The actor Amy Beth Hayes is a rising talent of the UK acting scene, with no time to spare, she’s appearing on the screens at the beginning of 2014 in ITV’s new production, Mr Selfridge, now in its second season this month.
Born in Wales, Amy grew up in the North-East of England, after some youthful liaisons with acting and despite being offered a place at the Guildhall School of Drama, Amy chose to study English at Oxford University. However this choice has proved no hinderance to her acting ambitions, and has, in fact, proven to be the opposite.
It was in 2007 that her acting career began in earnest when she starred in a production of On The Waterfront which was directed by British actor/director Stephen Berkoff. The following year, she landed a small role in Dr Who and also in UK channel E4’s groundbreaking superhero comedy-drama Misfits which led to her having a starring role in Romanian feature film, Eva, released in 2010.
That year was particularly rewarding for Amy as she appeared on stage alongside Mark Rylance in the award-winning and critically acclaimed Jerusalem as Dawn, Johnny’s (played by Mark Rylance) ex-wife, and was described as investing the role “with even more spirit and poignancy” further demonstrating her versatility and range as an actor.
Since then Amy has appeared in a wider range of TV roles in shows that have won her a popular following such as Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Case Sensitive, Black Mirror, Shameless, Sirens and The Syndicate. She has even starred in a Netflix original series, Lilyhammer.
This year Amy is set to reprise her role as Kitty in Mr Selfridge. Glass recently met with Amy to talk about her career, how she feels about acting and how she sees her career developing.
Amy Beth Hayes. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
How did your foray into acting begin?
I think it probably was the same as a lot of actors, doing a school play and going oh “wow, this is amazing, I didn’t know this kind of thing existed”. I auditioned for drama school at 17 and then got a place in the Guildhall School of Drama, but I got offered a place to read English at Oxford, so I decided to do that instead.
I had the most amazing time [in Oxford], it was a bit up and down because there’s so much work, you constantly feel like you shouldn’t be there and you’re not good enough. But all told, I had a great time and got into doing a lot of drama there – I did an awful lot of plays, I actually got into trouble with some of my tutors for doing so many!
I think what reading English taught me is invaluable to what I do now, it taught me how to really read something. I mean, how I read things now to how I did before is completely different, it forces you to read between the lines and ask questions about theses characters and the context and the time that they’re writing. I apply that to every script that I read now, so that was amazing training for me.
I did that and went and did three years at the Central School of speech and Drama – I had some incredible tutors, I still remember what they say to me today and I apply it to things now, I had some invaluable training of how to approach a character. You’re taught to trust your instincts and what to do with those instincts.
Well, that’s me in a nutshell (laughs).
Amy Beth Hayes. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
Consider the way you describe the way you read it now, does it make it easier to draw from your emotions when engaging with a character?
Yeah, I guess the most important thing when it comes to playing a role is your instinct and that’s worth a million, so if you read a script and something makes me laugh, I put a little cross next to it because I think if it makes me laugh, it should make other people laugh and that’s what I should go for when playing the role.
But obviously things change and develop, you might end up re-reading how you’ve approached something, but I often find the first line that my character says is important as it’s their introduction into the world of the play or film and it’s also our [audiences] first impression of the character, so no different from when you meet someone for the first time, your opinions of them are formed very quickly; it actually takes a lot to break those down afterwards.
I played a character once, only at drama school and the first thing she said was “Sorry”. I found it quite mind blowing at the time by how big a clue this was to her relationship with the other characters and to herself – it came out that she’s somebody who was going to suffer a lot of remorse and regret over the course of the play and ultimately she was going to disappoint. So by saying this one line, it was this huge clue. So from that moment I’ve always gone, right, first lines are really important.
Amy Beth Hayes. Photograph: Justin van Vliet
I know you’ve done theatre before, now you’ve done work in television, how do you see the two?
This has to be taken in account, which is the sad reality, that in order to afford to be able to do theatre, you’ve got to do TV. I absolutely love the theatre, it’s what I was trained in, it’s where I feel my most comfortable, I’m still very sort of uncomfortable in front of a camera, it’s not something that comes naturally to me, because I’m trained to use my body to tell the story as well and I don’t mean that as in doing big shakes or theatrics. (Laughs)
I just mean, the movement of your foot on stage can tell a story completely different to what your character says just by moving your arm, that’s like a big moment, whereas for on screen, everything has to take place in the eyes, and that’s a big thing to get your head around as a theatre actress.
What’s a good thing to gain from theatre?
I love the theatre; I haven’t done any since Jerusalem, which was back in 2010, with Mark Rylance.
