- With a new love in tow, rose petals between her toes and the next series of"Cold Feet' scheduled, things have never been rosier for Hermione Norris. We joined her in Thailand to talk massage, magic and men By Polly Williams. No cold feet here. It's 95 degrees. Seventy per cent hlimidity. So, actress Hermione Norris dunks herself into the depths of a huge spa tub and rearranges herself into a slice of sunlight. Her freshly manicured toe pierces the rose-petalled surface like a periscope. She's peculiarly out of context. The Banyan Tree Hotelon the Thai island of Phuket could not be further removed from the Manchester set of thirtysomethipg drama Cold Feet, where Hermione spends mlich of her working life playing the beleaguered trophy housewife Karen Marsden. But it could be a new episode: Karen shuns pastel tailoring and domesticity and steals off to indulge in selfish pleasures with her philandering husband's credit card! "I wish she wolild," laughs Hermione, bubbling to the surface. "She'd love it here. Karen loves being spoilt. She'd be in the spa all day and then she'd buy the hotel's matching dressing gown and slippers! " Hermione is not a hotel-slipper kind of person. A Notting Hill resident, frequent backpacker and Ashtanga yoga fan with a weakness for cigarettes, strong coffee and city living, Hermione is the bohemian within the bourgeois blonde. Physically, she looks like Karen's groovier colisin. More elfin than she appears on screen, her tufty beach hair doesn't scream "salon". And she does the Ghost black dress, flip-flops and wraparound ChaneI shade thing with louch ease. Hers is a quiet confidence: she is an actress at the top of her game. |
Hermione's brilliant portrayal of housewife Karen -the resentments and passions percolating
beneath thepolish -is central to Cold Feet's success. Depicting the
fuctuating lives of thirtysomethings wrestling with crises of commitment
and fidelity in the Chardonnay- lubricated bolthole that is " middle youth" , the fifth series of Cold Feet is about to start filming and the last had an audience of nine million. Whether Karen should leave dreary David, the unfaithful husband, has be come a matter of national debate. (Hermione's advice: "Leave him!") Consequently, as an actress, Hermione is as hot as a Thai chilli. She's been working back-to-back since March 2001, playing opposite Robson Green in the TV thriller The Wire in the Blood, as well as a vampish wife in a TV adaption of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim. This is a well-deserved holiday. "It's great to unwind after the last few months. It's important to step back from things. The reality of my life recently has been a Winnebago in the north of England, surrounded by people on walkie talkies. I've been longing for this solitude and peace,"she says. Not complete solitude, tholigh. Hermione is with her new boyfriend, Simon. After four years of self-imposed singledom, Hermione is loved-lip. It's been going a few months. She met him through Robson Green. He works behind the scenes in TV. He is, she flushes coyly, "quite a bit yunger than me. Gorgeous, adventurolis,funny and someone, like me, who refuses to compromise. Worth waiting for. " They are staying in a villa complete with massage tables, infinity pool |
"It's very Bond." They don't leave it often. At 34, with a new boyfriend, hot job, and petals between hertoes, Hermione is in a good place. "I've had a lot of growing up to do but I feel more comfortable in my skin than I ever have," shesays. She looks it. Tanned -"St Tropez fake and the beach" -and bright-eyed, a jaunty happiness bubbles up through the cracks in her dry humour and reserve.As in all the best dramas, this happiness is "not a given " .She's had a journey as colourful as any character on Cold Feet. Bom in Essex, Hermione was four when her late father deserted her mother and three sisters. Unsurprisingly, this had "a huge effect". Her mother, a health visitor, "worked full time and independently broughtt us up. She instilled the work ethic in us." It was not an ideal situation. "But you survive." And "out of the adversity" cameunderstanding. "Coming from a broken home requires you to look at things and work out the rights and wrongs. I was forced to ask questions about duty, fidelity and responsibility. I'm a traditionalist .like that." She learnt to avoid repeating history: "If any man reminded me of my father I'd look the other way." With no happy parental model as a template, her relationships have been very much trial and error. "It's through experience that l've learnt to change my behavior, spot patterns and break them," says Hermione.