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 Miriam Karlin: “It’s been pretty bloody messy”
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An accidental path to stardom
Sharon Garfinkel talks to the legendary Miriam Karlin about her life story that has combined top flight TV and stage acting with tireless political activism
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TIME passes quickly when you’re talking with actress Miriam Karlin.
We’re chatting following the publication of her intensely frank and inviting autobiography – Some Sort of a Life – and the octogenarian is in an open and upbeat mood despite the fact that a forthcoming ultrasound is playing on her mind.
The book stemmed from a suggestion by her friend Jan Sargent – a director and therapist – following Karlin’s diagnosis and successful treatment for cancer last year.
Once she heard that Karlin was to have six weeks of radiotherapy and chemo, Sargent offered to visit her with a tape recorder so that they could speak about “things that had interested me throughout my life” recalls Karlin. This proved to be a catharsis best described by the actress as an “upchuck” as “it certainly helped me as it was the most wonderful focal point for me” she tells me.
And the conversational tone of the book makes it absorbing for the reader. And it touches on all areas of her packed life including politics, trade unionism, religion, education, family and, of course, acting.
But, why the title? “There was nothing ever planned out – no life plan” she concedes, adding “It’s been pretty bloody messy. I don’t know how I’ve got through these 82 years. Going into the theatre was never planned. If I were to sum up my life with one adjective it would be ‘messy’. But, I should be nicer to myself. It’s been full of variety.”
Indeed Karlin has worked for more than 60 years, making her a pillar of the British acting establishment. She tells me that she has “regretted” never getting a degree “but it was a stroke of luck that I went to South Hampstead High School for Girls as my leanings towards the arts were nourished there”.
Her career stretches from the early days of television and film to cabaret and stage and she has performed with some of the biggest names in the business including Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers and Bing Crosby. Her most noted productions include A Clockwork Orange, The Rag Trade, Torch Song Trilogy, The Diary of Anne Frank, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be and Fiddler on the Roof.
It is perhaps The Rag Trade which endeared her to the British public. She played a stroppy shop steward in a garment factory and even now cabbies utter her trademark line “everybody out” when they meet her and invariably ask her “where’s your whistle?”
Yet it is not just acting which has occupied her – she loathes those actors who only focus on their careers. “I am hugely concerned with the world” she says.
She has always maintained an active involvement in politics in general and the Labour Pparty in particular – even though she cancelled her membership when Tony Blair came into power in 1997. She rejoined this September and tells me that she is “in despair with what’s happening to Brown over the current scandals. They are not of his making. Brown’s only mistake was saying that there would be no early election”.
Although she grew up in a traditional Jewish home – her father co-founded West Hampstead Day School for Jewish Children which later became the North West London Jewish Day School – she has “converted” to humanism as she has been disillusioned over Israel since Yitzhak Rabin’s murder in 1995. “If there was no religion or oil, wouldn’t the world be a better place?” she asks. She recalls how as a child a walk on Hampstead Heath with her father left a lasting legacy as he was called a “dirty Jew” by a stranger. Since then she has battled against all forms of racism and inequality.
As we speak I wonder how, despite her positive attitude, she has coped with her various illnesses. Added to the cancer she suffers from peripheral neuropathy – this describes damage to the peripheral nervous system, which transmits information from the brain and spinal cord to every other part of the body. She has also suffered from an eating disorder for 50 years and has been a member of Dignity in Dying (formerly the voluntary euthanasia society) for more than 30 years.
She tells me “I’m too stupid and too cowardly not to cope. I loathe, loathe self-pity.
“Nothing is worse than self-pity. People have far worse.
“Yet I’ve had enough of the excruciating pain.”
She then adds: “I’ve got some people coming round shortly. God. I’ve got to put on a face.”
And you hope that, however, hard it may be, she will continue with what seems an almighty inner strength.
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