Toyah Willcox - Acting Career

Acting Career

After her O-levels (which she took late, having lost a year to have corrective surgery on her feet) Willcox left school at about 17 and went straight to Old Rep Drama School in Birmingham. "Already by then I was known in Birmingham for being the oddball that walked around with dyed hair. And you've got to remember that this is pre-punk, this was about 1973–74", she later recalled. While in drama school she had to earn her own way to pay her fees because in here, ironically, she proved to be the one member of her year who didn't get a grant (the man who took her grant meeting wrote down on a piece of paper, which she saw: "She has a lisp and isn't attractive"). "I worked in all the theatres in Birmingham so I'd go to drama school from 10 to 5, then I'd go to the Alex Theatre or the Hippodrome Theatre and I'd dress the stars who were on tour", she recalled. All of those stars without exception, including Judy Geeson, Simon Williams and Sylvia Sims, took a liking to her; by this time she was known in the theatre clique as the "Bird of Paradise".

After one year at the Old Rep, 18-year-old Willcox had done some extra work at a BBC Pebble Mill TV station. A month later, director and playwright Tony Bicat was looking for a girl to play the leading role in the BBC "Second City Firsts" play Glitter (along with Noel Edmonds and Phil Daniels). "One day apparently in a peak of despair Tony Bicat went to the wardrobe department in Pebble Mill and out poured his woes and he said: 'I really don't know what to do, we start shooting in two weeks' and the wardrobe lady said: 'There's a girl in Birmingham you really have to see because she's an oddball and she has brightly coloured hair and she's like no one else we've ever met and she does extra work'. So Tony Bicat came to the theatre school to see me and he apparently made his mind up there and then that I was this girl." And so Willcox got the part of Sue, the girl who sang with the band called Bilbo Baggins and was dreaming of appearing on Top of the Pops. In the course of the 30-minute play Willcox performed two songs she co-wrote: "Floating Free" (an acoustic ballad, with Phil Daniels accompanying her on guitar) and "Dream Maker". In the 1981 interview, having learned the play's footage had been wiped, Willcox commented: "It's the best thing they could have done with it, really. It was the first time I ever sung in public, and I was shaking like a leaf... and I was so fat!" It was Glitter, though, that launched Willcox's career: it appeared that Kate Milligan and Maximilian Schell were watching that play. They offered her a place with the National Theatre in London, where she's got the part of Emma in Tales from the Vienna Woods. "So I got a phone call the following day saying come down to London and I went down to London with a carrier bag and never went back", Willcox remembered. It was at this time that she formed a band, Toyah. In the National Theatre Willcox was known as "The Animal", the nickname John Gielgud gave her after she with a girlfriend "discovered you could have a backwards wheelchair race" and she wheeled herself "into John's private parts".

In the summer of 1977, a National Theatre actor, Ian Charleson (best known for his later role in Chariots of Fire), thought that Willcox was someone that his friend, film director Derek Jarman, should meet and took her to tea on Tregunter Road in Fulham at Derek's flat. The director picked the script of what later proved to be a seminal punk epic Jubilee (called Down with the Queen at the time), said: "it's a punk movie and I don't know what we're going to call it. But it's fun, it's anarchic", and threw it on Willcox's lap, saying: "Pick any part you want". "So I picked Mad because she had the most lines in the film. And Derek then said: 'Of all the characters, if any have to be cut because of lack of money, it's going to be Mad. Because she is superficial, she doesn't serve a purpose', and I said: 'How wonderfully anarchic, I still want it'", Willcox remembered. In a month's time he did have to cut Mad from the film, but, seeing Willcox greatly upset, gave up his fee on the film so that she could play the role she was craving for. "After that Derek became like a surrogate father because he knew what it was like to go hungry and so did I", Willcox recalled. Later she cited Jarman as one of her greatest inspirations: "Derek Jarman I just love to death because he had no compromise. We went hungry when we made Jubilee. Derek literally had nothing to eat halfway through the film, he completely ran out of money. There was nothing in the coffers and he just refused to sell out and have any form of advertising or any form of sponsorship. Everything offered to him might have diluted the message of the film he turned down. So his spirit I feel very fond of. He was a great man."

Psychologically, though, the filming was difficult. "I'd never seen a nude person before. And there was this scene where I jump into bed with two brothers and get the lighter out and the first time we did it they had their clothes on and then we did the take and I jumped into bed and they had nothing on! I completely freaked out. I'd never seen a nude man before!", she told Paul Morley in a 1980 interview. Willcox continued to gain strong roles, notably, Monkey in 1979's The Who album-inspired Quadrophenia, which boosted her reputation of a provocative and anti-establishment figure. Later she recalled the circumstances: "Franc Roddam, the director, was thinking of casting Johnny Rotten (Lydon) in the lead role, and I went along and helped him audition by improvising with him and being a friend to him. Then the insurance people refused to insure the film with Lydon in it. So I thought: 'Fuck, I've been chucked because Lydon's been chucked', and I went along to Franc and told him to give me the part of Monkey... and I think he was so taken aback – I was quite rude – that he gave me the part. Partly because he couldn't think of anyone else to do it." Later she admitted of her awareness of it being a strong career move. "I wouldn't have stayed otherwise. Getting up at five, catching pneumonia. I didn't have a day off. I had to keep going, there was this nurse with me the whole time. I really was very ill. But I realised the film was benefiting me", Willcox said.