("When I was younger, I'd go out with people and ttry to make something work that wasn't going to work. Now I won't be with anyone unless it really enhances my life. I don't fear being on my own. It's far more lonely being in the wrong relation-ship. You either fight it [singledom ] and make yourself unhappy or accept it and move forward. But there's this huge pressure to be in a relationship, which is ridiculous. A good relationship is a precios thing. You can't go to Tesco and buy one off the shelf! " Hermione once said -pre-boyfriend -that "the whole falling-in- love thing is nature's way of hoodwinking you into procreation. I find my realistic outlook on life errs on the side of cynicism and I have to keep hoping I can pull it back into believing in the magic again." She's horrified by the quote now- "what an ice maiden!" - and claims mitigating irony. But, really, it seems she's stumbled on the magic. "It's a complicated old tping w hen Cupid strikes," she f says quietly, sweetly distracted. So will the once strident singleton !settle down? The domestic housewifey thing, "that ain't never gonna happen." But babies? "I was broodier when I was younger. I'd still love to. It's just that thing -when?" The relentless tick of time: a poignant thirtysomething's problem. " Aging is especially unfair to women," says Hermione. "It's one of the hardest things to grow old gracefully and embrace wrinkles. At Ileast our parents' generation could get their blue rinse and pink lip- stick and get on with it. Now, it's all Botox parties and collagen lips. The stakes are raised." So has she? Would she? "I say no now but ask me in five years' time," she laughs. "But if I had it done, I'd be so embarrassed if someone noticed. If people looked at the screen and went, '0000 that Karen's lips are looking oddly plump!" Hermione is all for self-preservation, though. Fighting the |
Hermione is all for self-preservation, though. Fighting the lure of frozen margaritas,
she's not drinking alcohol this week and cutting down on coffee. "It's a
brilliant opportunity to detox." She's brought her yoga mat. She is enjoying the
massages: "Thai Healer massage was the best I've ever had. It goes on for hours.
Blissful." Every day, she swims in her pool, specialising in lung-bursting, underwater dives: She trained as a dancer, which makes you "very aware of physicality .You are always being asked to criticise yourself, and look at the line of the body." In her thirties, she swapped aerobics for regular yoga and swimming, as they "elongate muscles rather than bulk them up. " Blessed with a racehorse metabolism in her twenties, "as I've got older, I've got more conscious of what I eat". The relentless filming schedule and flurry of "revealing scenes" (like her fling with the publisher played by Sean Pertwee) means "there are no days off. If I'm having a bad hair day, I still get shoved on camera," she confesses. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't care but I like to be fit. It makes me feel better mentally." Other essentials in Hermione's emotional capsule wardrobe include her "totally wonderful girlfriends", who she entertains not with chi-chi dinner parties but "a bag of salad and a bit of salmon". The exhilarating release of independent travel: Hermione has back-packed around India and driven a cross America -Thelma and Louise style -with a girlfriend. |
There's the sanctuary of her WII flat, "contemporary with bits of furniture I've
picked up from travels". The local boutique, Sub Couture, where she buys her party
frocks- "I like a bit of Gucci" -and heels, "dolly shoes that I put on
my window sill and look at rather than wear. In reality, I am more a jeans
and trainers girl." And, more than anything, city life. "it's wonderful
for a holiday but it would do my head in being this serene all the time,"
she confesses. "I like stimulation. I like life to be circus and chaos and feisty and to step out of it for peace. If I were living in a village, I'd be the one graffiting the village hall." It's clear there isn't a Karen fighting to get out of Hermione (More likely the other way round.) Given a new casting, maybe she wouldn't play Karen at all. A die-hard urbanite with young lover sass and attitude. Should she not be in Sex and the City? Hermione hoots with laughter. "I do feel more affinity with the characters. it seems very real somehow." She stirs the cloud of rose petals with her foot and ponders, "Well, you know neither of those lifestyles~ Karen's or the single girls -are |