Naughty but nice as OBE puts Miriam in swim
Jewish Telegraph, January 2002
ACTRESS Miriam Margolyes says it is ‘‘naughty’’ of the Queen to have awarded her an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.
Oxford-born Miriam, 60, told me from Australia: ‘‘I was astonished to receive an award. I just do the best I can, hope to keep working and love my job.
‘‘So it seems a bit naughty to be honoured, too. Once I knew I was going to be given the honour, the hard thing was to keep it a secret. I allowed myself to think about it when I went swimming, so every day I did backstroke and thought of the Queen!’’
The prolific star, who will play Professor Sprout in the next three Harry Potter films, added: ‘‘Most of the congratulations came from my Jewish friends and family. This shows they’re delighted that one of ‘us’ has been included. And I am extremely chuffed, too.
‘‘My only sadness is that my beloved parents died before it happened. Their joy would have been unbounded.’’
With more than 40 big-screen credits to her name, Miriam has remained in constant demand. She won a BAFTA for best supporting actress in 1994 for her role in Age of Innocence and has voiced some of the biggest animation films, including Babe, Cats and Dogs, Mulan and James and the Giant Peach. She has recently been seen on the West End stage in The Vagina Monologues.
Margolyes, who has Jewish-Belarussian parents, studied at Cambridge University, where she built on her passion for acting with the Footlights. Her vocal skills landed her voice-over jobs, including the seductive Cadbury’s Caramel bunny.
After appearing in television comedy Blackadder in the 1980s, Miriam landed a number of Hollywood film roles, including the nurse in Romeo and Juliet and Flora Finching in the 1988 movie Little Dorrit, for which she was honoured by the LA Critics Circle as best supporting actress. Recent television appearances include Miss Crawley in the BBC adaptation of Vanity Fair.
Among the Jewish-themed films she has starred in are Sunshine, Wiesenthal — The Murderers Among Us and Yentl.
Of her cuddly roly-poly figure, Miriam once said: ‘‘Fatness is not a state of mind and mustn’t be allowed to become so. I’ve been fat all my life and I expect to die fat.’’
She will be back on TV screens in March as Mrs Dickens in BBC-2’s much anticipated Life of Charles Dickens.
Miriam’s co-star in Wiesenthal, Salford-born actor Ben Kingsley, was also honoured with a knighthood.
The 58-year-old is best known for his Oscar-winning portrayal of Gandhi.
He played the Jewish clerk, Itzhak Stern, in Schindler’s List and recently starred as Otto in the mini-series Anne Frank, based on Melissa Muller’s biography.
Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji, the son of an Indian physician and British model, but he has Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side.
