Stage-struck from the beginning

Press, 22 September 1987, Page 11

Stage-struck from the beginning

Carol Royle, who plays the lovelorn Jenny in “Life Without George” (8.30 p.m. on One), was stage-struck from the beginning. “I used to go into the wings and try to ease myself onto the stage,” she says, remembering a transient childhood with both parents in show business. Her father, Derek Royle, was an actor and her mother was a makeup artist. Royle admits she was not good, academically, at school — “it was all so terribly dull” — and missed out on classics such as Dickens and Shakespeare. “And when I finally got to the Royal Shakespeare Company,” she says, “I was horrified by all these massive, knowledgeable* intellects around me.”

Despite a shaky start getting into theatrics at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama (after several failed audi-

tions), Royle came to a kind of instant stardom soon after in Britain’s long-running afternoon serial “The Cedar Tree.” A string of TV plays and series followed, which brought her to the attention of the Royal Shakespeare Company. For the first time she was treated as a serious actress, rather than a dolly bird with blonde hair and blue eyes.

“I actually like to act, be someone else,” says Royle. “But it seems to me there are two types of actresses — the highpowered, it’s-aii-giamour type; and the other who wears Indian cotton and a scrubbed face. “I’m neither, and sometimes people don’t know where to place me,” Royle laments. “You learn to be determined and philosophical at the same time,” she says. "You’re either struggling because there’s no work at all, or the work you’re being asked to do is horrendous.” Royle, married with a son, aged four, happily combines her career with domesticity. "Taran is obviously my priority; it’s wonderful, the feeling of having had a child. But it’s made me realise how much I enjoy work and how important it is. "I’m actually better at the domestic side of my life when I’m working.”