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Greta: Doomed affair helped resurrect my career
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 31.03.08
Cathartic experience: Greta Scacchi with Dugald Bruce Lockhart in The Deep Blue Sea
Painful split: Scacchi with Vincent D'Onofrio, father of her daughter, in Fires Within
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Greta Scacchi has drawn on the heartbreak that poleaxed her career to play the role of a lifetime.
The star of films such as White Mischief is to transfer to the West End in Terence Rattigan's searing drama The Deep Blue Sea after a hit UK tour.
The 48-year-old actress revealed that the part of Hester Collyer, an Establishment wife who throws it all away for a doomed love, mirrored her own life, and had proved cathartic.
Scacchi broke up with American actor Vincent D'Onofrio not long after they had her first child in 1992. The split left her so distraught she was unable to work for four years — just when her Hollywood career was taking off.
She was forced to resurrect those emotions in rehearsals with director Edward Hall for what proved to be a triumphant run in the regions.
Scacchi said: “With Rattigan, the convention is you keep a stiff upper lip and nobody shows any emotion.
“But he [Hall] got us to really plumb the depths of these emotions and use our own stories. It was quite a cathartic experience.
“I felt I had reawakened stuff in my own situation of overwhelming sexual passion that was unrequited. It was very, very painful and quite scarring.”
The Italian-born actress was “madly, impossibly, in love” with D'Onofrio, the star of Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam movie Full Metal Jacket. But “it ended in tears” when their daughter, Leila, was only six months old.
“It was a real struggle,” she said. “I got caught up in this relationship that was going to leave me quite incapable of working for a few years — four years of trauma. It shot my career in the foot.
“Now I feel quite triumphant. I have found a way to be glad that I had such heartbreak.
“I know something about wretchedness, which is the feeling Hester has. There were a lot of lines I couldn't have put better myself, I had more to give you, much more than you ever wanted from me.' It was so close to the bone. What I realised was I thought it was about me, though ladies I've met in the provinces who grab my arm say it's their story too.” She has received dozens of letters and rave reviews that she hopes will boost her career — she felt her good looks meant she was never taken seriously by British theatre.
“It's been a bit of a struggle to get accepted... but I feel there's hope now,” said Scacchi. “This is the biggest and best role I've ever had. Peggy Ashcroft said it was the most demanding role she had ever played. But it's very satisfying — maybe it's the chance for me to prove I have the qualifications.” She said she was now overweight and not as attractive as in her youth but was “happily settled” in West Sussex with her husband — and first cousin — Carlo Mantegazza, with whom she has a son, Matteo.
The Deep Blue Sea was inspired by Rattigan's relationship with a younger man but because homosexuality was illegal in 1952, the playwright created the character of Hester to tell the story.
The Deep Blue Sea is at the Vaudeville Theatre from 29 April to 19 July
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