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On a date she is delightful—"a smashing bird," says Director Reisz. She can make away with a bottle of Taittinger between 6 and 8, kick up her heels with the Tijuana Brass, get so interested in what someone is saying that she misses her mouth with her fork, and blurt a delightfully risky remark if it seems to be in order. "My bras have all turned yellow," she groaned to a friend recently. "I expect Nanny has boiled them in urine."
Off the Diving Board. And then all at once, in the middle of a smile, she gets that funny blank look in her eyes, as though a light had been switched off inside her head. "She just switches off," says Corin. "It's a very strange thing. She's done it as long as I can remember." But Vanessa has an explanation. "I have a bad habit of not giving much of myself," she says, "of saving myself up for work. To lose oneself in a role—that is what one lives for!"
It is a romantic conception of acting—but then Vanessa is above all a romantic. "She is one of the great romantics of our generation," says her estranged husband, Director Tony Richardson (Tom Jones). "Anything and everything can be romantic to Vanessa. She can believe in everything." Says Director Lumet: "She just plunges off the diving board without bothering to check if there's water in the pool."
Sometimes she plunges into little things. One day not long ago, quite unwittingly, she scheduled six separate appointments for 2 p.m., broke all of them, scheduled three others—and then forgot she had any at all. "It is necessary," sighs her secretary, "to keep one's appointment calendar in pencil." Sometimes she plunges into big things. For a while, the big thing was pacifism. In 1961, she plunged militantly into Britain's ban-the-bomb movement, was arrested four times during demonstrations, stood up before a rally in Castro-style battle dress and sang a Cuban revolutionary song. Sometimes Vanessa suffers for her romantic impetuosity, but then, as Corin points out, "Vanessa likes to suffer." She transforms her sufferings into performances. "She is mad," Sir Michael says, "I mean divinely mad. She is an inspired actress."
They are both inspired actresses—birds of a father—who seem sure to enjoy quite a flutter in the next few years. Some time this spring, Lynn will fly to London to make a movie with Rita Tushingham. Some time this summer, with Camelot in the can, Vanessa will fly to Turkey to make The Charge of the Light Brigade with Director Richardson—they agree that their divorce, which by then will probably be final, will not affect their professional relationship. The girls now have everything going for them, including the rumbustious new scene in cinema. The way things have turned out, after all, would surely cause a silent tear of joy to course down the whiskery cheek of Fortunatus Augustus Scudamore.
* The other nominees for Best Actress: Anouk Aimee (Un Homme et Une Femme), Elizabeth Taylor (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), and Ida Kaminska (The Shop on Main Street).