Michelle Collins: ‘The death of my school friend changed my life'

Times

a day ago

Michelle Collins, who's in Edinburgh with her Fringe show, Motorhome Marilyn, is best known for playing Cindy Beale in EastEnders.
It's a dark comedy about a woman called Denise who went to America to seek fame and fortune and ends up as a Marilyn impersonator. She is an obsessive Marilyn fan and also lives in a motorhome, hence the title. She has a very lonely existence in Las Vegas, living with her pet python, and has been Marilyn for so long she is not quite sure who Denise is any more.
Port Logan, where I spent three summers filming Two Thousand Acres of Sky (even though the series was set on a fictional island off Skye). It was probably the most enjoyable filming I've ever done. Port Logan is a tiny village next to Portpatrick with, I think, a population then of only about 20 people. Just beautiful. In the height of summer I remember it not getting dark until so late, and sometimes you could see the northern lights.
I love the beautiful, rugged landscape of Scotland; I feel a real affinity with the country. I also filmed Sea of Souls with Bill Paterson right up in northern Scotland, near Durness. It was a really hot summer and there were caves right on the beach. When the weather is good, Scotland is the best place in the world. The beaches were so beautiful and it was quite spooky because it was about a psychic criminologist and that part of Scotland in the north is quite spooky — I even stayed in a haunted hotel and saw a ghost.
Mother India's café in Edinburgh, an amazing Indian tapas restaurant near the Gilded Balloon, where I am performing this year. There were also some fantastic fish restaurants in Portpatrick: I remember getting my first deep-fried Mars bar there. I'm partial to vegetarian haggis.
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Intense, kind, scatty.
Charlie George. I used to have big posters of the Arsenal football team, especially when they did the double in the early Seventies. I still support them now.
The train up to Glasgow, then driving down along the coastline to Stranraer and on to Portpatrick and Port Logan.
That I was in Baywatch. I had dinner with someone once and they asked me if I still had that red swimming costume. Apparently, Wikipedia says I was in it. I wasn't.
Never send an email on a Monday morning. Always sit on it.
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My great-grandma, Granny Bowen. My sister and I lived with her and my grandad for about a year when we were children, when I was about 11. I didn't like living out in Hayes, Middlesex — it felt like the back of beyond. I used to do everything I could to wind them up. She used to call me a little minx.
David Essex, David Cassidy, David Bowie — all the Davids.
I'm not sure if this is just my mind playing tricks with me, but I remember being in a huge pram (a big perambulator — I was a Sixties baby). Apparently, I threw eggs out of it and someone went into the butcher's shop where I was parked outside, and said to my mum: 'Your little baby boy is throwing eggs outside.' My mum didn't care about the eggs but she told them: 'That's not a boy, that's a girl!'
I was in a TV show called The Illustrated Mum, which was adapted from a Jacqueline Wilson book. My agent didn't really want me to do it, but I wanted to because I loved the book. I loved playing the character, Marigold. It did really well — it won Baftas and an International Emmy. And I had a very memorable experience going to New York with Jacqueline Wilson. I was presented with the Emmy by Lenny Kravitz.
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I have very fond memories of going to see Oliver! with my mum when I was a kid. We saw it loads of times and every time I see it on TV now I feel an overwhelming sense of warmth and nostalgia. It still makes me cry. Also, The Sound of Music.
Meeting a girl called Kate Healy. I was about 14, she was 15. We had very, very different lives; she had much more of a privileged life than I did. I would say she was more middle class, I was working class from a single-parent family. Sadly, Kate died when she was 16 — I was devastated. She had a cousin who was an actress who then helped me to audition for drama school. In many ways Kate really changed my life.
Michelle Collins is performing in Motorhome Marilyn at Gilded Balloon Patter House until Aug 25 (not 13), edfringe.com