Scarborough-born actress Penelope Wilton took the chance to visit her former seaside home when she returned to the region to play an author moving from London to Yorkshire. Steve Pratt reports.

IN her latest TV drama, Penelope Wilton's character tells her London friends why she's so attached to her country cottage: "I love it there. I spent the best part of my childhood in Yorkshire." Yet the real life experience of the actress is the complete opposite as she didn't even start her school in her birthplace of Scarborough.

"My father was sent down to work in London," she explains. "He was terribly fond of Scarborough. I can remember the beach and the donkeys there. It was a place where people went for holidays from the big towns, like Newcastle."

While she was in Leeds filming Falling - the ITV1 drama based on Elizabeth Jane Howard's novel - she drove over to Scarborough for the day. Her other connection with the North Yorkshire seaside town is appearing in plays by the town's famous playwright Alan Ayckbourn. But it wasn't until a surprise 60th birthday party thrown for him that she got to perform an extract from his play Sisterly Feelings in her native town.

Wilton's appearance in the hit movie Calendar Girls, as one of the WI members who stripped off for a charity calendar, led her to discover another part of Yorkshire - the Dales.

"Yorkshire was a place my family had a great fondness for, so I heard it talked about more than I actually visited it, to be quite honest," she admits.

That was put right when she filmed Calendar Girls in the county. She was reunited with four of the real life women on whom the movie was based while making Falling last autumn. She took the chance of a day off from the schedule to visit them.

That was one of several reunions they've had since the film's release two years ago. "All of them came down to London, with their husbands, when I was doing Afterplay in the West End," she says, "And I did a concert for leukaemia research which they staged at the Albert Hall, where we all signed the 2004 calendars. They are very sweet women and I'm very attached to them."

She says they'll also be travelling to London to see her next month in the play The House Of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre.

In Falling, Wilton stars as Daisy Langrish, an author who moves into the Yorkshire cottage she's bought as a bolthole from her busy London life. She forms a relationship with a gardener Henry (played by Foyle's War star Michael Kitchen), who lives on a dilapidated houseboat on the nearby canal.

Elizabeth Jane Howard has said that her 1999 novel was inspired by a real incident in her life. The book has been adapted by Andrew Davies, whose previous TV credits include Moll Flanders, Doctor Zhivago, Daniel Deronda and The Way We Live Now.

The two-hour drama was filmed on locations in Leeds, Wakefield, Saltaire and on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Wilton deliberately didn't read the novel until filming was complete, although she did read Slipstream, Howard's autobiography, while filming Falling.

"In a script, choices have had to be made because one's condensing a novel into two hours of television, which is a visual medium. I find it's best to read the script as a script."

Daisy is not the first woman writer she's played, with roles as Vita Sackville-West on TV and as Lady Ottoline Morrell in the film Carrington. She sees Daisy as a successful woman, but one who's never had children or a successful relationship. "There's a reason for that - she's an open person. I've found often with writers that they aren't always particularly streetwise," she says.

"Henry catches her at quite a vulnerable time, and I think when people are vulnerable, they are inclined to be so pleased when someone takes the initiative for them."

She'd be happy to spend time with Daisy in real life. "She's a very interesting woman. She's quite open and warm, and obviously a very good novelist."

Last year Wilton appeared in the British horror comedy Shaun Of The Dead and will been seen on the big screen next in the new Woody Allen comedy Match Point, in which Scarlett Johansson goes out with her screen son. She'll also in the new big screen version of Pride And Prejudice as Mrs Gardiner.

Later this spring, she'll be seen as MP Harriet Jones in two episodes of the new Doctor Who series on BBC1. It was written by Russell T Davies, with whom she worked on ITV's Bob And Rose.

"I will be seen inside 10 Downing Street, behind that famous black door, but I can't say an awful lot more than that as it would spoil the story," she says.

"I've just done some post-production work and it looks wonderful because the special effects are just brilliant."

* Falling is on ITV1 on Sunday at 9pm.

Published: 03/03/2005