A Q&A with actor Josette Simon

Josette Simon has appeared in stage, film and TV productions. She performs with the Royal Shakespeare Company and was the first black female actor to play a leading RSC role: Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost in 1984. She was appointed OBE in 2000.

What was your childhood or earliest ambition?
At secondary school I wanted to be an interpreter: French or German.

Public school or state school? University or straight into work?
State school in Leicester, where I was born: Rushey Mead primary, then an all-girls grammar, Alderman Newton’s. I loved school. I was a swot, I suppose! My best friend saw an advert in the Leicester Mercury for kids to audition for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and didn’t want to go on her own. We both auditioned and got in. Then we got into pantomime. After a few years, a couple of directors cast me in plays and everyone kept saying I should be an actress. I said I didn’t want to, then it hit me: that was all I wanted to do. I applied to the Central School of Speech and Drama, finished my O-levels and off I went.

Who was or still is your mentor?
I’ve had to stand on my own two feet for much of my life. I can cite people I’ve looked up to and admired hugely in adult life, such as Maya Angelou, but not a mentor.

How physically fit are you?
I’ve done Ashtanga yoga for a long time, about 16 years. I go to a weekly swing-dance class, which I love. I walk my beloved dog and I cycle.

Ambition or talent: which matters more to success?
Talent!

Have you ever taken an IQ test?
No, never.

How politically committed are you?
I stand up for what I believe in and I put my money where my mouth is.

Do you consider your carbon footprint?
I do, in so far as I live in London and there is no good reason to drive. I use the bus, Tube, train or my bicycle.

What’s your biggest extravagance?
A lie-in.

Do you have more than one home?
Only one house, in London, but I do have a beloved VW camper van.

What would you like to own that you don’t currently possess?
A guarantee of good health into old age.

In what place are you happiest?
Whenever I’m with my daughter.

What ambitions do you still have?
To be able to pick and choose good work, not having to be at the mercy of others giving it to me.

What drives you on?
Truth in all things. And you should always do things that terrify you — they teach you the most.

What is the greatest achievement of your life so far?
My daughter. I cannot imagine what my life would have been without her.

What has been your greatest disappointment?
Witnessing the recent rise of racism and fascism across the world.

If your 20-year-old self could see you now, what would she think?
I think she would be proud of me.

If you lost everything tomorrow, what would you do?
I have a friend whose son was born deaf. I wanted to be able to communicate with him, and I now have an interpreter qualification in British Sign Language. I’ve also worked hard at regaining my French. So if everything failed, I’d make use of those.

Do you believe in assisted suicide?
In principle, I do. With the proviso of rock-solid safeguards.

Do you believe in an afterlife?
I do. Exactly what that afterlife is, though, I don’t know.

If you had to rate your satisfaction with your life so far, out of 10, what would you score?
Eight. My own satisfaction has to be bound up with the satisfaction of the many. Our single selves are part of a whole.

Josette Simon takes the lead role in the RSC’s ‘Antony & Cleopatra’, which is playing in repertoire with ‘Julius Caesar’ in Stratford-upon-Avon until September 7; rsc.org.uk