Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge on the sizzling chemistry they first ignited 50 years ago: We did fancy each other… no question of that

• British actors Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge discuss their latest project
• READ MORE: Emmerdale star reveals she quit acting career to be a teacher

We’ve known each other for donkey’s years,’ Nigel Havers says, leaning over to pat his old pal Patricia Hodge lightly on the hand.

‘Since the 70s,’ says Patricia, who is well known for portraying a series of elegant, formidable women, from Margaret Thatcher in The Falklands Play to the hilariously bossy mother in Miranda.

The pair of them are about to star together as lovers reunited in a new production of the Noel Coward play Private Lives. 

So, way back when they first met as aspiring actors, was there ever a spark between them? 

‘Oh, we did fancy each other, yes. No question of that,’ says Nigel quickly, before realising just how eager he sounds. ‘Or maybe it was just me?’ Patricia looks down at the floor and smiles enigmatically.

Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge are about to star together as lovers reunited in a new production of the Noel Coward play Private Lives 

Love took other paths. Patricia married music publisher Peter Owen in 1976. They had two sons and were together until his death in 2016. Nigel has had a more tempestuous love life, having once been told by the actor Kenneth More, ‘If you are charming, you don’t have to ask them to go to bed, they ask you.’

The son of the late Tory MP Sir Michael Havers, Nigel has played mostly posh characters, from a lord in Chariots Of Fire to smooth conmen in The Charmer and Coronation Street. 

He married his first wife Carolyn in 1974 and they had a daughter together but divorced in 1989 after he had an affair. Carolyn died of pneumonia in 2011 and Nigel was at her bedside, having already lost his second wife Polly Williams to cancer in 2004. 

He got married for a third time in 2007, to the charity worker Georgiana Bronfman, and they are still very much together. 

There’s no doubt, though, that he and Patricia have the kind of closeness only decades of friendship can bring. ‘We definitely have chemistry,’ he says. They need it in their latest play, which has been touring the country but is about to hit the West End at the newly refurbished Ambassadors Theatre.

‘You’re very lucky if you can bring a whole history onto the stage with you,’ says Patricia, before sketching out the twist they’re bringing to Private Lives as older actors. The plot involves a couple of divorcees who marry other people and go on their honeymoons, only to find they are staying in the same place. ‘When we decide to run off together in the first act there’s an intake of breath from the audience,’ says Nigel. ‘They can’t believe we’re being that naughty at our age.’

Coward wrote the play as a vehicle for himself and his friend Gertrude Lawrence when both were in their 30s, and it has been performed by actors of roughly that age since, although Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were in their 50s when they starred in it in 1983. But Nigel is 71 and Patricia is 76, while Dugald Bruce-Lockhart and Natalie Walter, who play their new spouses, are 55 and 43 respectively.

‘There’s more at stake in the play if you’re older,’ Nigel says. ‘There’s a lot more history behind us and between us, so it’s more touching if it’s someone of our age who’s drawn back to a former partner, rather than a flighty 30-year-old who thinks if a marriage goes wrong they can always have another go. At our age we might not be able to find love again, so that gives the whole thing an extra level of emotion.’

The play is very funny, but the story tugs at the heartstrings. ‘It’s really touching, I persuade her to run off with me and I always cry during that scene, every night,’ says Nigel. ‘It’s just extraordinary how moving it is. When we’re doing it we’re not really aware of the audience, because we’re so locked into each other. It’s a wonderful feeling.’

Coward wrote the play as a vehicle for himself and his friend Gertrude Lawrence when both were in their 30s, and it has been performed by actors of roughly that age since, although Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were in their 50s when they starred in it in 1983. But Nigel is 71 and Patricia is 76

The audience has to believe in their passion for it to work, Patricia says. ‘You couldn’t get away with what we’re doing if people didn’t really feel we had a great connection to each other. There was a play that a very famous actress was considering many years ago and she said, ‘You’ve got to really feel the people could be sexually active.’ That’s got something to do with this as well. You can’t have two people that are over the hill.’ She pauses, realising this might be taken as a personal revelation. ‘But I’m not telling you anything about myself.’

Nigel the gentleman steps in. ‘No. And nor me.’ Patricia adds, with a dash of dry humour, ‘I’m talking about the characters. I’m an actress. I can pretend.’

Nigel admits he was nervous about asking her to do the play, which is produced by his own theatre company. ‘When I rang she said, “Oh my God, I’d love to, but I’ll be too old.” And I said, ‘Well, what if we just think of it as a modern take on what happens when older people get divorced and remarry much younger people? Give it that twist?’

Patricia says, ‘This is what is happening in society. The lines are going down well with audiences who recognise this in their own lives. Do you have to be young to do a play about love? No is the answer.’

Private Lives was written in 1930 and these are very different times, so is there anything they’ve had to change? ‘There’s a certain line, a controversial line,’ says Patricia. ‘When we first did the play on tour it was considered that to keep it in would create too much focus, because people are so delicate. We didn’t do it, but we’ve decided to put it back in.’

