A Taste of Honey’s Rita Tushingham tells Laura Davis how her unusual looks turned her into a sixties icon
THERE was no budget to send the almond-eyed teenager to collect her Best Actress award at Cannes. So Rita Tushingham waited four decades to feel the weight of the trophy in her hands.
“Someone collected it on my behalf and never gave it to me, and eventually I got it about five years ago,” says the 67-year-old, in a gentle manner that suggests fame has left her unchanged.
She attributes her lack of diva qualities to her Garston upbringing – to her mother, Enid, who insisted “we’re going” when her daughter was invited to audition for A Taste of Honey, and her two brothers, Peter and Colin, who “would bring me back down to earth”.
Tushingham, who is holding a question and answer session and screening of the gritty 1961 film at FACT tomorrow, was a plucky 18-year-old when she won the role of Jo.
At the time, she was working as an assistant stage manager at the Liverpool Playhouse, having attended La Sagesse convent school, in Grassendale, and the Elliott Clarke School of Dance and Drama.
“My mum used to go to every production with a women’s group and sometimes, if one of the ladies dropped out, I would take their place,” she recalls.
“It was a great place to go and see things and that’s why, at 14, I decided to start writing letters to see if I could become a student ASM there.”
She penned something in the region of 60 letters before the venue’s director, Willard Stoker, offered her a position on the Christmas show. It was, Tushingam says, “the job of a dogsbody” and only paid £1 per week, but she loved it and stayed on after the New Year.
“I learned my craft there, working backstage, because you do everything, you do the prompting and the lights, you help with the wardrobe, you call the people and get them to the stage, you make tea, and play small roles if there are any,” explains the mother-of-two grown-up daughters.
“I realised just exactly how much it took to put on a show. It was fascinating to see how this jigsaw was pieced together.”
One of her jobs was to acquire props, which took “a bit of front”.
