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The Guardian
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sally Phillips and her family look back: ‘I wanted to be the kind of actress who plays Juliet at the RSC, but it turns out people don't take me seriously'
Born in Hong Kong in 1970, Sally Phillips is a comedian, writer and actor. After graduating with a first-class degree in Italian and linguistics at Oxford University, she began working as an actor. In 1997 she was cast in I'm Alan Partridge, and two years later she co-wrote and starred in sketch comedy Smack the Pony, followed by roles in Big Train, Veep, Miranda and the Bridget Jones franchise. She has three children and currently lives between London and Australia. Sally stars in new comedy drama Austin on BBC One on Fridays. My mum, dad, brother and I are outside our house in Hong Kong. Andrew and I are both in knitted ponchos, which I'm certain my mother was responsible for. My dad worked for British Airways, so we moved around a lot. If you have that kind of nomadic upbringing, you are naturally an outsider wherever you go. I spent a lot of my childhood observing, mainly the things that were funny and strange. Our parents were quite tough on us growing up. My mother especially. She would claim her toughness is because of her Yorkshire roots, but I've been to Yorkshire and met lots of soft people. She would say: 'Well-behaved women rarely make history.' I wasn't allowed a Barbie and instead had an Action Girl with a jumpsuit and ginger hair. Mum nurtured us in subtle ways; the house was filled with costumes and art supplies. When it comes to being funny, I believe there are two types of brains: one is a satirist who is good with words; the other is an idiot who walks into the wall. I was the latter; Andrew the former. He had a joke about a bulldozer that my mother still goes on about. At first I wanted to be the kind of actress who plays Juliet at the RSC, but it turns out there's something about me that stops people taking me seriously. That was quite devastating for a while. At university I co-wrote a one-woman show – Benedetta, the Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy – based on the true story of Benedetta Carlini. It was a big, serious endeavour: an hour and a half of me doing 50 different characters, lots of accents and a significant amount of mime. My parents, unfortunately, found it hilarious. When I graduated, they hoped I might work for Shell or Olivetti. Instead, I considered doing a PhD on the spaghetti western, which was not met with much approval. I then decided I would go to clown school, which they were also strongly opposed to. But I started to get work, and gradually the feedback evolved from 'What a ridiculous idea' to 'Well done'. I realised if you could push against your parents' disapproval, you probably had the determination to work in this profession, as it can be quite a bruising industry. Even though I've been doing it for decades, it still is. Some doors I open and everyone goes, 'You're a genius!', and behind another they'll say, 'You're so yesterday. You're so old and fat and exactly not what we're looking for.' When my son Olly was born with Down's syndrome, I moved closer to my parents, and they created a kind of crisis encampment. Dad said: 'We're going to operate a visa system, and you get to decide who is allowed into the flat and who isn't.' It was incredible, especially as my marriage didn't work out. Olly knows he can ring his uncle at any hour, day or night, and he'll answer, and probably take him to the pub. There are probably families that are closer than ours – we do have a strong vein of eating crisps in different rooms while watching different TV shows – but I have totally lucked out. I don't think I could have managed the hand I've been dealt without my family's support. Was Sally funny as a child? I always thought she laughed too much at her own jokes. But we got on. While I can't recall fighting much, we certainly would have clashed. Take our approach to Easter eggs. I was in the 'eat them all in one go' category. She was in the 'save it and have a little bit at a time' category. Naturally, when mine was finished, I'd go after hers. When Smack the Pony was on billboards around London, I'd think: 'Jesus, that's my sister.' It was bizarre but then you get used to it. Although I do still find myself getting mildly freaked out if I hear her voice on TV. Sally is a very supportive big sister. Very pro-family, very into keeping people together. She stays in touch with relatives who I can't even recall how I'm related to, and she does a Sunday roast for everyone whenever she can. All of which is quite amazing, especially bearing in mind how busy she generally is. Sally is genuine, she's helpful and she can be hilarious. Not all the time. But sometimes. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion We are crouched in front of our little wall garden in Hong Kong. One day we had a 5ft snake in it. Shortly after this was taken, I had a succession of postings: Zambia, Brunei, Lebanon, London, the Gulf, Australia, Italy, then back to London. It was a very interesting childhood for Sally, experiencing the different cultures. Like most daddies would say about their daughters, Sally was absolutely delightful. Very smiley and so bright. You would read her a story and a week later she would remember the words. When we were in Bahrain, an opera singer came to our house. She overheard Sally singing, and said she had perfect pitch. When Sally finished at Oxford with a first, I was so proud of her. I asked her what she was going to do next, and she said: 'I'm going to be an actress.' I said: 'Don't be so ridiculous. You'll be unemployed 99% of the time.' She replied: 'Somebody's got to succeed. Why not me?' She put me back in my box, and I was so impressed. Since then she has had the pressure of being a working mother and managing Olly, but people rally around her because she is such a great friend to them. It hasn't been easy. But, like anyone who has met Sally will tell you, she's always good news. Sally was absolutely beautiful when she was born. Actually, I take that back. Initially she had a big bump on her head as they pulled her out of me with a suction device. But in the end she was all right. Sally was very good at keeping her brothers in order. She's the eldest of three. She was also excellent at occupying herself, making up games and putting on plays. When Smack the Pony came out there were massive posters of the cast everywhere. It was lovely to see Sally get the credit she deserved. What I admired most was their approach to humour – it was for women, making fun of women. We hadn't seen that before on television. Sally is perceptive and has good taste. Are we similar? Well, I wouldn't think so. She's much better.