If you don’t know Mark, he’s sought to be the best stage actor over the last fifty years, working with somebody like that you learn lots, I would watch him in the wings a lot when I wasn’t on stage, his performance would change every night. It was the subtleties and nuances of the changes which I found fascinating and it’s something I wanted to take into my work, because it’s very exciting for the people you work with, to be fair some actors hate it when you change things (laughs), but good actors, they like it.
It looks like you’ve had a busy schedule in terms of filming, Lilyhammer and Mr Selfridge there’s even a little short film, Water Marks, you’ve done in 2013 – how do you transition between roles?
I think maybe, not seeing it as a transition, but maybe seeing it as a completely fresh slate, because taking bits into roles of characters you’ve already done can be a bit dangerous, I find it’s just best to start from scratch.
I think for me I can only play a character I love, I find if I don’t love the character it’s just impossible to play them. You know when you love somebody you have to accept that they have flaws, weaknesses and they’re not perfect – these things become crucial to the character and this is their vulnerability. I went through a period recently where I’ve been playing characters that are, less sympathetic, you know, a tricky sort of character.
My role in Mr. Selfridge is a bit of a handful, when I played my part in the syndicate with Timothy Spall, I didn’t get a lot of fans from that, it’s [all about] finding these characters vulnerabilities, for instance Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, this is a murdering psychopath, but we all loved him because we found out his vulnerability – he did his job and we all fell in love with him because of that.
So if the character is arrogant, jealous, vain or even if they’re a murderer, it’s because there’s something that’s hurting on the inside or there’s a deep insecurity there, that always boils down to something like yearning to be loved, fear of abandonment, these huge things that come out in other ways and that is often cloaked with other things.
It’s about understanding what’s going on inside and what the character presents to the outside world. Often when I’m playing a character I like to think of them when they wake up in the morning, when they get dressed and literally like they’re putting on their armor, how do they present themselves to the world?
So if a character is prestigiously turned out and everything is sort of matching and perfect, there’s probably something chaotic going on inside.
Amy Beth Hayes in the second series of Mr Selfridge
That’s a really interesting way to look at it, quite philosophical. What could you tell me about your character in Lillyhammer?
She’s a bit of a gangster’s Moll, she’s going out with he’s a gangster-slash-Millwall supporter; he’s not a very nice person. She goes out to Norway to sell his Lamborghini with him, so they go out there but when you first see her she’s got a black eye, so I found that really interesting, that’s like
Wow, what happened three days ago?
It’s never explained and I just love it when things aren’t explained like that. Because you see what her boyfriend ends up being like, you can make an educated guess.
So that’s interesting because that then says this is a woman who stays with a man that punches her in the face, she’s either made of steel or she’s completely fragile.
It turns out I’m made of steel, I end up killing somebody by downing lots of peanuts and giving him an anaphylactic shock due to a nut allergy. I seduce this man at the bar, take him to the toilets, snog his face off and erm, kill him. (Laughs)
But based on the script they wanted someone with short black hair. When I put that wig on, I look so different with short black hair, along with my leathers on, I felt like this invincible hard ass. It was brilliant.
Amy Beth Hayes in the second series of Mr Selfridge
A killing scene? How was that to film?
I loved it; I want to do more murders! (Laughs hysterically.)
They’re going to make a Hannibal of you yet. I guess costume plays a big part developing a character.
The clothes are really important, I say for an actress, well, actors and actresses, the same in Mr Selfridge as well, when I put on that corset and I get strapped into that dress, that certain way of doing my hair in an Edwardian style – even though those things make you feel a different way, you’ve got to listen to them, they make you hold yourself a different way and that’s going to influence how to play the character.
Speaking of Mr. Selfridge and costume while we’re here, how long does that whole process take?
It’s quite a long time, I’ve never worked on a production where there’s so much attention to detail, I mean, you walk onto that set and to me it feels like, not that I’ve ever done one, but how a Hollywood film would feel.
The attention to detail, the studio, every square inch is filled with something from that time, a beautiful jar or a bar of soap, I [Kitty] work in beauty, to get me ready takes about an hour and a half, but you get quicker at these things, to get my costume on now it takes a lot less time than it used to, you sort of stop complaining about how tight the corsets are because it just becomes this normal thing that you do every morning, but you get to a certain point in the day where you’re in pain and you’re basically counting down the minutes for lunch.
Amy Beth Hayes in the second series of Mr Selfridge
I never imagined a corset would be such an ordeal.
