Marchlands S01E01

Alex Kingston has appeared nude in many roles, and reveals that she is fine with being naked on screen. "I don't have any qualms," she explains. "I'm used to taking my clothes off in front of strangers. I've done it since I was 14 with my mother's adult education art classes. She liked to paint and I went along as a life model."

For all this, she admits that when she first arrived in Los Angeles, she felt jumpy about her looks. She would go to awards ceremonies and feel like the 'butchest' woman there. Then, following the surprise US success of the Mike Hodges film, The Croupier, Toni Basil rang Kingston to congratulate her on how 'natural' she looked in her nude scenes, marvelling at the fact that she looked so natural in the film in contrast to the plastic bimbos of current American movies. "Your body was so normal, your breasts so real," Basil told her. "I haven't seen a real body on the screen for a decade."

"In England, there just isn't that fascism of beauty and physicality, or whatever," says Kingston. "You don't have to look like a gym bunny, all buffed up and a size two. You're not judged the way you are in the States. At first it really bothered me, but thankfully on ER people were allowed to pretty much look normal. There's no 'Body Perfect' look. You didn't have to be so self conscious: "My breasts are beginning to look a bit saggy", or whatever."

The flip response to Basil's enthusiasm was that Kingston seemed to take her clothes off an awful lot when she was not on ER - as though she had developed a peculiar niche as the woman to beat when the script calls for a thirtysomething actress to peel off her shirt. After the knocker-swaying of Moll Flanders and the more discreet cuddling up to Clive Owen in Croupier, she got naked again as a gangster's moll in Essex Boys, a Brit gangster flick inspired by the grisly Rettendon "Range Rover" murders.

But Kingston is not embarrassed by the trend. If anything, she is proud of the political message she believes she is sending about the objectification of women. "I don't have the build of a Californian girl. I don't have that mythical figure. It's not that I'm on the heavy side, this is just me. I'm happy with who I am and as long as the nudity is justified by the drama of the situation, I will go ahead with it," she explains. "It's wrong for women to be constantly shy and embarrassed about their bodies. There are so many images of unattainable beauty that are so destructive. It's important to show how your body really is. As the cliche has it, beauty comes from within."


Television Series: Marchlands (S01E01)
Release Date: February 2011
Actress: Alex Kingston
Video Clips Credit: Trailblazer
1m03/25mb/RS,HF/720x576












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