Greta Scacchi

Published: March 10, 2019, 1 p.m.

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From Hollywood to European art house cinema, from Shakespeare to contemporary drama, Greta Scacchi is one of our most versatile actors.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about the film that made her name in 1983 \\u2013 Heat and Dust \\u2013 and chooses music from the soundtrack featuring Zakir Hussain.

She reveals how her musical training as a child \\u2013 learning ballet, piano and singing - has been invaluable when she\\u2019s been called on to play and sing on film. She particularly loved the character she played in Jefferson in Paris, the eighteenth-century Anglo-Italian artist and musician Maria Cosway, and explains how difficult it was to pretend the play the harp on screen. We hear some of Maria Cosway\\u2019s music from that film.

Greta chooses music by Satie which reminds her of her mother\\u2019s ballet school when she was a child. Her mother is still dancing at 87! And we hear one of Canteloube\\u2019s Chants d\\u2019Auvergne, and a Handel aria which illustrate Greta\\u2019s passion for the theatre; she chooses pieces which remind her of the places she loves \\u2013 Sussex, Italy and Australia. We get an insight into her passion for jazz with music from Jimmy Guiffre and Fats Waller.

And Greta speaks out about the importance of actors campaigning for causes they believe in \\u2013 she\\u2019s passionate about the environment and even posed naked with a cod to draw attention to unsustainable fishing.

Producer: Jane Greenwood\\nA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

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