Tuppence Middleton on the secrets of playing Elizabeth Taylor | In Character

Tuppence Middleton grew up watching Hollywood movies with her mother, who loved Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor. “When I started acting I remember her saying, ‘I’d love you to play one of those actresses one day,’ and of course I thought, ‘That’s never going to happen,’” she says. Flash-forward 20 years and Middleton, 36, is about to reprise her role as Taylor in The Motive and the Cue, the award-winning play that charts the fraught relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud in the run-up to their 1964 production of Hamlet. The play, which was written by Jack Thorne and directed by Sam Mendes, with Mark Gatiss playing Gielgud and Johnny Flynn as Burton, sold out its first run at the National Theatre and is transferring to the West End — having picked up the Evening Standard’s coveted best play award along the way. Middleton is ramping herself up to be Taylor once again. “It takes me a while to click back into her animal nature and that elevated energy; she is all instinct and sex and everything is about appetite, whether it’s food or love or thrill. I’m not like Elizabeth in terms of that kind of energy,” she says, folding her long legs underneath her as she talks. We are meeting in the bowels of the National Youth Theatre in north London, where the cast are rehearsing. Gatiss’s labrador is looking mournful in the room next door. Read the best of our journalism: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/ Subscribe to The Times and The Sunday Times YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_... Find us on Facebook:   / timesandsundaytimes   Find us on Twitter:   / thetimes   Find us on Instagram:   / thetimes   #tuppencemiddleton #richardburton #elizabethtaylor