Helena Bonham Carter - Therapy Works

I am unbelievably excited to have on this podcast and I have no idea what we're going to talk about but I know it's going to be good uh well can I can I just say I'm really really tough to be on this because for me privately you have been you've written handbooks for my life and you helped me Live and Not only am I an avid daily follow of your incredibly practical and helpful Instagram but I've read all of your books and from way back now so I feel I've had a relationship that has you

have no idea about it we've been friends for years Julia but grief works this too shall pass and then lately every family has a story and I go back and I glean from it and you're my teacher you really are my teacher and I I think you're a godsend and I thank you for every Jewel that your brain concocts and for your compassion think about crying now you can cry it's a safe place it's not meant to be this way around [Music] well the part I want to say this the challenge of being there's one

I mean I've had difficulty thinking of which challenge to make for this but one challenge um of being well known is that one is entirely sick gets one very very sick about talking about oneself um I thought I had a challenge about thinking which challenge I should pick um could you just give us a list of what they were I've got you a menu so you can choose okay so I thought I thought it would be useful for you guys to think of one that you know one that you haven't already done um and I

think the only use about sharing challenges and difficulties is to and any kind of pain is so that it helps other people exactly so I can I can tell you should I just read you one little poem about my I.T chat this is a micro there's micro macro challenges okay living first of all living is hard that is that is uh I think yeah that's a big one and inside it one of the many things that um I think a day can throw at one and it can sometimes be an assault course for me anything

I.T and there's this poem that has given me Mark Solis I don't know if you know Mary Oliver I'd love Mary Oliver yeah do you know yes my goddess he's my goddess too oh do you know this poem called what I can do no okay good tell me God for that yes I'm giving something to you okay right now by the way but no I like doing it but it's called Mischief Mischief is Paramount in life okay what I can do it's very short by the way so you don't have to tune out the television

has two instruments that control it I get confused the washer asks me do you want regular or delicate honestly I just want clean everything is like that I won't even mention cell phones I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair wear a book is waiting but that's about it oh yes and I can strike a match and make fire that says oh my God wallpaper yes okay we're gonna do merchandise we will do merchandise I think it's something I find everything ramifies into complications in Modern Life you know and choice that's

a micro one so if I can take my role back okay you can try let's see how long it lasts yeah okay not long yeah when you're listing your challenges let's get a list of what they were so there's the microbe I.T I mean there's the acknowledgment that life is difficult and I think that is a good one to start with because I think if we think it isn't difficult we somehow feel that we're failing whereas if we know that life is difficult and days can feel like a thought courses like you said that is

a sort of more prepared state of going for the day absolutely and I think it also helps us to combat um reasons why what you call the shitty committee or I called it my when I was 15 I identified that I was I had a self-destructive part I called it the sdp and um wow which was quite sophisticated thinking for a 15 year old I was much more sophisticated when young than I'm old I've gone backwards I really have um and I was born old and I think that was slightly problematic for me but the

sdp has made and learning to live with my sdp and your shitty committee that's a challenge so I think I've spent a lot of my life thinking of ways to combat it and one of those things is to get there before they do so saying like hang on life is difficult before you tell me that I'm stupid it's like it's not my fault you know um one thing that I've um well because if I mean sdp is a 15 year old and you just said a whole mass of things that I really want to go

into that you were old when you were young and then you're young now that you're old but I also felt that when you were young there were things that happened that may have arrested your development definitely at your mom's breakdown like your dad's illness um changing School I I think um I think I had to deal with very big things very young so in a way maybe I didn't have the space to be a child and I remember not through anybody's fault just the the fault of life and what they say happens um so and

