Few among us can say they knew what they were going to be at five years old.
But under the bright stage lights of the Forester’s Halls 1956 Christmas show, five-year-old girl Lesley Mackie – in the starring role of Little Red Riding Hood – made a life-changing decision.
“I just remember thinking: ‘I want. To be. An act-ress!'” recalls Lesley, 71, hissing out the final syllable with theatrical flair. “It was like a new world.”
And so, with payment in the form of a giant chocolate penny and rabbit named Panto – “the magician pulled him out of his hat and gave him to me” – the little actress was born.
Now, 66 years, an Olivier award and a hit film later, Lesley has added another feather to her cap with the release of her memoir, In And Out Of The Spotlight.
Lesley had been writing her book for exactly 30 years when an accident last year landed her in the hospital for over a week.
“I was just walking across the Perth bridge last August, I’d been for a coffee with a friend. And then I woke up in the Ninewells High Dependency Unit with head injuries,” reveals Lesley.
“It was terrible. And it does give you a sense of your own mortality.”
An “honest” account of her lifetime in the acting business, Lesley isn’t afraid to “ruffle some feathers”.
But far from dressing room dramatics, she hopes In And Out Of The Spotlight can cast an eye on the less glamorous parts of showbusiness, including the challenges of bringing up her children Katy and Ollie on uncertain wages – and learning lines between night time feedings.
“We moved to Perth in March 1993, just in time for Shirley Valentine,” reveals Lesley. The ‘we’ in question is her and her late husband, the well-known actor, director and writer Terry Wale.
“Terry was directing it and I was doing it,” she continues.
“We were trying to rehearse in rooms surrounded by boxes! And it was a one-woman play, so I had to find someone to take the kids, because Ollie was just one and Katy was six.
“Whenever Ollie took a nap – that was it, down to the lines!” she laughs.
“But despite all that, we loved doing Shirley Valentine.”
Terry Wale and Lesley Mackie – soulmates on stage
Indeed, as Lesley tells me her life story – in her fast, enunciated whisper – it is inextricable from that of Terry, who lost his life to illness in 2021 at the age of 83.
Every sentence is “we”, a memory of two.
For many married couples, living together and working together would be a waking nightmare – but Terry was the perfect match for stage star Lesley.
“It was always our favourite thing is he was asked to direct me in something, because I respected him as a director,” she says fondly.
“He was an actor’s director in a sense. And because he was an actor himself and a writer, I just knew I was safe when he was directing.
“We just found we got on so well. We were soulmates.”
It was Terry who wrote smash-hit musical Judy; and it was for her performance in the starring role of Judy Garland that Lesley won an Olivier Award in 1986.
In fact, Terry was on stage beside Lesley for her very first standing ovation; clearly, their connection was special.
“I’d started doing my repertory work at Perth Theatre back in 1974, when I did a summer season,” she says. “And Terry had arrived in that year – we were both in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
“Folk were standing in Cutlog Vennel, which is outside the back of the theatre, to listen to the music because they couldn’t get tickets.
“It was the first time I ever experienced being on a stage when there was a standing ovation. And it takes a bit for Perth people to get on their feet!
“We thought: ‘Isn’t this great to be a part of something folk are loving?’”
Being Daisy from The Wicker Man never gets old – even 50 years later
For Lesley, that feeling is surrounding her again as the 50th anniversary of cult horror film The Wicker Man approaches later this summer.
Lesley played Daisy, a young girl in the schoolroom. She had just three lines; and yet half a century after the film’s release, she is still hearing the echoes of the phenomena it spawned.
“I think the reason the focus is on me – and this is not me being modest, this is a fact – is there are not many people alive who were in that film!” says Lesley matter-of-factly.
“It was one of my first jobs, straight out of college. I knew it was just a wee part. And then of course, got to Newton Stewart and it was like a new world.”
Alluding to affairs, debauchery and covered-up chaos on set, she wryly says: “I was witnessing something very ‘wicker’ – the antics that went on, and the way it echoed down the years for me.
“It became part of my life.”
Does it ever tire her, I ask, to be “Daisy from The Wicker Man”?
“I mean, I was a week on that film – the fact that it’s echoed down the years has not made a jot of difference to my working life,” laughs Lesley.
“But my son said when he asked Alexa ‘who is this Lesley Mackie?’ the only two things that get mentioned are Judy and Daisy.
“And so I think that’s quite fun, to be on Alexa with Daisy!”
- In and Out of the Spotlight: The Ups and Downs of an Actress by Lesley Mackie, published by SNB Publishing, is available on Amazon. RRP £14.99; Kindle version £5.99.
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