Charlotte Hope
Starring as a real criminal profiler in Alibi’s Catch Me A Killer, actress Charlotte Hope talks to us about landing an agent from a university play, the additional talents that have helped her in her career and what she loves about working in theatre.
How long have you been acting?
For 14 years now, I think, which is a long time! I’ve always been obsessed with acting itself - I have this memory of being in a drama class when I must’ve been about 6 or 7, and just thinking that this game of pretend was, like, the greatest thrill I’d ever experienced! I kind of assumed that all the other kids felt the same, and as I didn’t come from a family where anyone knew anything about acting I didn’t know it was something I could do - the only people I’d seen acting were super famous or it seemed like everyone just had endless rejection and failure. A bit later I did Twelfth Night at school, when I was about 15 - my sister auditioned and I decided to as well, as I was copying everything she did, and I ended up getting the part instead of her! I went on to do some more plays at school, and I think that time, doing plays without the pressure of the industry, was some of the most enjoyable, “playful” acting I’ve ever done. But I still didn’t know anyone who was an actor, I didn’t know about drama schools. I was a very determined child, and at 13 I’d decided I wanted to go to Oxford to study French and Spanish - I was very focused on that and ended up getting in, so I did more plays while I was there.
What was your first professional job?
While I was at Oxford I was approached to attend a street casting, weirdly! It was for a French film called Serge Gainsbourg: vie héroique, to play a young Jane Birkin. I had this meeting with Des Hamilton and ended up going to London to audition, and it was the best audition I’ve ever done. All I’d ever heard about acting was that it was an “impossible” industry, but while I was in the audition I remember thinking “Oh, this doesn’t seem so difficult.” I went to Paris to meet the director, but in the end I didn’t get the job - that experience did make me think though that maybe this was something I could do. As a result of that I wrote to a ton of agents and got them to come and see my uni play - one of them wrote back and actually came to see it, and although I didn’t think I was very good as I was leaving the stage manager said the agent wanted to talk to me, and I ended up signing with them! After that I started doing a lot of auditions and got several guest parts - I think I did just about every crime and hospital procedural drama that exists, which I loved, and still do love. I’m one of those actors who’d be just as happy doing an episode of Holby City as I would an episode of Succession. There’s something for me in the thrill of getting to live in someone else’s body and have an experience that isn’t mine that’s just completely addictive.
Those shows can be great training grounds for actors just graduating into professional work as well - how did you find the experience?
Totally - the really great thing about it is that I got to work with a ton of different people, as it was like three days here, maybe two days there, and I did an episode of Waking The Dead that was eleven days, so I never felt this huge amount of pressure that I had to carry something, that it was all on me. Especially having never been to a traditional drama school I was really grateful for those early jobs where I got to just watch and learn on the job and figure it out. I’d done a year at Jacques Lecoq, which is a French drama school in Paris, and it’s a mime school essentially, so they have this rule that you can only speak when you have to speak - “parole nécessaire?” - which was also good training, and I’ve always lived physical work since because of that. So the first few years of my career were just bits and pieces here and there, but it meant that I got to figure out who I was as an actor before I got on a job like Game Of Thrones.
As Catherine Of Aragon in The Spanish Princess
Do you speak French and Spanish to a fluent degree? Have you done any work in France?
I do, yes. I’ve never worked in France aside from the year at Jacques Lecoq, although I have done a few jobs where I’ve had to speak French, like Catch Me A Killer, where my character was a fluent French speaker, and with The Spanish Princess a significant part of the reason I got that job was because I speak Spanish. I think that the acting game is so hard, anything that can make you more specific is so helpful, like having the ability to speak a language. I see so often actors who are focused on just acting, but really going out and learning a really specific skill can be so useful. I did this Netflix series called The English Game, and the boys had to be brilliant football players - if you have the skills and can marry them with your acting, that makes you a much easier hire for casting directors.
Was The Spanish Princess your first leading role?
