Harriet Walter never felt like a 'typical woman'

Harriet Walter believes she would be "dressing as a boy" if she was a teenager now.

The 74-year-old actress doesn't see herself as a "typical woman” and never felt like a "real girl" growing up, but she found she identified with her "genderless" portrayal of Prospero in Phyllida Lloyd's 2017 production of 'The Tempest'.

Discussing how a therapist told her she had gender confusion and was probably a repressed lesbian when being treated for anorexia when she was 20, she told The Times newspaper: “Not long ago I played Prospero [in a 2017 Phyllida Lloyd production of The Tempest] as genderless, free-wheeling in the middle of male, female, wherever. I think that’s where I’ve always felt I was.

"It wasn’t to do with my sexuality: it had to do with how I express myself and how I feel in the world. I’m not a typical woman, and I’m not a lesbian either...

“There’s a huge spectrum of ways you can live your life and you don’t have to define that. I said to a non-binary young friend, ‘These are definitions I put on a form: that I’m British, female, white. Boxes I tick. They are not who I am.’

"And God, if the person I was when I was 12, 13, was living now, I seriously think I’d have been thinking maybe not about changing anything, but just dressing as a boy. I didn’t feel like a real girl. But then what I didn’t know, and what you learn later, is that nobody else does.”

The 'Succession' actress thinks the current preferences in Hollywood has made the ideals of what a woman should look like even more restrictive than when she was growing up.

She said: “It feels like the more women have gained in territory in terms of what jobs we can enter and what income we can earn, the more women are sort of cartooning themselves and boobing themselves and plumping their lips and all that.

Harriet fell for fellow actor Guy Paul when they starred together in 'Mary Stuart' on Broadway in 2009 and they married in 2011, and she thinks tying the knot later in life is the "best time" to do it.

She said: “It’s the best time! It’s exactly when you want to be married. When you want to do all sorts of things, and you’ve got a companion to travel with and hang out, and you don’t have these idealised, impossible visions of how people should be.”

But the 'Killing Eve' star admitted it is "very difficult" to start a relationship when older.

She said: “It’s very difficult to embark on a love affair in later life. When you’re young, that’s what everything’s aimed at. Music culture, party culture, club culture. It’s all about getting a partner.

"Whereas when you’re older, it’s much harder to see the signals. You develop links as a friend and think, ‘Is this going to turn into something else?’ "