I remember when I was about 13 which was interesting enough when I became an actor and I think it's a total response to what might happen to my father I felt a sense of wanting to stay young and I think that's also something that wanting to keep my childhood keep and prolong the childhood that somehow the Innocents had already been had already been exploded and so it took me a long time as an adult if I have become an agile that's questionable to grow up um having said that it's never it's never one thing is

it I mean genetically my Granny if you met my grandmother not violet or my mother's mother she was somebody who was you know she was 89 and she was seven years old so you know she had a great very young disposition my mother has a very young and wise disposition so there's a lot that were handed down and then the more and more that we hear about transgenerational stuff that we get handed down um given what you know has happened to them I remember being very very very young and thinking I'm young I am older

than my grandmother I remember which was not a laugh a minute reading uh uh at speech and drama in in Southampton we had to pick a poem and um you know learn it and recite it and looking back on it is completely barking because I think I was at eight or nine and I chose John Claire's I am yet what I am no one cares foreign but I had this weight of sadness I think or that Germans call it is it the velch Merz or something I've just been learning German yeah compound words I was

born with it and I think that's helped me um it's it's helped and form you know perhaps why I I can bring something to Parts because I've been here before why have the weight of the exhaustion of being I think that's my maybe why I go to sleep for most of my life and that's something that I do often when in doubt I go and do um I have a snooze I have a horizontal but can I need to try and track yes no it's a challenge well I mean the sense that I'm making of

it is fascinating and I think will other people will hear themselves and what you're saying is though we have a very simplistic view of ourselves but actually we are very complex beings and What Makes Us me is what we inherit genetically so from both sides of your grandparents and your parents what happens to us like your mums break down when you were five and your dad becoming profile was he profoundly disabled he was in a wheelchair from 50. yeah that went wrong yeah when you were 13. and somehow you were born with wisdom that was

a sounds like it slightly was too much when you were young and but you wanted to hold on to your childhood so you developed many parts one was this self-critical part which feels quite cruel but another one was a like a young part that could play and be an actress and be a different different versions of yourself but how you your defense against all of this energy that's inside you is to go to sleep so do you Retreat I've probably missed something but no you have that made sense it makes total sense I think um

I definitely um there was two things and this is part of the problem is when I get scattered is which which path to choose um my response I think to what happened to Dad and to my mom and this wish to prolong my childhood was definitely um was me was me running away and becoming an actor because I thought I could create my own reality and I could control that so I could step away if life and I remember being really quite stubborn at 13 when it happened to Dad saying this is not going to

defeat us and my father didn't defeat my father in spirit and it certainly wasn't going to defeat me in my sense of um optimism and I just thought it's up to me what to make of it um actually there's a quote about my desk which says it's our task to make to make music of what remains and I love that has that been uh has that been a guiding influence totally and I've got another one which has put magic in today that's from my mother I think it's been a um it's our choice we're given

what what happens to us and there's a huge amount of luck that has been come my way and privileged including the actual people that ended up being my parents I really strongly believe that has been my biggest privilege as well as Financial as well as so much in that department and material but the quality of people and how frankly intact those two people are I mean they went through their own Journeys um but they were meant to be parents you know not everyone and I often question that of myself they were meant to be parents

what does that mean for you it was their gift to be I mean they knew I didn't I felt they did a good job you know I played um this other day I played sir Nicholas winton's um I go to on tangents that's the problem with me but Sir Nicholas Winton was an amazing man and I played his mother and I was reading about Sir Nicholas Winton and he lived 106 and he did an extraordinary thing with his life yeah he saved all the truth he's saved 450 yes children from Prague and he was asked

what was his secret to his long life and um loving life and he said well number one you choose your parents which is obviously an acknowledgment of him to say I got lucky and we do get lucky we get in birth the moment of birth we're so lucky where we land which family we land which position in that family we learned the geography of where we are um so much as random luck random or not then that's the other thing is that the older I've got when lost and or I become more and more intrigued

by where I've come from and what I've been handed down and with a feeling of I have to fulfill the purpose of this short time that we're all given and what am I meant to be doing here I'm not always this serious by the way but but something's an important question but it is what are we meant to be doing with this time I mean are we meant to be learning how to do it or do we just say oh that's not my gift you know um or um I have an idea I interrupted you

no do you have an idea of what your purpose is I'm getting there I don't think it's acting acting has been my luxury and it's my hobby almost and it's my play um is my way of coping and I love profoundly um and I feel so lucky that I've got the chance to do it the the chance of being other people I mean it's um doesn't it it stops you being scattered doesn't it because it gives you a script where you have a narrative and a line where you're going and you can inhabit that person

you know where you want to get to whereas live is much more messy and chaotic exactly I've got a frame and I've got a sense of definition and I've also very got clear boundaries I think I can I'm naturally quite curious and I'm actually quite generous if I may say without that's an unlikely thing for me to compliment myself but I can be pulled in many many directions and get very excited and that's I think that's why then I suddenly have to go to bed um because I exhausted myself but um it was something else

