"I'm very bad at taking compliments, so fuck off Brian." So began the acceptance speech of Harriet Walter, esteemed British actress of the stage and screen, whose crisp, gravelly tones have enchanted audiences for decades and whose tireless work – from acting and writing to philanthropy – earned her the Icon prize at this year's Women of the Year Awards.
Her wry opening line was directed at her long-time friend and former co-star, Brian Cox; the expletive a reference to the frequent potty-mouthed diatribes of Cox's Succession character, Logan Roy, whose ex wife, Lady Caroline Collingwood, Walter portrayed with icy relish. Cox introduced his friend with touching sentiment, reminiscing about their first encounter in a drama workshop, where her prodigious talent had impressed him from the start.
"I knew instantly that this young woman was destined to have a career as an actor," he said, listing her range of work, including "a definitive Brutus in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-woman’s Shakespeare plays" and "last but not least, Logan Roy's ex-wife, who gave me a particularly hard time, in Succession."
Walter accepted her award with characteristic humour and self-deprecation. "I really don't know how to take it," she said. "Except I shall perform it for tonight and, at midnight, I promise I will revert to a rather un-iconic pumpkin."
She went on to talk about the definition of the word icon, remembering her own; the models of the sixties whose images she would pour over in the pages of this very magazine, longing to look like Celia Hammond, Gene Shrimpton, Twiggy and Jill Kennington "when I really didn't". Acting, she explained, gave her a release from this ill-ease with her appearance: "I could pretend to look like somebody completely different for a living."
"But in my 50s, things began to change, and I wanted to live in my skin," she said. "I wanted to be my age and, out of habit, I looked for images of older women that could inspire me – not just how to look, but how to be in the decades to come. And guess what? There weren't any. There weren't any in magazines or in the media or in the movies or in Shakespeare plays. So I decided to collect, commission, and snap some for myself, and I put them in a book called Facing It, which, ironically, I had to publish myself because no publisher would touch a bunch of pictures of old ladies. But I did learn in that book that those women were my icons, these women who their interesting lives were etched in the lines of their skin, and there was a sort of survival’s courage in their smiles."
Walter went on to quote Anita Pallenberg, who once described her lines and wrinkles as "battle scars," as she made a straightforward yet emotive plea for the increased visibility of older women.
"What I'm trying to say is, thank you Harper's Bazaar for voting for an icon whose wood and varnish are very crackled and who's nothing like a saint," she said. "There are lots of women like me and better and brilliant, and you should seek them out and bring them into the light."