It’s designed to push you in at the waist and up at the top, designed to be very, very flattering to the observer. We put one on a guy once, just because they just didn’t understand. Though, I think the guys have a rough time with their collars, it’s a very stiff type of card under the chin, so every time you turn your neck it’s a little bit painful – but it’s just what they wore back then, we’re so lucky in what we get to wear these days.
To return to Mr Selfridge, you’re back for a second season. I know you’ve played recurring characters before, but what’s it like to reprise your character Kitty this time around?
It was something that I really, really enjoyed. There were certain changes because we pick up the story about four or five years later. We start the second series just before the onset of World War One. It’s a period in history where everybody has to go through a lot of changes and you know we haven’t experienced a war like this before so it’s something very new and quite traumatic.
Also what I found fascinating about it was because this wasn’t WWII where you would of experienced what WWI was like, these characters have no idea that it wouldn’t be over by Christmas, it was just going to be this little thing where the boys went off, did a bit of fighting then came back – and of course it wasn’t like that at all.
I remember there was a scene which we shot where it was just before the boys were getting drafted up and in the store there was a bit of a parade and a drum march and stuff, it was quite a somber moment, I remember playing it quite seriously and I then I thought, hang on a minute, she doesn’t really know how serious this is going to be, maybe she thinks this is quite funny, there’s this bloke banging on a drum, so these people are coming at it quite innocently and there’s a tragedy within that which I found really interesting.
In terms of my character, I really think she’s grown up since the first series and she’s now doing what I think she feels she was born to do, she’s head of the flagship department which is beauty, in the first series, beauty wasn’t a department and in fact anything to do with women’s cosmetics, it was something that was sold at the back of the store, under the counter, women would go in and whisper,
[Whispers] “Can I have a pot of moisturiser please?”
And any women that used toiletries or make up were prostitutes, so we come to series two with an entirely different attitude towards women and the way they present themselves. I believe Selfridge was the first to do this and my character Kitty is the head of this transition, so to play a character that is at the forefront of this movement is really exciting and something she [Kitty] takes very seriously. I think because she’s found her calling, it softens her and we see a different side to Kitty emerging that we perhaps didn’t see as much of in the first series.
Amy Beth Hayes in the second series of Mr Selfridge
I know you’ll do more work than this, but at the moment, do you feel comfortable in this character?
I really love my character and I’d be very sad to see her go, I just really love playing her, I think she has a beautiful naiveté and childlike quality to her, she always says what she thinks or feels and I think that’s quite rare and liberating because we’re so used to thinking before we speak or imagining how it sounds, but she’s not like that, she’ll just come out with something and I think that’s the reason why she gets away with a lot of what she does. She’s so instinctive, like a child would be.
And there’s a lot of that in Kitty, which I find adorable in playing her – in this series Kitty has to do the tango, which was loads of fun, I thought I was going to absolutely hate it.
How could anyone hate the tango?
I have a fear of dance! I did dance when I was younger, but I never really felt like I was one of those little waifs in a blue leotard skipping about the stage, I just thought “this isn’t really me” but I started learning the tango and I ended up absolutely loving every single second of it. A guy called Amir Giles, who was my tango partner in the episode, teaches me tango still and he’s an amazing tango dancer.
That’s what I love about my job though, if anyone said to me I was going to learn to tango, I would have been like “what are you talking about?” (Laughs) My producer told me should have a few lessons – I thought, I have to do this, I’ve not got a choice, the scene has been written and we’re filming it in two weeks time – better learn some tango (chuckles). You just give yourself a deadline and do it; it’s the best way of learning isn’t it?
Learn by doing. Do you watch your own performances back?
I find that my heart wants to come out of my mouth before I come on, I don’t know what I expect to happen, I’m not sure if I think I’m going to physically combust on screen or something, but I have this like massive fear of what I’m going to do, but I force myself to watch these things because I learn from it and I can pick out where I should of looked at camera or done something a little differently, so I very much use it as a learning process.
If you could star alongside anyone – any era, who would it be?
I might have to think about this one … I really love Bette Davis, but I almost don’t want to say her because she’d act me off the screen (laughs), but I’m going to say it because I love her so much. I’m a big fan of actresses from that period; I just think they’re wonderful; my favorite film of hers is All about Eve.
What’s next for you?
All of these things are up in the air, such as an actor’s life. You just never know what you’re doing, they say you never know what you’re doing until you’re in the lunch queue (laughs). But could be another series of Selfridges, there’s a few projects on the horizon, the iron’s in the fire.
by Kashman Harris
Mr Selfridge will be screened on Sunday, January 19 at 9pm on ITV1
Photographs: Justin van Vliet