You can see why people might be offended: Nigel’s character Elyot says to Patricia’s character Amanda, ‘Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.’ But Nigel says, ‘I’m just being flippant. In the middle of this argument I throw this line in.’

Patricia insists it’s in context. ‘We’re sl**ging each other off like there’s no tomorrow. He’s deliberately baiting her. She gives him every bit as good as she gets.’

Nigel relishes the reactions. ‘There are a number of lines that shock the audience, which is great. Mostly how women should be this and not that.’

If he said those things on a chat show, for example, he’d be cancelled, wouldn’t he? ‘Crucified. But Amanda reacts like the audience. She throws it back. And she says pretty provocative things about men, actually. Coward wrote really well for women.’

Do they feel brave putting the line back in? ‘We’re in the driving seat,’ says Patricia, firmly. ‘If you don’t like it, then get up and walk home. As actors, not to deliver the playwright’s intention is to fail at the first hurdle. We absolutely should say what was written, even if only to say thank goodness we’ve come a long way since then. It’s a snapshot in time.’ So if anybody protests will she keep going? ‘Absolutely.’

Nigel adds, ‘We’re more confident now we’ve done the play. We feel we know the characters well and how far we can go with it and are confident enough to say, ‘Put the line back.’

Although both have played many upper-class characters, their backgrounds are quite different. Patricia is the daughter of hotel managers in Grimsby, while Nigel’s father was Attorney General and Lord Chancellor under Thatcher. She trained as a teacher before joining the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art aged 22. He turned down Eton to go to stage school. They made their names in the theatre but by 1975 had moved to TV – Patricia in The Naked Civil Servant and Nigel in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Actors of their generation had elocution lessons to lose their regional accents. ‘You had to or you wouldn’t get a job,’ Nigel says, although it was less of a problem for him. ‘Now you have to acquire another sort of accent,’ he says, slipping into the Estuary English you hear on EastEnders. ‘You know wha’ I mean?’ Otherwise, you won’t work if you’re young, white, posh. You might as well become a dentist.’

How has their relationship been over the 50 years they’ve known each other? ‘Very easy. We pick up from where we left off, don’t we?’ Nigel says. Patricia agrees, ‘Yes, I don’t remember you as a cent different from when we did [The] Death Of The Heart.’ (A 1987 film in which they played a married couple.)

Have they watched each other’s stuff over the years? ‘I love Miranda,’ says Nigel. ‘I was always on the side of the mother played by Patricia.’

Did she watch Nigel in Coronation Street? ‘I don’t think I ever did.’ He laughs, unoffended. ‘I didn’t watch myself! I had a great time there, though, people were wonderful.’

He played Lewis Archer, who started out as a male escort, seduced Audrey Roberts, kissed Deirdre Barlow on the sly and stole money. His last appearance was almost ten years after his first, on New Year’s Day 2019. ‘I am dead. I had a heart attack.’ Patricia wonders, ‘Did they tell you? Or did you say, “I’ve had enough?”‘ Nigel answers, ‘I said, ‘I’ve been back and forth for years. I think to die is probably the best thing.’

He had got used to people shouting at him. ‘Someone wants to hit you, berates you because of what your character has done. You have to say, “Excuse me, I’m not really him.”‘

Patricia is more likely to hear people calling Miranda’s mother’s catchphrase, ‘Such fun!’ She sighs. ‘People come up and say, ‘Go on, say it!’ when you’re trying to lift a bunch of bananas in the supermarket. It doesn’t quite work.’

They laugh a lot. ‘She’s terrible for laughing in rehearsals,’ says Nigel. ‘We’re pretty good in the show, aren’t we? You nearly lost it in act three a couple of times, though.’

‘The other two actors are heaven,’ Patricia says. ‘It’s a play about love and there is so much love between us. The four of us stand in the wings with our arms around each other and have a massive hug before we start. When the curtain comes down we hold onto each other in the same way, then go off into the night.’

Nigel has a home in Wiltshire so beautiful that when he appeared on Good Morning Britain by video link the viewers compared the interiors to Buckingham Palace, but he also has a place in London. ‘I can walk to the theatre in about 45 minutes, then afterwards get the underground back. Or have a cocktail and get a cab.’

Patricia lives along the river in Barnes. They talk about how few plays there are in the West End now and how it’s dominated by musicals. Then Nigel remembers that another old friend, Sir Ian McKellen, is touring a new play with Roger Allam. ‘They started in Windsor, now they’re in Bath. And it’s apparently just stunning. I did my first West End theatre production with Ian and there he is at 84, still going strong.’

Patricia breaks in. ‘There’s the thing, Ian loves being on the road, like us.’ And Nigel says, ‘He likes to show off and shout. That’s what we call what we do. We say, ‘I’m just going off to do a bit of showing off and shouting.’ And we love it!’

Private Lives is at the Ambassadors Theatre, London from 31 August to 25 November 2023, atgtickets.com.

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