wasn't there there's always something in the purpose and meaning what's the purpose absolutely it's not acting what is it I don't know yeah but it said you were closer I'm closer I'm not close enough to articulate it but I think um there's something in be in being said that when one doesn't know necessarily what one's meant to do is to look at what you've been handed and where you've come from and I do think death can be a real interrupter and a bugger of what bug in that way in that it's interrupted our parents our

grandparents or whoever will they were doing something so there's something that we're handed out in our DNA sometimes it's something we have to get rid of and say sorry this is not mine just go away and other times you go actually this is something that um I can fulfill so a tiny thing like as an actor you get choices and you go like should I do it or not and that's a challenge sometimes it's great to have the choice but then there's the responsibility of making the right decision um so for instance the Winton story

came up it wasn't an extraordinarily big part but it was an extraordinary story and it completely tied in with what my grandmother and my grandfather on both sides did with their second World War so I felt in traveling back to that time I was meeting them and then there's another funny thing that happens is that when I act people from different times and a lot of the time I am in the past professionally um I find I start encountering [Music] um or people pop up it's like being a hologram and my grandmother pops up like

something I goes like what was that was my auntie Lily or that's my so there's a lot that we're receptacle we're carriers of people who've gone before and that's exciting because I'm all for you know I find Death so so heartbreaking because we feel it's final it's so Final on many levels but any semblance that something carries on that an energy carries on or that there's a continuity then um then I you know I I love pursuing that okay I find that a kind of inspiring thought that when you know you had very distinguished grandparents

and parents on both sides and rather than kind of looking at them from a distance and kind of feeling daunted by them or kind of overshadowed by them it feels like you've through your parts and through who you are you've been able to step back and embrace them and let them become part of you so you've integrated them through different pathways and I guess what would be interesting to explore is how that might be then passed down to Nell and Billy or two children yeah what's it like being your child well that is a very

good question it's a tricky one because I've got a lot to say about that but I don't want to sort of cross I don't want to talk about them out of turn you know and um all for them and um I have it's only recently that I thought oh my God um it might not be such it's difficult to see yourself objectively and like me as a mother or what people project on to me is very different from me and that's the thing of having somebody famous is that you aren't necessarily any of what other

people think of you you tend to be this projection of lots of people's others opinions of you and I think in order to survive being well known very quickly you've got to recognize it really has very little to do with you people people will come up when you go like well that's there well that's what they need me to be and it might be negative too A lot of the time it is negative and that was quite a hard challenge when I was younger was having a lot of judgmental negative opinion to deal with and

keeping before I had a sense of self um keeping my confidence intact it was difficult to grow up actually because I was young I was I was 18 when it all happened and um it's kind of what what I recognize is so toxic about the Instagram and the social media is just when young people are forming themselves they're making themselves vulnerable to strangers opinions and um it really can make their own shitty committee triumphant with a set within a second you know drown so um yeah um that's so psychologically complicated isn't it you know it's

a hard enough navigating one's own relationship with oneself and then how one has relationships with others which is how we kind of live with the sense of love and connection in the world but then being famous means that you have endless and Limitless projections that are onto you some negative some positive but also you had them before you were even developmentally mature and so kind of working that out for you about how to protect yourself right rather than ingesting them and what you're talking about Instagram is that people do they take them in and then

it with their head basically and who they are but it says that you've done quite a lot of work to work out okay that's them that's their what they need me to be or as young said you know you put on to the other person what you most don't like or what you most like about yourself it's nothing to do with the person well it's like the Daily Mail frankly sometimes yeah I mean the Daily Mail is the shitty Committee in in publication I find so it can be so toxic and so automatically judgmental and

so vile so when I'm having a shitty committee moment and there's certain things that triggers you know get the shitty committee to go in chorus [Music] um I mean really particularly if I have to watch myself something I mean that's not something that any actor I think would would pretty much identify with watching oneself certainly brings my shooting committee into a huge chorus of Triumph you know of uh yeah it's yourself I have to watch myself because I feel like it's an inverted narcissism because if I don't watch myself and I don't see everybody else's

