KEY POINTS:
Jennifer Ward-Lealand was in a funny mood when I phoned to ask for an interview. She said, "I'm too old for this lark", and muttered something daft about not being "good" enough to be interviewed.
While I was talking to her I was looking at a picture of her on the Herald website. It is a promo shot for her role in Berkoff's Decadence (at the Maidment until July 21).
She is sprawled across a couch in a sexy frock. She is mostly long, gorgeous legs.
"Oh well," I said, "I'll just come and interview your legs instead."
This was a silly thing to say (but she was being silly) and she sensibly (she is usually very sensible) ignored it. She came to the door of the nice house in Grey Lynn attempting to look the opposite of glam. Her legs were well covered, in jeans. She doesn't quite pull this off, though, because even in jeans she looks like some superior sort of being. She has that old-fashioned glamour that actresses have.
She likes, by the way, to be called an actress, not an actor, because "I like the sound of the word. I like how old it is. I would have been Mrs Hurst on the old playbills."
"Mrs Hurst" - she's married to actor Michael Hurst - has made scones: date and cinnamon, wholemeal flour and no sugar. Today she looks, almost, like a working mum at home on a day off. Which is what she is, except that she works at night.
The day I phoned her was opening night and on the day of opening night she does go a bit funny. She can't settle to anything and every single opening night of her long career she thinks, "Why am I doing this?" Hence the "I'm too old for this lark".
The scones are evidence of her having "landed in the house" again after the nerves and flitting about, the "not being able to settle to anything".
The scones are also evidence of her niceness. She is a very nice woman who happens to play other women, some not so nice, for a living.
She is also at 44 a very sexy woman (those legs), even in her working mum's uniform of jeans and white socks.
It must be interesting living next door to her. She came home the other morning after the shoot for that photo, in a frock split all the way up her thigh, fishnet stockings, high heels, full slap. She saw people look. Well, you would, wouldn't you?
"Oh, yes, I'm often dressed like this, you know, at 10.30 in the morning."
Somebody has come up with the idea of flogging off the couch from Decadence (the one in the photo I was looking at) on Trade Me after the season. What a funny idea. "It is funny," she says, and practical, too. Because the play has been put on "on the smell of an oily rag" and the couch was expensive. But what would people be buying: a couch from a play or ...
"Or as laid on by? I don't know! It's an amusing idea. Amusing or disturbing. I'll go for amusing."
She looks amazing in the photo. What does she think when she looks at it? "Good shot. Yeah, good shot, and I think it's really right for the play so I don't think it's false advertising." Oh dear, I hadn't been suggesting that it was.
"No, I know you're not saying that. But I need to make sure that somebody doesn't think that when they come to the play I'm actually in a full-length pants suit. That's pretty much what I look like in the play."
She does glamour terribly well. She always has. "Yeah, I love dressing up. I do it a lot in my work so it satisfies the dressing up part of me. I don't think we have it much now, you know, so the stage really is the only opportunity to do that. So if I'm creating a show or MC-ing I love to add that splash of glamour because I think people love to feast their eyes on that."
Her imperious dame, in the one-woman show Marlene (as Marlene Dietrich), has been so successful she now tours the show as Falling in Love Again and does the songs from it. She put out a CD, of the same title, which she sent me (and presumably other journalists) with a sweet little handwritten note because I had given her a good review many years ago. This points to good manners, and good PR.
She says she has been around the city for so long she does know people, like journalists, and feels she can ring them and tell them what she's doing and they might like to do a story. That makes her sound a bit pushy but she's really not; she's just good at being a working actor.
I once had to ring her up because some editor wanted a story done on tall women married to short men and told me to call her. I would have told me to sod off, but she was terribly kind and just said she thought she was a bit busy, just at the moment. When I remind her of this she says she's forgotten but, "Oh, and what did I say? Did I politely decline? Right, I guess we were slightly over it."
I was going to tease a bit - "So, how's that going being a tall woman married to a ... " - but, for all her niceness, she had a closed-off look that made me think this wouldn't be a good idea.
She is a person who takes being interviewed seriously. Actors can be so hard to interview. They often appear to be away with the fairies, even after opening night has been got through.
They're fine after a play or a film because the words in their heads have gone - whoosh, just like that - and they've got room in there again. But when they're in the middle of the thing, it's like having another person in the room with you: the character they're playing.
From time to time Ward-Lealand slips into the upper-class drawl of one of the two women she plays in Decadence, which is slightly disconcerting. I didn't realise she was doing this until she said so, at the end. I just thought she was being a bit imperious, which she can appear to be; she does use "one" for "I" a lot .
She is not really imperious but she is rather regal, although that is probably just because tall women (she is 1.8m) often are, at least when they have good posture - as she does - and also that good bone structure that makes a face look posh.
Despite this, she is good at creating a cosy little domestic scene. She gets out her grandmother's good china. She makes proper tea, with leaves and a pinch of Lapsang Souchong. She likes things to be nice, to be done properly. And she likes to keep a very orderly house.
Actually, I'd think anyone would hate to live next door to the Ward-Lealand/Hurst household. What a racket they, or at least three of them, must make. Two actors live in this house and they have two young boys, 7 and 10, who play the drums every morning for half an hour. Ward-Lealand looks faintly horrified at the idea they must be awful neighbours and says they've never had any complaints.
The other actor, husband Michael, is here, making a racket, singing snatches of old music hall songs, showing us some mad "waggling kilt" song he's planning to do anonymously (oh dear, sorry) at some mad talent quest.
I say we'll have to lock him out of the room while I interview the legs. So we do, but he makes an entrance through another door: "I want to be interviewed!"
They have been together for 24 years, and what was he like when they met?
"The same."
So, quiet, unassuming? "Ah, noooo. No, no, just how he is. Lots of energy. And he's not always bouncing around the house like that, no. But if he gets excited about something he is, absolutely. He's gleeful, which is fantastic, and we get very excited about our work."
She looks far too regal to bounce, but she says she does. "In a different way. In a slightly longer way."
I would like to see her bounce but I don't believe she ever does any such thing. She glides, serenely. She is very calm and nice and, oddly, quite mumsy. She makes sure we're not too hot, or too cold. She insists the photographer and I take a buttered scone away with us. What a nice woman she is - and her legs aren't too bad either!
