Edge Forum

Alexandra Boyd has had a colourful career, from interior design and eco-blogging to cartoon voice-overs and Coronation Street, she has travelled from London to New York, Seattle, Los Angeles and back in the course of her career. And it’s not over yet, as Alexandra says, “I can’t stand not doing something, I have to keep busy – nobody is going to call me if I sit like a blob on my sofa.”

What do you do and how have you got there?

I went to a private girls’ school in the ‘70s. I’d imagine all the other girls went to sixth form and then university, but I left at 16 because I wanted to be a dancer. I went to Laine Theatre Arts for three years, and came out with a sort of singing, dancing, theatre qualification. But I really always wanted to be an actress. I was just a little song and dance girl and I couldn’t possibly go from being a musical theatre actress to go into Shakespeare! So I did a one year postgraduate course at Drama Studio London in Ealing. By the end of the course I’d married an American Airforce pilot. We moved to Florida and lived there for 3 years. When we split up I moved to Seattle, then New York, doing all the jobs that actors do when they are not working. I waited tables, worked as a telemarketer, in catering. I’ve done everything!

I lived in LA for 12 years and worked on the movie Titanic. I did lots of independent films, loads and loads of television commercials, voice-overs for cartoons for cd-roms like Curse of Monkey Island but then I got completely burnt out; I thought I was going to give up acting. I was by that point over 40 and nobody in LA wanted to employ me. So I went to an Interior Design school. I did that on and off for four years, then became very interested in the sustainable environmental side of design and architecture. Then I moved back here three years ago and decided to go back into acting. I landed a role in Coronation Street against all the odds and I was in that all of last summer. So I guess I am an actress again!

What drives you?

I have to keep busy. I have a very strong work ethic. Even though I could just sit at home and take my dogs for a walk, and gym and yoga I don’t think that’s fair. I can’t stand not doing something, which is why I write a blog which I created called How Green is Your Life? www.howgreenisyourlife.co.uk And I go to design shows and eco shows and I know all the ‘green people’ in London. I also blog about plays, films and auditions I go to. All these things to just keep myself busy because one thing I have learnt is that, especially in my business, nobody is going to call me if I sit like a blob on my sofa.

What challenges have you faced?

I was incredibly intimidated by the other people on the postgraduate acting course. They had all graduated from university and I had been just singing and dancing and messing around – well I ended up winning the best actress award at the end of the year! For the others, their academic training meant they were used to having to write an essay but it was a practical course and writing wasn’t the most important thing.

Then, another challenge for me was to move to another country with my husband, living in a place where there was no work for me. What ended my marriage was me actually being physically homesick. I’d had a theatre company here in London that I started with a friend from Drama Studio. I has 18 months before I moved to the States so we performed at the London Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. When I moved to Florida we really moved to the middle of nowhere! I was waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant for two years.  I was very young, but I probably had something that was close to a nervous breakdown. There was just no potential work in Florida. When my husband and I split up, I moved to Seattle. Seattle’s got a lot of theatre, about 13 professional theatre companies. But even so, it was a challenge because I was starting right at the beginning to make myself known to these theatre companies.

Sometimes you don’t always succeed, sometimes you fail but what can happen - nobody dies! You know, I’m not curing cancer or driving a crane over somebody’s head, I am just trying to make someone laugh or cry or tell them a story.

In acting did you ever get told you were not good enough for the job?

Well they don’t say that to your face, but I haven’t, no. Because I think that intrinsically I have something that you can’t train and that is talent. And I know that now. I don’t mean that to come across as arrogant, it’s because it’s been proven to me enough times. So I can go into interviews and visualise myself doing the job- but that’s a very new thing. I used to go in thinking, ‘Oh, no, there’s 5 other girls, she’s thinner than me, she’s blonde, they always like blonde girls…’ I would talk myself out of the job, thinking about all the reasons why I might not get the job. That’s a complete waste of time and energy.

Do you have a good work-life balance?

I was talking to an actor friend about this just the other day. He’s my age – never been married, only had long term relationships- and he confessed, “I think I have probably always made career decisions that went against being able to have successful long term relationships.” If somebody isn’t in the same business as you it is really hard to maintain, especially if they are sat at home and you are working every night at the theatre or away filming.

Are you pleased with your career so far?

I went to see a play with a friend of mine whose father is a very famous actor, whose step mother was in quite a famous television show. Anyway, it was a sort of TV actor fest, and I feel like all these years looking at the television screen has been like looking through a glass wall. Well now I’ve smashed through that wall. Now I am inside the television screen! Because I have now been an actress for so long I feel like I’ve been invited to the party and I don’t feel like a Dickensian child looking through the window. Since I was on Coronation Street nothing has been the same. Because one in five people know who you are, one in five people watched you five times a week.

Who is your role model?

I love Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet. I just love those actresses.  When they were first starting out, they weren’t classically beautiful. I spent a lot of time watching the pretty, young blonde girl playing the part with all the lines, while I was playing a 60 year old servant, aged 24, at drama school. It’s only in the last 3 or 4 or 5 years that I’ve become the character actress that I am – so I like actresses with character.