work and there's a lot to film act film actor film making is a team effort and there's a lot of a play of many many people's skills and that's kind of what I love about it a lot of what I love about it is there's this group and I find quite touching is there's a group of people with all these disparate talents totally desperate sound design camera um pretending to be people makeup hair and they're all coming together to tell one story and it's like a mad dance too we're all trying to dance in sync

all to the same tune that's up to the director or the conductor in a way so I forced myself and also I am one thing I am really good at in the acting department is I love this but the one thing I will absolutely say hand on heart and say positively is I'm really good at something called ADR um do you know what ADR no ADR is a tech is the term In The Biz which is called additional dialogue recording so you get the chance well sometimes you have to do it at the end of

a film like some months later they'll be putting their film together they've edited it and then eventually they have to come around to doing the sound a lot of the sound that was originally on the original day is not usable because there's a plane or it interconnects from interconnects between two different takes so they don't match or so many different things so you get the chance of doing a clean track um and so they'll say could you do that speech again or that line or that word and it's all Patchwork filmmaking is all a massive

Patchwork of moments snatch snitches snatches so as an actor you're not in control of your performance you do bits you give it to the director he'll choose the which choices out of all the takes that you've done and put it together and at the end of the day then you'll see the finished product and you'll see the finished product in context in the story so once it's the first time it's the last time really you'll you'll have seen it when you read the script in your head then you see it in reality and very often

it is very different from what you intended Choice wise and also you have to get over the really a possible thing if you just aren't what you think you are and I think um it's it takes a huge level of self-acceptance plus the fact once you've got over yourself and go like well whatever this is I can't do much about it this is what I am and this is what I've done then you can make different choices and go okay so they've chosen that and that's the Arc of the story I can do a different

inflection on that or I can do if there was a line that had a potential laugh that's your time when you can go in and do it again because it's something you finally see the context and context is everything so I now force myself to watch it um so that I know that I can improve it and do myself Justice and I can't it's a ridiculous process and I go down abyss and uh a Vortex and then I come through it but the the amount of time spent in the vortex is lessened as I've gotten

older wow it's fascinating but also it links to what you're saying about usdp and also being scattered and also honing your craft and the challenge psychologically and emotionally of doing something that really you have to put your your skill out there but be it the mercy of other people of what they what they make of it yeah so there's there's risk and you have to trust and what sounds fascinating actually is similar to mini driver is that you recognize you go down a hole but you are quicker at getting yourself up out of it that

somehow the years of building muscle and kind of recognizing oh this is the whole it's not that you're never going to go down there and I think all of us know that we're going to go down that damn hole but it's knowing what gets you out there but the thing that's pinging in my head is I have this idea that acting gave you a root and a Persona and so that felt coherent but what you're describing isn't that at all it's coherent when I'm doing it it's coherent and gives me a root and a wonderful

map when I just got the job when I got all the ideas when I'm mapping it out the one of the great Joys and I for me is opportunity you know the sense of possibility oh I could do this and that and that that gives me a real Buzz then doing it the play with people once you've gotten over the first day nerves or the nerves which one always has um because you've never played the same part twice that's the other thing and then you've never well it depends maybe you have worked with the same

people but there's always nerves to deal with and then [Music] when you I mean I love walking around wearing somebody else yeah in life I mean I'll take them for a walk unfortunately and you know much to the irritation of those who live with me I'll if I have got an accent the accent comes with me and it's fun and it's really it's playful I just played a German so the German accent was really it was so fun because it had a sensuality and I'm doing it wrong but it really it brings out a different

person version of hey it's a different version and we have multitudes in ourselves that's it we I love that whoever said that we contain multitudes yes I love that I love that and I also use that with dress is like I love dressing up because I think we can become many many different things we are different people depending on who we are I don't mean in a schizophrenic multiple personality way but we have all these different sides so um and and putting them on and playing with them is the antidote to you know yeah seriousness

of life it's you know ultimately I get out it's like being alive isn't it yeah we've got to choose life and it's like live on the side of life and ultimately um you've got to not take yourself so seriously or it I mean you can obviously when you're in pain there's no choice it's not about taking things seriously but but if you can still play and have a laugh with somebody else I love that that other thing that really helps me is that the shortest distance between two people is laughter and I really it's not

