it is now seven, hardly a full shift at the coalface.) But anyway, she is – finally – apologetic. And I in turn put on my thrilled-to-meet-you face and tell her that I deeply enjoyed her autobiography Faithfull (1994), which I did. It is a truly amazing story – a pop star at seventeen, a mother at eighteen, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend at nineteen, reigning over Cheyne Walk – and yet by her thirties she was a heroin addict living on the street in Soho. Even if she didn’t write a word of it (David Dalton was co-author), she deserves some credit just for living it. For a while she basks in my compliments and then switches off the charm and snaps, ‘But I’m not going to talk about the book, I want to talk about the film.’ Huh? Too late I realise my mistake with the placement – obviously there has been some signal from François.
    So then she launches into her spiel about Intimacy – how she saw Patrice Chéreau, the director, in a Paris restaurant and rushed over to tell him she loved his film La Reine Margot and to ask, ‘Can I be in your next film?’ He said yes, and started writing a part for her that night. It is quite a small part, as a loopy bag lady, but Chéreau evidently convinced her it’s the pivot of the film. Did she mind having to look so unglamorous? ‘I did and I didn’t. The first time I saw it, it was a shock. But I would jump off a cliff for Patrice. I don’t know why, but I really fell in love with him and I want to work with him again. He’s one of the reasons I’m doing this interview. I want the film to be a success – I want Patrice to go on making films in English so I can work with him again.’
    Actually, I would have thought that Patrice Chéreau’s career could survive without the services of a ratty old rock chick. But let that go – she is very good in the film, however briefly. She has always had the potential to be a good actress, but four years ago she told the Radio Times , ‘I was