It was. Honestly, by the time The Spanish Princess came along I was just so excited to get to go to work every day - I got to do so much acting. And the gift about being a lead is that you don’t have time to worry about whether you weren’t very good in a certain scene, because it’s on to the next day with new stuff. That job was everything I’d dreamed of, and it was as good as my dreams were. Before that I’d had this impression that actors were getting these amazing jobs and going off on these adventures, and I felt so left behind - I remember getting the call to say I’d got the role, and a few days after that I was in for costume fittings and it was just down the rabbit hole from there. That was among the best six months of my life.
In both The Spanish Princess and Catch Me A Killer you play real people - Catherine Of Aragon and criminal profiler Micki Pistorius, respectively. Do you approach playing real people differently to fictional characters, and did you get to talk to Micki for the role?
I did - Micki was super, super supportive and kind. I read her book, which the series is based on, and her PhD and some other work. I don’t approach playing fictional characters and real characters too differently, but the advantage of playing a character like Micki is that there’s a wealth of information already to work from. And with Catch Me A Killer I didn’t want to mimic or imitate her, I really wanted to portray her as she’s written in the book. I think technically it should be easier to play a fictional character as opposed to a real character as you don’t have any expectation - there isn’t the pressure of a comparison - but because I wasn’t trying to be a carbon copy of Micki I had a lot more freedom creatively, just really trying to portray the character she’s written so beautifully in the book. One of our advisors, Kurt Oliver, who worked with Micki in real life, came up to me a couple of months into shooting and said “Charlotte, this is so weird, you have all of her mannerisms, you’re so similar to her!”, and that wasn’t something I’d set out to do, but I think when you spend so much time with the material there is a natural kind of enmeshment, if you will.
As Micki Pistorius in Catch Me A Killer
How long was the shoot?
It was a five-month shoot, and South Africa is an incredible country so I was very grateful to be there.
You’ve worked on projects in various countries across the world - where has been your favourite so far?
Truthfully, my favourite experience has been The Spanish Princess - we were in Bristol, and I am obsessed with Bristol as a city, it’s just so vibrant, and also we were filming it in the summer and it was my first time in the trenches all day every day, it was like oxygen to me. And I met my partner on that job! So that has a really special place in my heart. South Africa I really did love - I didn’t get to see much of it as I was working, but from the back of my car it looked truly spectacular! I love getting to go away anywhere on a job - any time an audition comes through I always look at the location and wonder what life would be like there. When I come back to London I’m waiting for the next adventure constantly. The behind the scenes access you get when you’re an actor or part of a film crew is so much more than as a regular tourist - I remember on The Spanish Princess we went to Spain for a bit of it, and we were in the Alhambra shooting at like five o’clock in the morning.
Have you done much stage work in the past few years?
I love, love, love theatre - that’s how I started. But I also didn’t go to a traditional British drama school, so theatre kind of felt inaccessible to me in some ways. The first stage show I did professionally was A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Liverpool, shortly after Game Of Thrones, and I loved it. The thing I love about theatre is that you get a rehearsal process - on TV, the way filming schedules are, you turn up and it’s just “Go, go, go” from the minute you step on set, while with theatre you get the opportunity to grow as an actor in a way you don’t on a film or TV job. I also did a show at Trafalgar Studios, Buried Child, with Ed Harris, and that again was probably one of the best creative experiences of my career. Ed’s a phenomenal actor and also a super kind man - I did another play with him, in New York, where I played his mum as a ghost! And I did a play at the Almeida as well, Albion, with Victoria Hamilton. I still find it quite a closed shop, I guess there’s maybe part of me that feels as I didn’t go to drama school I’m not “worthy” of doing theatre, but I do love it and am always asking my agent for more.
Your stylist Aimee Croysdill is one of the big names in celebrity styling - how long have you worked with her?
Aimee and I went to school together! I remember when we were kids we both said that if we got successful enough we’d work together, so I’ve been very lucky that she’s done all of my styling all the way through. It’s also just really nice to just come up with a friend - I’m so proud of her, she’s just a phenomenal woman.
Words: Scott Bates