sex I think it's laughter and that I love that oh my God that's good so if you have the potential for that that's what it's about so you've got to do things to play you've got to instill reasons to play and not take your self so personally I think um I mean I love what you're saying in the sort of freedom of it yeah and in the vivacity and the kind of energy of being alive like letting yourself be a different person today by the lips that you're wearing or the shirt you put on or

the jewelry or the accent and that that is exciting and playful and creative and I think one of the Terrible Things of lockdown and then all this ghastly politics is that we've forgotten how to have fun we've forgotten how to play we none of us have enough play we're constantly sort of doomscrolling and miserable and so I love the idea of connection is closest through laughter not sex yeah my stage of life is probably more likely frankly [Laughter] I think I think we that's definitely I mean I think sex is overrated but they might say

a lot about myself but but um I you're very sexy Helena let me oh thanks so you Julia actually a bit of a gold Crush going on but um yeah very mutual yeah yeah so nice well hey you're married aren't you yeah I so am I married yeah yeah yeah but anyway we can love lots of people that's the other thing which I've always believed and play play with being having a crush of course like it's playful it is playful and it's it's um it's play of energy and laugh and constructing sentences and construct and

making things together any kind of that kind of relationship just cons it's um it's like building blocks but doing it with sentences or thoughts I think we're so overloaded with responsibilities you know the one good thing about covid was the Press pressing the pause so we all had time to not answer 7000 emails we you know the barrage of Life stopped I felt for me I was safe I had my home um no one was ill we could cope and then so I had the luxury of enjoying the fact that the world had stopped so

the inbox stops then that thing is you know the totally ridiculous thing about being an actor is you might not be in work but you can see other people working and for once none of us are working so there's no ending and no energy she's got that part yeah yeah there's no feeling of threatened by other people it's very very dangerous as a profession because you can put your whole self-esteem in the hands of other people's success if you're not careful [Music] um so how do you hold on to your core self and your confidence

and who you are internally given that all we've talked about of the different roles you can inhabit the projections put onto you what you've what's been carried down to you from your parents and your grandparents maybe your great-grandparents how do you you know I think one of the great difficulties in life is finding how to stabilize oneself with a sense of this is the core aspects of me that I I can rely on that regulate me that keep me sort of connected with myself and alive um [Music] alive in both not dead but also alive

energetically rather than terrified all the time towering under the um I think it changes from day to day um and I think you know it's very interesting how quick a sense of confidence can vanish I was talking about it with a really high achieving friend who was sort of saying oh I haven't done much with my life and and his his trials she's done so much and you're like it's that sense of satisfaction or confidence just evaporates very very quickly um it is but the thing is you know I have a lot of compartments in

my life so I'm not just an actor that's the other big challenge is how do you balance all the roles so I'm a mum to two very different individuals I've I'm a daughter I'm really good at that I will say that that's a good thing yeah I think I get that I think I really won't and that's another thing that's the big ask of you I want to ask you about the Big Challenge okay um but so the mom I have friends who have really put up with the fact that I've had to vanish for

times in my life because when I become somebody else or go off on a job it is all-consuming but they patiently wait for me to come back I have a boyfriend I have he's this is not the list of priority on the list of priorities I think it's not list of yeah and um how are you doing things for charity I think I've always been quite eclectic and wanting to so I'm very aware of not to pigeonhole myself not reduce myself and ultimately it's listening to the shitty committee if my shitty committee really gets nasty

like the other day when I was dealing with watching myself in this latest program I asked I started to sing out loud what they were saying that was a really good antidote like oh my God yeah 256 yes the face is sagging oh my God oh my God changing yes you're getting old and it really because I did it in The Sound Studio it was just looking at me like as if I was completely and I said yes I'm mad it doesn't really matter but this is what I carry inside he said yes and of

course me every single person who walks this Earth carries a shitty committee I love the name yes congratulations but once I started talking it out and I'm trying to I hope it won't breach her Court's thing but I am trying to introduce this notion to my amazingly clever stunning daughter who has a very hyperactive inner critic I'm trying to point out that what that inner critic says is not fact this is it is all things are not facts yeah feelings are not facts oh there's so much I have learned from you but that was another

