Not that Kinda Girl. Lisa Maxwell
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a fifth former. I was mesmerised by her beauty and sophistication; she was the most stunning girl I had ever seen. She wore drainpipe jeans tucked into her boots, had feather-cut hair and always seemed to be carrying a large portfolio, probably full of gorgeous 10” by 8” headshots. We all wanted to be Leslie Ash.
The whole place was magical. In the loos were slim white paper bags with a picture of a crinoline lady on the front. We four thought they were there for our ballet pumps (one shoe fitted perfectly in each bag) and we lined them up in the dressing room. I’m sure the older girls must have been in fits of laughter. We were also convinced there was a ghost in one of the classrooms (we called him ‘Ghost Boy Blue’) and left notes out for him. They always disappeared, which meant he was real. Years later, when Karen and I were revisiting the school, we discovered the teachers had been nipping in to take them – they thought it was very funny.
Italia Conti was run by the Shewards, whose four children had all been taught there and now helped out: I got to know the youngest, Graham, really well. They are a brilliant family, dedicated to the school and the kids who go there. I think I was the smallest in our year, but from the beginning it worked out well for me. Even before I started full time in the summer holidays we got a call from the Conti Agency (when you attended the school you were automatically placed on the books). The BBC were casting a TV show (Ballet Shoes, based on the book by Noel Streatfeild) and they were looking for girls under 4’6” to play extras. We had to be aged 11 or over to be allowed to work, yet most girls that age were too tall. I was nearly 12, but only 4’ 21/2”.
‘Oh, bless her!’ said the girl from the agency when Mum told her how tall I was, and we could hear them laughing in the background. She then had to check with the casting director that I wasn’t too small, and luckily I wasn’t. I was thrilled to be working and being paid about £50 before I’d even started at stage school. But it wasn’t all happy memories, and this was also my first experience of something that would haunt me throughout my time as a child actor.
In order to work, all child actors had to go to the Inner London Education Authority and jump through hoops put in place to ensure we weren’t being exploited. We were weighed and measured, then had to prove our schoolwork was up to date and a third of our earnings was being saved. For me, the worst part was that I had to produce my birth certificate every time, and whenever I pulled it out there it was in big bold letters: ‘Father Unknown’.
Why couldn’t Mum just make up a name? Why does everyone have to know? I would think to myself. We lie about everything else in our family, so couldn’t she have told ‘just a little fib’? The school would ring up to say I had a job, adding casually, ‘Make sure Lisa brings in her birth certificate.’ Of course it was no big deal to them, but my heart would sink. If only one person could have put it in perspective. I wish someone had said, ‘Your mum had a really shit time because everyone judged her but actually they got it wrong, it doesn’t matter – she and your Nan and Grandad should stop worrying about what other people might say and accept the situation.’ But no one did, and it was years before I could tell myself the same thing. As it was, I couldn’t be in the same room when they looked at the birth certificate, I couldn’t bear seeing someone else’s eyes reading ‘Father Unknown’ – it made me feel physically sick. The worst thing was people feeling sorry for me. I can’t stand pity.
For most of the filming of Ballet Shoes I was at the barre doing exercises. I was never the best at ballet and the teacher in the film would come up behind us and whack my backside, which was always sticking out. When the programme was finally broadcast on television it was hard to spot ‘class member number three, second from the left’ with my hair scraped back and the same clothes as everyone else. Then again, had I stood out I wouldn’t have been doing my job properly. We didn’t have video in those days to pause and freeze frame, but Mum, Nan and Grandad all went along with it, claiming they knew me. Although I was only an extra, it was still exciting to be in front of the cameras, and the experience gave those of us taking part a bit of prestige when we arrived at the beginning of term. My friend Laura was in it with me and we felt like the chosen ones.
And the parts kept coming in. Next, I was in a TV sitcom called The Many Wives of Patrick with Patrick Cargill, who was very upper class. With my Italia Conti vowels, I could also play posh. Around this time I also did a pilot for The Gender Gap with Judy Parfitt and Francis Matthews, and again I was supposed to be from the top drawer. I think they got a surprise when I muffed a line and suddenly said ‘Oh fuck it!’ Not just the sound of a 12-year-old swearing, but a real Cockney accent when I was acting so terribly, terribly proper. Just after that I landed another part in a kids’ series: A Place Like Home. It was great, not just because I loved acting: it meant that I could secure my full Equity membership (in those days it was tough to get into the actors’ union and impossible to secure work unless you happened to be in it).
A Place Like Home was about growing up in a foster home (Pauline Quirke from Birds of a Feather played one of the other kids). I had a lead role: a sweet little kid with my hair in plaits, always planting things in the garden. However, I caused real problems by catching chicken pox in the middle of filming and they had to rewrite the scripts around my absence. Years later, when I worked with Pauline again, she told me she was cursing me at the time because she had to learn a lot of my lines as well as her own. She even had to play a game of Monopoly on-camera, playing my part, too! When I went back, the make-up girls worked hard to paint out the last three spots on my face.
Having these jobs so early on was a huge boost to my confidence because everyone there wanted to work. The school were very kind to Mum and me: they knew how much of a struggle it was for us financially and so they put me up for any job going. I was very happy at school, although I know some of the other pupils weren’t – you’ve got to remember every kid who goes there is the best in their local dancing school, and then they get to Conti’s, where they meet 15 or so other versions of themselves, some more talented and more confident. This can have two effects: either it boosts your confidence and sends you on your way, reaching for dazzling showbiz heights, or it can do the exact opposite and make you realise you’re not so talented or as special as you thought.
For me, it opened up a wonderful escape. Italia Conti was completely classless, with working-class pupils like me and other kids from well-set-up, middle-class backgrounds, who lived in the suburbs in houses with gardens. Most of them had brothers and sisters, and to me this meant they were not accidents – their parents had wanted to have them and that’s why they had more kids afterwards. I always felt being an only child was part of the shame of my birth, and for years I was under the impression only children were unplanned and unwanted.
Although the friends I knew when I first started were other working-class girls, soon I was mixing with others from privileged backgrounds and they spoke nicely (without pretending) and lived in big houses. I was always self-conscious about where I lived, and if anyone gave me a lift I’d be dropped off round the corner in Bath Terrace (which sure didn’t sound like a council estate). Later, I found that the well-to-do kids didn’t have an issue with where I was from. I had a South African friend called Renee who used to stay and her family were fine about it, even though they were wealthy. I was forever borrowing her clothes (she was the first girl in school to wear trousers) and I kept a pair of her grey flannels for months. To me, her Mason & Pearson hairbrush seemed like the height of posh and I swore I’d have one of my own as soon as I could afford it.
Today I’m embarrassed by the young Lisa who was ashamed of the Rockingham Estate because I’m a very down-to-earth person, the complete opposite of a snob: at the time I was so self-conscious about being out of wedlock it made me feel bad about my whole background. What I loved was being able to blag my way through to convince everyone I had the right to be there. Deep down, I felt like a pretender. Then again, a lot of actors admit they are always afraid someone will come up to them and say, ‘You’re not actually very good at acting, are you?’ They always think they’re going to get found out. That’s how I’ve felt all my life, but not about my acting – about me: ‘I know who you are, you’re that little kid who hasn’t got a dad, who comes from a council estate at Elephant and Castle,’ they’ll tell me. Confident in my acting, I was also comfortable with walking into a room and talking to anyone. I wasn’t scared of anything … except