Then the Sex Pistols started on their own film, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, and for a while, when Russ Meyer was due to direct, Willcox was going to take part in the movie. Then, her role fell through. Instead, she teamed up with Derek Jarman again to play Miranda in his innovative version of The Tempest, which won her a nomination as Best Newcomer at the 1980 Evening Standard Awards. "Derek offered me Miranda which was the first time I've really ever experienced Shakespeare and was very frightened of doing it but refused to give it up because I like a challenge and that was the biggest challenge in my acting career yet", Willcox recalled. Her 'wild child' performance, described as "naive and knowing", exotically "puffed out" her image, according to Paul Morley. "I knew it would benefit my acting career within the acting world. Punk rock star Toyah Willcox doing Shakespeare. It had that sensationalist aspect about it. But not only has it benefited my acting career. It's opened up a new audience for me", Willcox commented.

In 1979, on London's Royal Court Theatre stage Willcox played Sharon in Nigel Williams' Sugar and Spice, the play about "hate, despair and sexual derision", climaxing with an unsettling jab of physical violence (the main character Steve having his genitals twisted out by the broken whisky bottle). "I was offered the part of Carol, who is the bird that ends up naked, and I instantly refused it. I just couldn't handle a part like that. I sent the script back, and was offered the part of Sharon, which I was quite happy to take. The nudity would freak me out. Completely", she explained in the 1980 NME interview. The part took six weeks to learn and still proved demanding, lots of words Willcox muffled on stage. "You get to the point where if you're not concentrating I find I'm talking a load of gibberish because I'm missing certain words out. I'm not thinking about what I'm saying, and the cast are looking at me in horror. You do things like that 'cos there's so many lines, you forget you are talking sense", she explained. Still she insisted on having at least one stage play a year, merely as a mental stimulant. "'Cos it's training, really good training. Film can be so related and you don't have to concentrate so much. I just find it a good refresher course. It just makes you think", she told ZigZag in 1980.

Also in 1979 Willcox appeared as Tallulah in Stephen Poliakoff's American Days at the ICA, playing alongside Mel Smith, Antony Sher and Phil Daniels and, the same year, opposite Katharine Hepburn in the made-for-television movie The Corn is Green, directed by George Cukor. Willcox remembered how she had to go and do an audition with 2000 other hopefuls for the film after the Emlyn Williams book: "I had bright pink hair at the time and this is a period film. And my agent said: 'don't turn up with your red hair'. So I borrowed a wig from the National Theatre and I turned up at Eaton Square where George Cukor, the film director, let me in and he introduced me to Katharine Hepburn. And apparently she saw my eyes and said to herself: 'this is the girl'. So the next day I go along knowing I got the part, I get the big phone call saying I got the part. I thought: 'sod it, I'm not going to wear a wig, I'll just go with my red hair'. And I walk in and George Cukor said: 'would you like to take your hat off?' (laughter) and my hair was quite short back then and it was – it looked like feathers. And his face went ashen as to think: 'oh, what have done, this is absolutely terrible!' And he brought in to see Katharine, and he said: 'Katharine, this girl has red hair', and she just grabbed me, and in three hours we read through the play, and she just had her fingers in my hair the whole of the reading. Katharine Hepburn just fell in love with me the first time I met her and I say that modestly because she actually admitted she did... She loved my eyes, she said they were full of fire", Willcox was saying in her 2000 interviews.

Willcox played Calamity Jane at the Shaftesbury Theatre and was a guest vocalist in the anniversary tour of The Rocky Horror Show at the Royal Court Theatre. She had many television roles, including series such as Quatermass (1979) and Minder. She starred opposite Laurence Olivier in The Ebony Tower (1984), also appeared on Kavanagh QC and Secret Diary of a Call Girl. During the late 1980s and 1990s Willcox forged ahead with a career as a stage performer. Notable credits include Trafford Tanzi (at the Mermaid Theatre, leading role), Cabaret (Sally Bowles), Three Men and a Horse (winner of an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy), the UK tour of Arthur Smith's Live Bed Show. In 1990 she played Costanza in the national tour of Amadeus. She has also appeared as a presenter of programmes such as Songs of Praise, Holiday (BBC), and Good Sex Guide Late as well as being a guest on several shows such as The Heaven and Earth Show, Through the Keyhole and Loose Women. In 1999 she took the lead in the children's television series Barmy Aunt Boomerang. She also provided the voices for the children's television programmes Teletubbies and Brum. She has also appeared in the reality television series I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and I'm Famous and Frightened!.

In the 2000s Willcox had a busy schedule with theatre commitments, including appearing on stage in London's West End performing the title role of Calamity Jane (nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Best Musical) at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 2003. In June 2008 Willcox appeared on Living with the Dead on Living to share her experiences living in her haunted home. On 24 July 2008 Willcox appeared on UK ITV1's This Morning to discuss her role as a vampire in rock musical Vampires Rock. Toyah has also appeared in many shows looking back on popular culture, including the I'm a Celebrity series, and various 'Top 100 favourite' shows. More recently, Willcox played Queen Ivannah in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Lyceum in Sheffield for the 2009 Christmas season. In October 2009 she made a guest appearance in the BBC drama series Casualty. Willcox has also been heard on radio including the 2002 BBC Radio 4 series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. She is also credited with voicing the widow Fantine in Focus on the Family radio theatre's version of Les Misérables. In December 2006 she joined the radio drama series Silver Street on the BBC Asian Network as Siobhan Brady.