She has worked with Robert Redford, been nominated for an Oscar, and won a best actress prize at Cannes, but Vera star Brenda Blethyn admits she still has imposter syndrome.
“I think a lot of people have got it,” the legendary actress says in an exclusive chat with Woman’s Day.
FIRST DAY JITTERS
Despite her acting pedigree, she recalls her nerves on the first day on set for her latest TV series, a lavish adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s epic novel A Woman Of Substance.
“When I turned up, they had already been filming for six weeks on the Yorkshire Moors,” she recalls. “It was evening and there was a bit of drizzle and I was a bit anxious as I was about to do my first scene and the producer, the writer and Jessica [Reynolds], who plays the younger version of my character and who I had never met before, we all hugged.
“It was a reassuring and magical moment,” she adds.
In Vera, the much-loved British crime drama, which ended after 14 seasons last year, Brenda played the iconic sharp detective with a messy personal life.
And in the period drama A Woman Of Substance, she plays another formidable woman. The book, which has sold 32 million copies, is the sweeping story of Emma Harte, a bright and ambitious servant girl in Yorkshire, in the north of England, who overcomes her impoverished beginnings to become a retail and business magnate in order to exact revenge on those who have wronged her.
Brenda tells, “It’s a great story traversing the 20th century in all its highs and lows and innovations. What’s not to like? It’s exciting and it ticks all the boxes. It’s sexy and tragic and then it arrives at her being the richest woman in the world!
“The series opens with older Emma in a limousine with a cocktail cabinet in the corner in 1970s uptown New York, and I thought, ‘Finally I’ve arrived! Where is the old trench coat and bucket hat from Vera?’ It was great! Variety is the spice of life and it was fun to embrace that and swan about in couture and high heels,” she laughs.
Revealing that she felt a strong connection to the character of Emma, she explains, “She’s an inspirational character who succeeds against the odds. Emma grew up in poverty as I did, and it resonated with me.
“We had no electricity and went to bed by candlelight. My parents worked in service in a big posh house and they earned a pittance. My mum was a parlour maid and then gradually got promoted to ladies maid and met my dad, who was a chauffeur in the household. Sadly Mum didn’t become the richest woman in the world,” she smiles, adding, “But she was a grafter and a wonderful woman.”
AWARD-WINNER
While Brenda may see herself as an imposter, that’s not how the film industry perceives her. In 1998, she was Oscar nominated for playing the awful mum Mari Hoff in Little Voice and two years earlier, won best actress at Cannes for Secrets & Lies.
And the accolades keep on coming, too, with her last movie, 2025’s Dragonfly receiving rave reviews, while of course, her performance as DCI Vera Stanhope is dearly missed from our screens.
Speaking about why she decided to hang up Vera’s bucket hat last year, Brenda – who turned 80 in February – says the 16-hour days were gruelling and vowed to spend more time “building sandcastles on the beach” near her seaside home in Ramsgate in Kent with her husband Michael Mayhew.
The award-winning actress got married to her long-time partner Michael in 2010 after being together for 35 years.
The couple met in 1975 and had a long engagement before finally tying the knot in a small ceremony at a London registry office.
She has since enthused about the benefits of “living apart together”.
They have two separate apartments in the same building. Her husband lives in a flat above hers, and she describes the unconventional arrangement as “brilliant”.
They made the change to resolve temperature clashes – she prefers fresh air, while he is always cold.
VERA RETURNS
So what’s next for the beloved star?
“It hasn’t been confirmed at the moment, I’m not at liberty to say, but there is a project,” she winks. “And no, I haven’t retired.”
Would she ever reprise her role as Vera? “In a drop of her bucket hat. Yes, if they did a special or something, of course I would. It was a wonderful job,” she says with a smile.
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