You might associate Fiona Shaw with the theatre, and perhaps rightly so – she has won a stack of awards and wall to wall acclaim for many stage performances stretching back to the start of her acting career in the 1980s. These include the original RSC production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, Machinal in 1993 and (somewhat outrageously at the time), as Shakespeare’s Richard II in 1995.
But a talent as fine as this is not going to be left alone for long by the film and TV industries, and Shaw has been in demand on screen for decades. Her first biggish film role was as Christy Brown’s doctor in My Left Foot, and she went on to do a wild variety of things, some you might expect (Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, The Butcher Boy) and some you definitely wouldn’t – Three Men and a Little Lady, The Avengers (not that one, the other one) and the legendarily bad Super Mario Bros.
Like many a big-league thespian though, Shaw is probably best known to film audiences for her continuing role in the Harry Potter films – as the nightmarish Petunia Dursley – but perhaps has outshone that on the small screen, with significant roles in Killing Eve (as spy chief Carolyn Martens), Fleabag (as Phoebe WB’s counsellor), and Star Wars spinoff Andor (as Maarva, Diego Luna’s adoptive mother).
On the big screen more recently she’s popped up in awards-bait films (Colette, Ammonite, Hot Milk) and now has a (weirdly all too rare) lead role in new drama Park Avenue, in which she plays a mother reconnecting with her daughter (played by Katherine Waterston) after the latter leaves her husband and holes up in mum’s apartment in the celebrated thoroughfare of the title. So, lots to ask about; get your questions in by 6pm on Wednesday 24 September and we’ll print the answers in Film & Music.
• Park Avenue is in UK and Irish cinemas from 14 November.
