British-American actress Zoë Wanamaker CBE has been on our screens for years. Find out more about her incredible career and playing a killer queen in Sky Atlantic’s Britannia.
Zoë Wanamaker's age
Zoë was born on 13 May 1949 in New York City, making her currently 72.
Zoë's parents
Zoë is the daughter of Canadian actress and radio performer Charlotte Holland and American actor, film director, and radio producer Sam Wanamaker.
Sam is credited as the person most responsible for saving The Rose Theatre, which led to the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.
Who is Zoë's husband?
While she lived with fellow Royal Shakespeare Company actor David Lyon for many years, Zoë is married to fellow actor Gawn Grainger who she married in 1994. The couple have no children together.
Zoë and the theatre
Like many actresses, Zoë began her career in theatre. She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1976 to 1984.
She won two Olivier Awards, one for her 1979 performance in Once in a Lifetime and another for Sophocles' Electra in 1998. Zoë has also received many Tony Award nominations for her performances.
Zoë Wanamaker movies and tv shows
Madam Hooch in Harry Potter, Lady Cassandra in Doctor Who, Ariadne Oliver in Poirot, Lady Bloomsbury Barton in Worzel Gummidge... Zoë has never shied away from taking on wonderfully wacky roles.
My Family
One of her most well-known roles, Zoë portrayed mum-of-three Susan Harper in the BBC situation comedy My Family for 11 series from 2000 to 2011.
Britannia
The warrior queen Antedia, in Britannia – about the Roman invasion of England – is Zoë’s most outlandish to date. The third series of the show began on August 24.
“She’s a killer,” says Zoë. “But she was betrayed in the last series and when this series opens, she’s being kept in a hole with a chain around her. She feels like she’s been let down by the gods, and those she trusted and put her faith in. Now she’s trying to find her way back.
“She’s a warrior queen who has been forced into this state because she’s lost her tribe. Self- preservation, as well as loyalty to her tribe, is what keeps her alive. Also, it’s rebelling against the invasion of another tribe that comes in and tries to dictate to everybody.
“Britannia is set in AD43 and the Romans are pretty vicious, but our writers Jez and Tom Butterworth also go off into completely different tangents which open up a whole discussion of possession. Everybody was from somewhere else - whether that's France or Germany, and later the Vikings. Nobody is English. Everybody comes from some other place, which is always fascinating.”
Britannia may be set 2,000 years ago but Zoë feels some of the issues raised are still relevant today.
“Tribal warfare is happening all over the world and that’s what Britannia is about. It seems to be a universal and perpetual situation. It’s all about, ‘This is my religion, this is my land, this is my tribe’. History just keeps repeating itself.
“Jez and Tom have played with the concept of tribalism and religions based on magic and things that we simply don’t understand, such as the Druids.”
Ruthless ruler Antedia is famous for her insults.
“I love them,” laughs Zoë. “The more the merrier, I say. I think it makes her much more colourful and much more interesting, because she’s got a brain. That’s the thing about her; she has a brain. She has to, because she’s a queen.
“Language is very important to her as it is to me. It’s great because the writers and director allow me to bring my own ideas to the script. There’s more to her than her colourful language and being hell-bent on revenge, though. She has a back story and, in this series, we get to see her more vulnerable side. Yes, she’s very angry but there’s got to be a three-dimensional person there. To just say, ‘I want revenge,’ isn’t enough. It goes deeper than that.
“We’ve all come from something, and that goes all the way through our veins. To try to rectify that is about self-knowledge. Antedia is constantly betrayed, so of course it would make you cross!”
Filming this series of Britannia was something of a challenge.
“We should have finished last September, but we ended working through the winter because of Covid delays,” Zoë explains.
“It was the worst winter we’d had in many a year, so that was a struggle. The producers set me up in a nice little tent with a portable loo saying Queen Antedia on it. It was very nice of them but I didn’t like sitting in the tent by myself, I got bored!
"I like to sit and gossip with the others. Most of the time we were outside, so it was a relief to get into the studio, which was only for about two scenes."
“The locations were extraordinary, but we were hit by all the elements! An added complication was that we’d have to climb through mud, and the boots didn’t have any grip. We started filming in a quarry in West Sussex, and it poured down, so it was impossible to walk anywhere. We’d slip and slide all over the place."
“The weather and the costumes were, I would say, the biggest challenges of all. The costumes are layered so going for a wee was a major event! Someone had to help me get back into it afterwards. I had thermals, trousers, a shirt, a skirt, a jerkin, and leather gloves, so it was really complicated to get anything off. I didn’t drink much water, put it that way!
“I think I’m attracted to mystical stories such as Britannia and roles that scare me a bit. To me it’s heaven, going to another world. You get to dress up, and mess about in the freezing cold and the mud. It’s just so much fun!”
Britannia starts on Sky Atlantic on August 24
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