I Think You’re Nuts by Jenny Runacre

This book is an account of my work as an actor collaborating with several original, ground-breaking, and inspirational film makers in the 70’s and later. To my knowledge I am the only female actor who has worked with each of these versatile and innovative directors in a leading role and the only one who is attempting to provide an account of this experience. It presents a breakdown of the methods they used to elicit performances from the actors and explores the concepts behind their work and the influences they have had on cinema, especially in terms of specific cinematography and performance styles, and myself as a performer.

Collaborations with Directors John Cassavetes, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Stephen Dwoskin and Derek Jarman. Veteran British and Hollywood Directors like Tony Richardson, Ridley Scott and John Huston as well as British Cult Directors Freddie Francis, Robert Fuest and Nicholas Roeg.

The book provides a birds eye view of how it feels to be an actor in various very original creative and cultural environments. The exhilaration of performing in the heady counter- culture, anarchic, permissive, and creative of 1970s British avant-garde fringe theatre. Collaborating with experimentally inclined directors such as Charles Marowitz, Ed Berman, Steven Berkoff, Howard Panter, Verity Bargate and Fred Proud. And being involved in the hilarious and controversial production of Kenneth Tynan’s “Oh! Calcutta!”. The excitement of working in television classics such as the Sweeney and The New Avengers.

It will be of particular interest to film buffs and those who are interested in a unique period of film history, the 1970’s arts and punk scene, the excitement and vitality of this time and the gradual emergence of diverse gender representations/roles and lifestyles that followed in the wake of the explosion of 1960’s swinging London. I also explore the dialectic of uneven power between male director and female player which was much more pronounced then – which I treat from experience and hopefully, in an insightful manner.

JENNY RUNACRE