English actor Penelope Wilton Photo: AFP via Getty Images
English actor Dame Penelope Wilton's warm smile will be familiar to fans of Downton Abbey, Doctor Who and the Ricky Gervais series Afterlife.
Her new film The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a study of the different ways two people react to profound loss, Penelope tells Colin Peacock.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is in New Zealand cinemas from 8 June.
Harold Fry (played by Jim Broadbent) is a pensioner who, driven by a sense of failure, "suddenly drops everything" to walk over 400 miles to see a friend dying in hospital.
Yet Penelope says his wife Maureen (who she plays) could never walk away from "her things" so easily.
"You don't suddenly drop everything. You build around you a sort of fortress of the things you own. That has been her safety. She doesn't like to go out much because she doesn't trust the world, she's angry.
"Grief takes you in a lot of different ways – it makes you angry, it makes you sad, it makes you hit out at people. And it can also ruin relationships unless you face up and are able to speak about it."
As someone who's "been at it for quite a long time", Penelope says different crowds recognise her from different roles - it could be the long-suffering wife Ann in '80s sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles or the fictional British prime minister Harriet Jones who was killed by the Daleks in Doctor Who.
Penelope Wilton the zombie comedy film Shaun of The Dead Photo: Universal Pictures
But it was the role of Barbara in the 2004 zombie comedy film Shaun of The Dead. that gave Penelope "enormous street cred" with her daughter.
For decades, until her "early middle age", Penelope worked as a theatre actor, and then television started to take off.
With an abundance of platforms and very talented writers, the medium has gone from strength to strength, she says.
The best thing about working on the cult historical drama series Downtown Abbey (across six series and two films) was developing a creative friendship with her fellow dame, Maggie Smith.
Over the years, the two actors got to enjoy having "a good go at each other", Penelope says.
People related to the challenges of her character Isobel Crawley, an aristocrat-by-marriage viewed as "middle-class".
Isobel is not posh enough to be accepted by the aristocracy upstairs or to be waited on by the servants downstairs, she says.
"[People] could identify with her and with her difficulties – either upstairs or downstairs – and how she managed her new life."
Dame Penelope Wilton and Dame Maggie Smith in the British historical drama series Downtown Abbey. Photo: Carnival Films
