Page "Toyah Willcox" Paragraph 14

Also in 1979 Willcox appeared as Tallulah in Stephen Poliakoff's American Days at the ICA, playing alongside Mel Smith, Antony Sher and Phil Daniels and, the same year, opposite Katharine Hepburn in the made-for-television movie The Corn is Green, directed by George Cukor.

Willcox remembered how she had to go and do an audition with 2000 other hopefuls for the film after the Emlyn Williams book: " I had bright pink hair at the time and this is a period film.

And my agent said: ' don't turn up with your red hair '.

So I borrowed a wig from the National Theatre and I turned up at Eaton Square where George Cukor, the film director, let me in and he introduced me to Katharine Hepburn.

And apparently she saw my eyes and said to herself: ' this is the girl '.

So the next day I go along knowing I got the part, I get the big phone call saying I got the part.

I thought: ' sod it, I'm not going to wear a wig, I'll just go with my red hair '.

And I walk in and George Cukor said: ' would you like to take your hat off?

' ( laughter ) and my hair was quite short back then and it was – it looked like feathers.

And his face went ashen as to think: ' oh, what have done, this is absolutely terrible!

' And he brought in to see Katharine, and he said: ' Katharine, this girl has red hair ', and she just grabbed me, and in three hours we read through the play, and she just had her fingers in my hair the whole of the reading.

Katharine Hepburn just fell in love with me the first time I met her and I say that modestly because she actually admitted she did ... She loved my eyes, she said they were full of fire ", Willcox was saying in her 2000 interviews.