Juliet Stevenson is one of Britain’s leading actors. She has worked extensively for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Royal Court, winning an Olivier award for her performance as Paulina in Death and The Maiden in 1991.
I love audiobooks with a passion; both recording them as a reader, and listening to them.
To record an audiobook is to sync into the fiction, play all the characters, and inhabit the whole world of the story in a way which is deeply satisfying and so much fun
For the listener, I think to be told a story aurally is something that human beings of every kind have needed and loved for millennia, to be drawn into the story intimately in that very personal way, and to be soothed, distracted and absorbed can often be positively therapeutic.
It seems to be a pleasure that crosses all barriers of class, age, race, gender and faith, having the capacity to sooth loneliness, boredom, illness, anxiety, insomnia, travel tedium, and many other ills – or simply to fill the hours with pleasure and absorption.
It’s one of the jobs I most love to do in my professional life, and I feel blessed to be paid to read!
Juliet's most recent theatre credits include starring roles in Wings at the Young Vic, Robert Icke’s Mary Stuart and Hamlet (both of which transferred to the West End) and of course Beckett’s Happy Days, also at The Young Vic. Her films include Truly, Madly, Deeply; Bend it Like Beckham; When Did You Last See Your Father?; Being Julia; Pierrepoint; Mona Lisa Smile; Diana and Departure. Recent releases include feature film Let Me Go. Recent television work includes starring roles in Williams brothers’ thriller One of Us for BBC1 and Sky Living’s supernatural thriller The Enfield Haunting as well as playing series regulars on two series of Atlantis and The Village. Other television work includes Place of Execution, The Accused, The Hour, and White Heat. She also stars Sky Atlantic series Riviera, opposite Julia Stiles and Will Arnett.