‘Every family has silences’: Kathryn Hunter on despair, desire, dislodgeable limbs – and her acting genius

She has played King Lear, all three witches in Macbeth and an ape turned variety performer in Kafka’s Monkey. As she prepares for a new show, she discusses the soaring highs and deep lows of her extraordinary life Kathryn Hunter pulls off her black beanie and sits down. She hates

She has played King Lear, all three witches in Macbeth and an ape turned variety performer in Kafka’s Monkey. As she prepares for a new show, she discusses the soaring highs and deep lows of her extraordinary life Kathryn Hunter pulls off her black beanie and sits down. She hates having to keep still: “It’s torture.” On aeroplanes, she is always in the aisle, bobbing up and down.

She has an inner restlessness, an energy looking for the right outlet – one that even eight hours of rehearsing hasn’t quieted. With the beanie, a body warmer and a cup of builders’ tea, the acclaimed actor looks as if she is on a break at a construction site. She is working on a stage adaptation of Eurotrash , Christian Kracht’s novel about a mother, played by Hunter, who is accompanied on the final trip of her life by her son, played by Ben Whishaw .

As the pair come to terms with their dark past – and Europe’s – they must confront what Hunter describes as a “hinterland of silence”. In this case, it stems from the family’s Nazi ties, but Hunter believes “people will relate to it … in that every family has silences”. Working on the play has got her thinking about her own mother – and about the actor Marcello Magni , the co-founder of Complicité theatre and the love of Hunter’s life, who died in 2022 at 63.

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