thing that I was going to say but um but but and what you tell yourself is not factual so my my CBT course really helps that but now practical things that help singing it out yeah so hidden in shape it grows in that horrible Topsy way that Shane does in silence looking to grow into all sorts of get it out you've got to spit it out I went through a very painful divorce without again I don't want to breach people's privacy but the way I cope with that was that I just got A4 I got

one here you know just at the page of Asia paper um okay that's you know I thought you actually ride them so I bet 200 shoes it's different from a diary I just I keep it Darkness oh yeah so technical challenge yeah I can't hear you now something's gone Georgie is that it yeah you've got it better yeah sorry I pressed the button it's all right I did it myself um um yeah so the April pad that you wrote stuff down into I mean I bought I don't know 500 of them because it was a

long lasting thing divorce does not that's the other thing it's not that fine it never ends and even if you divorce somebody the marriage it's a kind of marriage it's you're still with as if you have children with them particularly you have them the relationship has to change so um and it's not just them of course a divorce and it's interesting how a divorce has so many the anatomy of a divorce and how many different Grieves are which had never occurred to me before until I did it but what it does to your inside and

what you have to grieve and what you have to lose and say goodbye to so many levels and layers and and identities dreams yeah whatever you've attached to being you as a matriarch if it is or you as the uh with your team with your family um and then also what you are in relationship to groups of friends and the world in the family it impacts the entire family also how people don't necessarily know how to treat you I think there's a lot of things that we should just need to tell people out there when

dealing with people who's if you're on any kind of grief either divorce or loss losing somebody you talk about it you don't avoid it you don't you don't want changes you know you face it and you name it the person who's in grief is consumed by that person whether they're leaving them or whether um they've gone and they exist and you have to meet them bring that person into the space and talk about it and if also I'll just put it out there because it really came acroper in my with some people when our divorce

that sometimes family you know friends don't know what to do and they don't I mean there's a split loyalty and they don't know contact both sides if you don't if you were worried about hurting somebody contact both sides and just check in and say would you mind if I saw so always respect what they had even if it's in your view the past or even if in your view it wasn't a good thing anyway it doesn't matter you have to the divorce and that the previous relationship and that person was theirs and part of The

Grieving is Letting Go and it takes a longer time than people expect much much longer the whole more than you want either you want to be over it like you want to be over it I think people often think I think sometimes people are bored frankly of how long I've grown mowed on about it and I said look I don't want to be I'm bored by my own feelings but it is really really all-consuming you can also become it yeah and you can be very very selfish when you're in pain because it's so consuming you

can't you don't think of other people's but literally because it's congest taking your every cell of your being processing it and it is of huge change yeah I just wrote and wrote and wrote not to be read by anyone I wrote it I've got I still got a draw full of it I just draw vomit it out uh I spoke to people who've been here always find the tribe you know you've been through it yeah they'll show you the way through the dark you know there's always people who've done I've been through it before you

know there's a general rule for life you know in your young you think I'm so unique and special and no one knows what I feel and I go like I'm sorry to tell you but we're basically unoriginal well we have our own subjective experience but divorce talking to other people what they've gone through normalizes the madness or the desperation that you feel or and it can also give you advice about what to do with friends or what to do with friends also the children it's a very complicated thing how to share the children all those

patterns um and also the knowledge which I can tell now people who are going through it and I'm now five I mean I'm years down the line that it gets so much easier and it's that thing of [Music] um it you get it gets easier but I I do think to change into changes one thing I would bring back which I found enormously hard and again it was exacerbated by being well known so I couldn't walk around going I kept on wanting to say I want to be in Black I want to wear something to

indicate to people that I'm not my normal self I'm in morning yeah I'm in morning and I'm under reconstruction you know this is um yeah my scaffolding has well I've got no scaffolding so definitely it's just like just gone but until I've fallen apart I won't be able to rebuild so don't expect anything correctly of me because I can't take anything I found um in the process there was a lot of just disintegration my brain couldn't make decisions because it was so congested with I think just processing it's occupation the part of the what you're

saying is in some ways that the breakdown is the Breakthrough but you can't make it faster you can't kind of press you know fast forward you have it's a painful disorienting kind of what's the word you're saying is that you feel like you're breaking inside don't you like there's nothing there no it's a fragmentation yeah fragmentation total fragmentation and it's very scary and the landscape is very very desolate and you feel very very alone and I'd only say to people who and I you know I'll go through it again no doubt when somebody dies but

