Life With Maria MacDonell: ‘Acting was always my first love’

Scottish actress Maria MacDonell on getting older, the best advice she has ever been given and working as an artist’s model at 60.

I grew up in the Highlands on the Black Isle. I remember the days of the Kessock Ferry before the bridge was built. I studied hard at school, played music and acted in plays. I would have liked to have been naughty.

Acting was my first love. As a child I wrote plays on my little red typewriter. I still have an unfulfilled desire to be a child actor in a pinnie and button boots. Possibly the earliest memory is of being in a play my parents put on in our garden. They were both actors. I was a cat. 

I love so many places in Scotland, both urban and rural.  A very special place is the Glenesk Folk Museum in Angus. It has been running for 70 years through tenacity and passion. This community run museum sits in stunning landscape and is full of extraordinary stories. Also, I am always delighted by the view from the top of the 35 bus going up the royal mile in Edinburgh. 

If I admire something it’s generally because I know I couldn’t have made anything so good. Currently I have recently enjoyed Maggie O Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait and Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle, two brilliant historical novels about male power in art and women’s responses to that

It’s important to see older women on stage. We make theatre as a reflection of ourselves and our experiences. Older women are part of that. The biggest misconception about getting older is perhaps that we somehow know what we are doing, as if we have done this before.

I worked as an artist’s model in my 60s. It’s always fascinating being part of the picture making, the struggle and the joys. It can be physically demanding but then I don’t know if it would be easier to be younger.

My father said make a decision and stick to it. Even if it’s the wrong one. I have taken that to mean live without regret.

I walk and I read to relax – although not at the same time. I eat rather a lot of chocolate, but it has to be 85 percent cocoa, nothing less will do. Having five amazing children is the biggest achievement of my life. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do think memory, imagination and stories are immensely powerful.

I am perplexed by people who finish my sentences when I talk , even if I don’t know them well. It’s my pet hate. I wonder if the audience will anticipate the ending to my play.

Written and performed by Maria MacDonell, theatre production LIFE draws on her own experiences of working as an artist’s model as an older woman. LIFE is a play about female ageing and the male gaze; women as objects; our legacy through art, our faces and the stories they tell; our personal truth and whether we hide or show it. 

LIFE’s Spring tour opens in Edinburgh on 7 May and finishes in Creetown 31 May, with Edinburgh Fringe dates between 15 – 19 August.

Read more from the Life With series here.

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