My body & soul: Tamsin Greig, Actor, 41
1. Are you healthy?
I’m a pendulum swing of rationality: I know what’s right but I also know what I secretly like.
2. How much sleep do you need?
I need loads, I love sleep. I normally get about six-and-a-half hours, but I find myself taking a sad little old lady’s nap in the afternoon. The Europeans have got it right: I’m all for the siesta – it should be enforced. If it were, of course, I’d spend all my time fighting it in illegal wakefulness.
3. How much do you drink?
I don’t really. I don’t drink at functions because it all goes a bit soft focus and I really love talking to people so if you feel a bit woolly-headed it’s a waste. I love a very cold glass of champagne but I only really drink the top third because once it warms up a bit I’m not interested.
4. Attitude to smoking?
I smoked roll-ups for about eight years, mostly because I like being with people but not always having eye contact. At home we’ve covered the whole kitchen table with paper and put loads of pens out so when you’re eating or having a cup of tea you can do a bit of scribbling, there can be a bit of silence and you can chat a bit. There’s something more natural about it – when you have to have eye contact those moments can feel slightly awkward. I had a cigarette addiction because I liked looking down, that doesn’t sound right does it?
5. Attitude to drugs?
That’s a tricky one. They’re incredibly harmful and incredibly non-harmful and they say so much about our need to alter reality.
6. Ever spent a night in hospital?
When I had the babies. With my first I didn’t know I could leave him so I would take him every time I went to the loo. The midwife was saying, “What are you doing? Put the baby down.” I didn’t listen; he’s a baby – are you insane? It’s like saying, “Just leave your arm in the bed.”
7. Are you happy?
Oh yes. I look around and just see all these incredible blessings. We can have a tendency to respond in a glass-half-full way but happiness lies in the grace that we use to respond to things – with kindness or warmth.
8. Have you ever had therapy?
Yes, after my mum died. It really helped me to deal with the fact that death is an utter reality and that loss and grief is an absolute and necessary part of what it is to be human. I learned to grieve properly; not subvert it, deny it or wish it away.
9. How do you feel about cosmetic surgery?
I look at my body sometimes and there is a level of disappointment about how life has treated these old bones. In my more awkward moments I’ve thought, “I’d better go and get that sorted,” but in my saner moments I always know I never will. I want to be able to grow old and go, “Yep, this is how I look: this is it.”
• Tamsin Greig is currently in Gethsemane at the National Theatre, touring to Windsor, Newcastle, Cambridge, Bath and Brighton from 3 March (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk)
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