you the only thing that I can say of help I've been always taught is like is the short view thing you know we have to try and just do the next minute keep it in the day keep it in the day and that it's not um real insight to human existence isn't it when one does and one will get stronger and you'll come together very much better I do think it's not a comfort because it's a um and being public figure made it worse because you wanted to wear black and look awful but somehow because

you were recognized you couldn't I think wandering around and being looked at most of the time I can take it because again it's like whatever I can wear Veil as it were not literally a veil but I mean I just psychologically yeah psychologically I realize again it's that thing it's not really anything to do with me you know I privately have joy playing different people the the side benefit is the same thing that's something that I do with and it's and it's of great benefit many times a lot of the time it's of complete pain

um and it's a pain when you are not when you are very vulnerable I remember doing the school gate and feeling I was so vulnerable and I couldn't obviously meeting friends was fine my my best friends but not people I don't really know because you're raw and it goes so it was like I had not no skin yeah and um but that's when I say not because I wanted to wear black but I think we should that's something that you know the victorians had we should have you know we should bring back um a uniform

for morning because it gives an indication to people that you aren't yourself and nor should you be yourself yeah and completely agree yeah and it's it's called I think I've got a thing with Alice saying I'm not myself I can't explain myself because I'm not myself and that I like that yeah and it and it sort of says look guys because I think we still have trouble admitting vulnerability and there's a judgment about it and we should be strong and it's the real Legacy of the British stiff upper lip and it's like we have to

honor and respect loss and in fact not wear it as a badge but have um more protection or more or honor it you know in our society and press pause the time when you really need to have a sort of lockdown after a death just to let yourself heal space space in which to recalibrate and with birth too you know I've heard a relative who's just said about it you're like you've no idea the shock of having a birth it's for me with death and birth and if I lost my dad very quickly after I

had bill but it was also he was amazing because he he my dad wanted to live to when Billy was born but they were both like and that was a real Act of generosity but they're both mini earthquakes too also you know that's like the tectonic plates go flying up totally shift yeah yeah and then and then you have to just wait till they come down to start walking and I think people try to run way before it's sensible it's quite interesting that a lot of the parts you play go back in time and psychologically

I mean we can't fully know what life was like then we can imagine yeah but I think there is something about the speed of 21st century lives that expects you to keep going and they're kind of 24 7 news and your emails and the pressure and all of those things and be able to get to places their life was just slower of course there was more death because children died and basically you got ill you died yeah there was no medicine but I think there was uh and there were lots of terrible things about it

so I'm not saying it's better then but there's something about the slower pace of Life honors these big life events of birth and death and separation and moving High through all the different types of losses because we need to slow down in order to allow ourselves to feel and to be able to absolutely allow that to come through our system and as it does that it allows us to change and adapt to our new circumstance but this this you know Chop Chop get on with it push forward push forward is is a real illness and

really bad for our Mental Health I think it's really bad but our mental health and our physical health yeah and I think it's sometimes impossible what I mean I do go to work to escape because the barrage of decisions that I I meant to I meant to make but then the quote my Guru mother she said one rule is don't ever do anything today that you can postpone till tomorrow you know that is the opposite isn't it of everybody else but it's genius isn't it it is actually the way to survive Spain don't do anything

today that you can do tomorrow and that is that's a great day to be in badges yeah yeah yeah so listen we are coming to the end very unfortunately and I'm gonna make a request which may not be possible but I would love to talk to you about your the challenge that you kind of just slipped in momentarily which was about your mum which we haven't even touched on but we couldn't start now because I think it's there's a lot there so maybe we could have a part two at some point I'd love a part

two that's the my life is haunted by the potential loss not potential it's obviously going to happen but the loss of my mum I've lost my father but every grief is different for the obvious reasons so I wanted to know from you and maybe we postpone it is there anything that we can do to prepare for death of somebody but with a [Music] um with the agreement and um um yes is there anything that we can we can do to prepare for them to make a good death and for our own Souls and how to

