Britain’s Big-Time Sensation

McTeer plays opposite Brendan Gleeson in Into the Storm, and on-screen, they are a magnificent, powerful pair. McTeer admits that off-screen, the duo are more playful: “Brendan and I text each other insults all day,” she says. “He’s a genius. Of course I’d never say that to his face. To his face I’d tell him he’s an asshole. But he’s wonderful, and he’s a gorgeous man, and a sensational actor, and as far as I am concerned there was absolutely no question that I would work with him on this.”

“I describe myself as Michael Phelps with tits.”

One gets the sense from talking to McTeer that though she towers above most of her peers and could very easily play the diva card given her prowess, the thing she really loves about acting is other actors; she craves the collaboration. “When I was very young I got work very quickly, and I think younger actresses were very jealous, and some of them were very mean. But I’m really not competitive,” she says. “Personally I adore other women, I think women are fantastic. I also adore men.”

Adoring other women is a strong statement in an industry where females seem to claw at each other for roles—roles that become increasingly rare with age. But McTeer has that air of grace about her, the feeling that she is more interested in grabbing hold of other actresses and tugging them upward with her, rather than keeping anyone down. At the Tonys, she will be up against Harriet Walter, her co-star in Mary Stuart, and she says that any rumors of a fighting spirit between the two women are completely false. “Harriet and I are up against each other, which is really boring,” she laughs. “We’re not very competitive—we’re really not. We don’t want each other to win over the other, because we’ve become great friends. It’s so bizarre, every time I’ve done an interview, people go, ‘So do you really get on? You know, because you don’t get on on stage!’ And we laugh, and I always think, surely you wouldn’t ask that of two fellows.”

It’s this assumed cattiness among women that McTeer finds so abhorrent in the entertainment world. “As soon as you’re in your 20s, you realize that some women, yes, can be really mean. After that, life starts to get a bit more complicated. And I think women tend to have a lot more compassion for each other as they get older. Maybe it’s because life as a woman is harder than life as a man. It just is, in every way it’s harder. It’s harder in the business, there are less parts, it’s harder on our bodies. As women get older they go, this is really tough and we’re all on the same page.”

It has certainly seemed like the season for grand dames on Broadway—not only are McTeer and Walter shining in Mary Stuart, but all over Times Square, women over 40 are dominating the shows. Jane Fonda, Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, and Phylicia Rashad are all pulling weight. “We’re all having a ball!” says McTeer, “And we’re all incredibly supportive. I can’t think of anything nicer than being on the same surface as some of those fantastic women.”