The Independent
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Stephen Mangan: Maybe middle aged panic is setting in, I'm clinging to whatever fitness I have
Actor and author Stephen Mangan says he feels 'edgy' if he hasn't managed to get out for a run. The star of BBC's The Split and sitcom Episodes says: 'I just feel slightly antsy if I haven't run in a day. Some people put on lycra and ride around parks on bikes – I run up a hill.' The 56-year-old, whose roles have included Adrian Mole in the BBC adaptation, Guy Secretan in Green Wing, and Dan Moody in I'm Alan Partridge, says perhaps it's his age. 'I've got quite a few friends into running, maybe middle-aged panic is setting in. We're all trying to cling onto whatever fitness and youth we still have.' Mangan, who is a World Book Day '£1 author' this year – offering his children's book The Fart That Broke World Book Day for £1/€1.50 to get more kids reading – got the running 'bug' after doing his first marathon at 30. 'It's very therapeutic,' he says, 'Whatever's bothering you tends to float to the surface. It's sort of your brain churning away without really consciously doing it, and also getting outside in the fresh air. 'When you're doing a play, you have to keep yourself in pretty good shape.' Mangan is currently starring alongside The Split co-star Nicola Walker in Unicorn at the Garrick Theatre, playing a couple who bring a third person into their marriage. 'It's nice in the play that we're married again after the horrendous split,' he says with a laugh. 'We just get on and we really like each other, and we're very relaxed with each other – she's a great actress.' For any stage actor, keeping up energy levels to perform every evening for a long run is taxing. 'It's a slight jet lag thing,' explains Mangan, 'rather than getting up at 6am to go on a film set, you shift your whole focus to later in the day. So I might write for three hours a day, go for a run, stare at a wall for a bit, read a couple of books, go and lie on the stage for 10 minutes, and then, hopefully by 7:30 I'm in the right frame of mind to be in a throuple. Between TV and film acting, theatre, radio (recently starring in BBC's The Island) and writing children's books – as well as being a dad to three boys, Harry, 17, Frank 14, and Jack, eight – life is 'disordered and chaotic', he says. ' Running, reading and eating opportunities have to be grabbed whenever they present themselves for all those three things,' he says, and reading is 'completely central' to his life and wellbeing. 'There are long hours on set or sat in a trailer waiting to go on set [as an actor] that's perfect for reading. I'll read in the kitchen when everyone else is clanking about. I'll read on the [London] tube. I'll read in my dressing room, wherever I can grab a bit of time. I've normally got three of four books on the go at once.' As a child Mangan always had his 'head in a book', even at the dinner table. 'I would read all the way through meals – I wouldn't stop to eat.' He adds: 'My parents weren't that flush with money, but would always let me buy any book I wanted. They were very supportive of me reading so I really quickly built up quite a big library of books.' Mangan, married to actor Louise Delamere, reckons he owns thousands now – 'My wife is like, 'You've read it, you know, you're not going to re-read it.' But he equates finding an author he likes to making a friend. 'This is why people feel so desolate when they finish a great book, they're really enjoying the relationship. It's not over, but that intense, passionate period has come to an end, and you can't throw a book away,' he laughs Research shows more than a million children in the UK don't own a book. 'It's heartbreaking really, because there is this world, and there are all of those worlds [in books],' he says. 'And to be able to visit those worlds, to be able to visit other people's lives, and be able to look at the world through the eyes of great writers – who can see something about the world and who we are and the way we behave that the rest of us can't, and can articulate it so beautifully and movingly and hilariously – I want that for everybody,' says Mangan. Another barrier could be the prevalence of screens though, too. 'Screens are sort of crack cocaine for children and it's very hard to compete with that dopamine hit,' he says. 'We're living through this really crazy social experiment with phones and screens and one day we'll look back on as several generations that had a very peculiar upbringing.' When his own children were little, 'my favourite bit of the day was sitting on [the] bed reading together' – and it's something Mangan has encouraged ever since, even naming the heroes in his books after his boys. 'You'd think that writing a book would be encouragement enough [for them to read] but I'm the least impressive person they know. I'm just their dad.' From his breakthrough TV debut in Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years in 2001, Mangan's career has steadily flourished – which has made fame easier to handle, he says. 'I was never in one massive smash hit at a young age, and it went from nought to 60. Everything has very gradually happened to me. So it's almost without noticing it.' So the level of fame he's acquired is 'not intrusive' – 'I haven't got a phalanx of stalkers outside. It's very bearable.' Although the people pleaser in him is 'hard to shift', he's become 'more discerning' as he's got older. 'I think you know when you've done a good piece of work so I'm not interested anymore in what people say in newspapers or on TV or in reviews. It doesn't' bother me. 'I still want to please people, but I think who I want to please has become a smaller group. I have people I admire and respect, and their opinion is of great value to me 'If you really want to hunt for someone who thinks you're a t***, you can find them, of course. [But] why? It's of no interest to me, either to find people who think I'm awful, or to find people who think I'm the best thing since sliced bread, if there are any. That's their issue.' World Book Day (celebrated on March 6) is a charity that improves access to books, helping children to read for fun, because it improves lives.