is there anything I could do to help myself survive life after it's a big one so I'd like to have a part two but I think if you were sure I can give you a short answer great I've got my notepad hang on yes so listen I'm just trying this out this may not yeah okay okay but the fact that you're thinking about it already that that is part of your consciousness is the first step to Preparing so it's not like you're in Blissful ignorance this isn't going to happen so you are I imagine when

you go and see your beloved mum you're kind of aware you know maybe this time you know I've only got 50 more of these visits to do you know you're aware that time is narrowing that her her life on Earth and I mean the first thing which I'm sure she and you've already have is to have any of the conversations that you did that are important to have that you don't have regrets whether that's to do with your relationship in the past whether that's to do with actual practical plans like what does she want for

her funeral does she want to be on a on a life support machine does she have end of life planning in advanced wishes those practical things um and do that possibly with your two brothers so that yeah because I think after a parent's died that wish that kind of wondering what would mum want you know and man says well she said to me this and the other one says she she said to me there and that's conflicted so that if you can have that collaboratively together that really helps that's a good tip and the other

one is being present which I think you really are in the moments that you have with her and really cherish them and embrace them and create opportunities because in the end all you will have is those memories and they will be your treasure Trove to go back and revisit after she's died and they will resource you in the same way as your dad is still very present in you and you can remember the conversations you had before he died when Billy was born that you know although your relationship with your mum I imagine because she's

a mother not a father is very different like when you're with her like make sure you have the conversations that will nurture you and allow you to feel close and loving to her because as you know the love for her won't die um and then the final piece in this short bit is basically you can do these things and at the moment of death you're never prepared it is always a shock you can be told two hours before someone is going to die that they're going to die by the end of the day or whatever

it is and still that moment when they stop breathing is like it is just unbelievably shocking that's my short thank you but we can go into each of those long forms I'd love to I can't it's another long one was like I wanted to know how you got so involved with death but that's a long one I can't tell you that it's from my childhood obviously oh really I mean I wasn't brief but lots of people my parents were very significantly breathed did they lose their parents or so my mom by the time she was

25 she was an orphan her mother her father her sister and her brother had all died and my father his father and his brother and they never talked about any of them children [Music] my grandmother was an alcoholic my mom was an alcoholic um so there was there's a lot but I'll tell you oh yeah no that's what a legacy yeah well I have loved this conversation Helena no me too so much I really feel like we I felt you know that there was so much that you've obviously thought about that has sort of come

out but it does feel like as it's coming out you're understanding yourself better and more with more clarity and one of the things I would say back to you is that you ha you say this about yourself that you're scattered or disorganized and my response to you is that you have much more kind of centered wisdom and um uh grounded sense of self then you probably recognize I think that's my father I mean I'm made of both and I'm also I don't know if you believe in all that but I do find it has happened

but but not not that but astrologically um I'm a Gemini so I have this Gemini um I've got a knee-jerk reaction to get to have lots of we all have millions of ideas occur and um I think also post menopausal the brain changes you know my brain has definitely changed since I've had the menopause and during the menopause that's a whole other challenge so um and that's the other thing that I think I've learned is that every decade is just a different Learning lesson you know I'm doing my 50s now and the challenges now are

obviously completely different than from when they were 40s and we've never done this age before unless we really have lived before you know so it's um everything's new I wondered but do you feel more I don't want to say a sense of knowing yourself and well-being and optimism in your 50s than you did definitely because I've gotten to know myself yeah I've gotten to know how to live with myself and not take myself not be might not have myself take up so much time give myself a break it's like oh just whatever get over yourself

and then be an open to the world you know and play and um experiment and taste and explore and ask and I do love people that's why I act as I'm curious about how people put together and I don't think it's a million miles away my mother's psychotherapist so in some ways I deconstruct people and I'm always interested in playing ill people actually and I didn't realize that until I suddenly thought oh that's so I always go like well how did they become this way how do people and then I deconstruct that so there's that

sort of story so it's um no it's sort of as you get older I think you get more used to yourself and then it opens up the possibility of actually being alive you know and being living and having fun for fun sake yeah I love that's a wonderful place to end thank you so my pleasure anytime Julia anytime again thank you for everything oh totally my pleasure thank you not at all so does this end or do I do I meet your daughters or not do they just discuss things after they discuss things after so

I don't get to meet them can I meet them another time definitely read them another time they'd love to give you another time no I'd love to meet them