Felicity Kendal has reflected on her career including huge hit The Good Life, in which she played Barbara Good, revealing the role helped her cope with her divorce.
The Good Life actress Felicity Kendal claims filming the classic BBC sitcom made her forget the heartache she was having at home going through a divorce at the time. The star became a household name thanks to the TV comedy in which she starred alongside fellow cast members Richard Briers, Penelope Keith, and Paul Edgington.
Millions tuned into the show every week when it launched in 1975 to see her and Briers as Tom and Barbara Good – a suburban couple in Surbiton who had given up the rat race for a life of self sufficiency. Their hilarious attempts at ‘the good life’ was countered by their run-ins with their snooty posh neighbour Margo Leadbetter (Keith) and her downtrodden husband Jerry (Edgington).
While audiences were in stitches at the ratings-pulling comedy, no one would have guessed the turmoil that Felicity was having in her private life during filming. During the series run, she was going through a divorce from her actor husband Drewe Henley – a relationship which fell apart amid reports of his philandering and depression. However she now pays tribute to the BBC show for getting her through her ordeal and she claims the cast and their close friendships and constant giggles helped her leave her worries at the studio door.
Felicity said: “I don’t think there was ever a bad day on The Good Life. I was going through a divorce at the time so it was at a time when I was actually not particularly having a wonderful happy settled time. And yet, and yet, I do not remember that (the divorce) coming into the rehearsal or the performances at all. It was, above all, a wonder that show and those people we became close, close close friends. Laughter was mostly what happened backstage.”
The 79-year-old actress opens up about her life in a new documentary called Beyond The Good Life with Felicity Kendal which will air tonight (May 3). It charts her rise to stardom and the debt she owes her ‘incredible mentors’ – her parents Geoffrey Kendal and Laura Liddell – who were also actors.
They moved from England to India when she was just seven years old and they worked in a repertory theatre company while living there.
As they grew in popularity, they became the inspiration for a Merchant Ivory film called Shakespeare Wallah about a travelling family theatre troupe of English actors who perform The Bard’s plays in towns across India. In the 1960s, Felicity made the bold move to leave her family behind and go solo by embarking on her own acting career in England.
She admits to being very naïve especially when she moved into accommodation in London’s Shepherd Market. It was a famous hangout for prostitutes to be picked up by older gentlemen and although she was propositioned several times, poor Felicity had no idea what these would-be punters were after.
The star now recalls: “I was renting a friend’s room in Shepherd Market behind The Curzon. That was where I was living. I was quite young and I would go back and say ‘It’s very friendly around here’. I never understood. It’s the only place in England where people smile and say hello. They were all considerably older gentlemen. I didn’t get it!”
Felicity went on to enjoy a very impressive career on stage performing in key plays such as Amadeus, The Vortex, The Real Thing and India Ink as well as the musical Anything Goes, her TV shows include The Mistress, Rosemary and Thyme, The Camomile Lawn and Ludiwg – not forgetting her stint on Strictly Come Come Dancing.
This summer she is back on stage at London’s Barbican theatre in Cole Porter’s High Society. But she knows she will be forever linked to the BBC comedy The Good Life which ran for four series from 1975 to 1978.
She was approached by actor Richard Briers – whose work she had always admired – to join the sitcom even though he thought it might flop. And she recalls: “He said ‘It’s only six or seven episodes. It probably won’t work and there’ll be no money and it may be a compete disaster because it is such an off the wall idea. I wondered if you would read it and see if you like it to play Barbara the wife. I knew I’d do it anyway because I wanted to work with him and I read the scripts and they were just amazing.”
Over the years, she has earned the tag as a ‘TV sex bomb’ and ‘sex kitten’ thanks to that comedy. In the documentary, her friend Sir Ian McKellen jokes that he imagines ‘stage door Johnnies’ queuing up to date her after every theatre appearance and he admits: “Men adore her.”
But Felicity claims she was nowhere as successful with men in The Swinging Sixties as people might think. Of her early boyfriends, she says: “I had several wafty ones. Everyone was ‘swinging’ but me. I had hot pants and short skirts but no swing.
“Then I fell in love with various actors but nothing serious at all. I don’t think it made any difference. But I was always in love with somebody. I tend to go for talent. Talent is energy. It’s strength.”
She ended up marrying actor Drewe Henley in 1968 but that ended badly in divorce in 1979. Following their split, she wed American theatre director Michael Rudman (whom she calls ‘the love of my life’) from 1983-1990.
After they separated, she famously dated the late playwright Sir Tom Stoppard and she was cast in five of his stage plays. She now says of him: “I think with Tom Stoppard, he felt that I could say his words in the way that he wanted me to say them and he could hear them.
“I think it is like a musician. I don’t think somebody writes it for somebody to play but they want them to be instrumental in playing it.”
Felicity has two children – Charley Henley from her marriage to Drewe and also Jacob Rudman from her marriage to Jacob.
Asked if she thought family mattered to her as much as fame and how she managed to balance the two, she replies: “It is a difficult thing because to me family and work are so much linked. I grew up in a family that was working in theatre. I then married an actor. I was working and had a family.
“Family and acting? It is very difficult to say which as they were so intertwined.”
But she says she is proud to have juggled serious theatre work with lighter TV projects and only chose projects where she felt the writing was exceptional – something her father was proud of.
She added: “I think without a doubt it’s the imprint of my fathers beliefs about why you become an actor. Certainly not for your name in lights. It’s nice and there is nothing wrong but it is not the reason.
“It is also his belief that it is the words and the writing. You can be as wonderful as you like if you haven’t got the writing then that’s not going to make any difference.
“I always went for the one where I thought the writing was better than the part. I’d prefer a smaller part in a brilliant new play than a huge great Anna Karenina. I always saw myself more as a character actress.”
Sir Ian McKellen pays tribute to the fact that people love Felicity as she has a unique ability to make people laugh because of the way she moved her face.
He says: “There is a sort of special quality that she has. That round face. The lips come together. And you think there is a whole bundle of laughter going to tumble out if she’s not careful.. and joy.. and we all laugh with her.”
And in fact laughing is her mantra for life. She says: “I act because I love it. It is a joy to make people laugh. In the end you have just got to laugh. Laughing is a medicine. Laughing and a walk will get you through most things.”
* Beyond The Good Life will air on tonight May 3 at 7.30pm on the newly launched Arts Biography Channel on YouTube.
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