Eva Gray – Actress and more

The busy actress takes a few minutes to discuss dressing up, fame and being vegan

Eva is driven. Not ruthless or blinkered. Driven.  It is not a naked, in-your-face ambition. Nor a boring ‘Mother would not approve’ haughtiness. You actually get the feeling Eva would consider any challenge and, once passed by the censor that is her ideology, you sense she will bring to bear a formidable focus that will not only allow her to excel but will carry others along in its wake.

We met in a pub in her home town. Everybody there seems to know her, even the patrons’ dogs. She is precisely on time and quietly dressed. No grand entrance or ‘look at me’ couture.

Over soft drinks, we begin, at the beginning. There was no family theatrical tradition yet Eva developed a taste for the stage at an early age. “I was so jealous of Snow White in the school production”.  Combining sense with dreams, it wasn’t just drama that Eva went on to study but Politics, Literature and Drama, at Kingston University.

Very quickly though the acting became the dominant pleasure for this girl who has “always loved dressing up”, so politics lost, and RADA gained, a student. Working alongside the likes of Kate Winslet and Richard Johnson, Eva was soon achieving the professional success her parents had warned would be elusive.

Unsurprisingly, given her immense drive, many of the roles that Eva has chosen to play are from the heavyweight works of J.B Priestley, August Strindberg and the like, but Eva’s own favourite is the snooty Portia du Pont in the children’s television programme ‘Sooty Heights’. Coupled with critical acclaim for the role of troubled Marilyn Monroe it’s clear that Eva is flexible enough to avoid typecasting.  Just in her current three projects there’s enough variety to task any actress: Moving from Sybil in ‘A Tribute to Fawlty Towers’ through café assistant in BBC’s ‘Casualty’ to the female lead as a magician’s assistant in the film ‘Deadly Illusions’.

This is acting in the modern world and not something that Eva would advocate to everybody. She loves it and plans to go on and on but she believes it is not for those who want to become famous. “There are easier ways, like reality television, these days”. Much more telling is her advice to anyone thinking of pursuing a career in acting. “Don’t. If you’re only thinking of it, if you are not sure, don’t. Acting is like being an artist or a writer or musician…it’s there, inside you. It’s who you are.”

So there in broad strokes, is the actress Eva Gray. And the person that is Eva Gray also shows the same dedication, the same determination in achieving her self-set goals. Eva has worked with many charities, recording boardroom minutes to recipes for the Royal National Institute for the Blind and, most recently, taking to the catwalk, fundraising for Gloucestershire children’s charity Cloud9. In all these activities Eva does not settle for just doing the job but always works to publicise the cause.

There is one more facet of Eva, without which no portrait is complete. Alongside and inseparable from her work is Eva’s adherence to a vegan diet. So strictly does Eva hold to these principles that she has both turned down work that does not allow her to conform to her beliefs and sought work in projects that promote her ideals. Of course, as is to be expected by now, she is more that just Vegan, Eva is the local contact for the Vegan Society.

Not a placard-waving zealot though. They would try to convince you are wrong. Eva is certain she is right. You just know she has studied the matter. Eva doesn’t argue, she uses facts and quotes and when those quotes come from Mahatma Ghandi, William Shakespeare and Albert Einstein, it is very difficult to argue against the sheer historical weight of those guys.

There is more to Eva still. For she is also a woman, a wife, someone’s daughter, someone’s friend. Little of which had chance to show in the short time in that pub.  There’s no doubt though, whichever medley of Eva she is dressed up to be, that is who she will thoroughly become, and she’ll enjoy it. As will you, if you are lucky enough to be there.       

Steve Fearn

steve_fearn@hotmail.com

November 2007