Synopsis: In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild and brutal Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell torich tourists to support herself and her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison, arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a European tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from apersonal tragedy.
Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest.They are two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheresand personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realization that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.
For information on where to watch visit https://ammonite-movie.com/
Q&A with KATE WINSLET (Mary Anning)
As Ammonite begins, where do we find your character, Mary Anning?
It’s the 1840s in Lyme Regis, on the South West coast of England. Mary Anning is slightly past her prime at this point – the days of her making huge discoveries as a leading scientist in the field of palaeontology are somewhat over, and she’s a little bit jaded with the profession. She’sbeen much maligned by her male counterparts. She’s looking after her ailing mother and selling fossils from the fossil shop where they live.
How would you describe Mary?
She was remarkably stoic. She was born into a life of poverty, lived in a class-ridden, patriarchal society, and was very much sidelined. Her achievements were taken from her by her male counterparts; they would credit themselves for the majority of Mary’s finds. But she was determined, she was very headstrong, so she didn’t change who she was as a person. She was uneducated, but she learned from her father, who died when she was ten years old; it was because of the things he taught her that she found her first ichthyosaur at eleven. She had an inquisitive mind and a vast, knowledgeable brain – this self-taught ability that she had, and that she continued to learn throughout her life, was something I truly admired in her.
Mary was also very kind – she was compassionate. There’s not a huge amount of literature on her, and we don’t know very much about her personal life – but one thing that we do know is that she would give the little that she had to the poor. Among the fossils she would also find items that smugglers were hiding on the beach, in the caves. In those days you were supposed to turn over anything you found of a smuggled nature to the authorities; but Mary would re-hide the things that she found and then tell the poor people where they were! And she herself was poverty-stricken. She would give the very little that she had.
Did you know of her before reading the script?
I was overwhelmed to discover that I knew nothing about Mary Anning. I had heard of her, and I knew she was from Lyme Regis, but I had no idea at all how great her achievements were and how significant a female figure in history she is. I was quite embarrassed, actually.
Why is it important to tell her story now?
Because she’s so important. Her strength, her courage – I admired those qualities very much, but also her vulnerability, which she had to keep hidden. Now more than ever we’re living in a time when women are absolutely obsessed with other women and when, more than what we look like or how we feel when we walk down the street, it’s about what women have to say.
Women are greater together: the more strong female voices we have, the more togetherness we show, the more examples we have of great women history – the more inspired we will feel as a community to support one another, to encourage one another and to inspire one another. For years we’ve been judged; still now we’re judged. We’re questioned all the time, we’re asked to justify our choices – why we wear what we wear, why we do our hair the way we do, why we work or don’t work. I’ll be questioned about my decision to play Mary Anning and I will have to justify it. And that is irritating – but that’s why I think these women who achieved great things historically are more important than ever. We’re seeing a new chapter in the history of women: it started with #metoo, and it could not be more fantastic. We’re seeing much more equality in the workplace – and it’s women like Mary Anning who inspire us to use our voices.
How did you prepare for the role?
Preparing for this film was really a lot of fun. I often get to learn a new skill or a new craft when playing a character, but I never imagined that I would be taught how to fossil hunt. Now I could take you to Lyme Regis and I would know what I was talking about. That was really important to me, because we didn’t want to use hand doubles – we wanted it to be as authentic as possible.
Also, this is something Mary was doing as a child, so it just had to be in my bones. Paddy Howe was our fossil expert down in Lyme Regis, and he was just terrific at sharing his knowledge – he made it really user- friendly, there was nothing daunting about the words that he would use or the techniques he would describe. Often he would just say “go on – whack it”, and I was like: “yeah, I can do that. I can whack it.” So we’d spend days whacking rocks together on a beach, because sometimes ammonites can be lurking inside them. The people at the museum in Lyme were also incredibly helpful; that’s where Mary’s writings are, accounts of how she was thinking and feeling, and they were very generous in letting us access those. And really just being in Lyme Regis. The atmosphere of the town, the sense of community, everyone knowing everyone and everyone knowing something about Mary Anning… that in itself was very helpful.
And of course, costumes play a really huge part. I couldn’t have truly felt like Mary until the wig was on and all those layers of costumes were on; that was v much a part of working out how to play her.
What were the most challenging scenes to shoot?
There were lots of challenging scenes. It was still quite cold, and we had a lot of outdoor work. I love being out in the wind and rain, I have no problem with that and actually I don’t really feel the cold – but it was much harder for Saoirse, who’s much smaller than me and does feel the cold. It was a case of bracing yourself and getting on with it. For me the more challenging scenes were the quieter scenes, actually. Mary was a composed, still woman; I’m quite loud and animated and I move a lot. Francis really physically changed me, in terms of how I held myself, my energy levels, and keeping me still. That didn’t come naturally to me at all. So much communication at that time couldn’t be in physical gestures – it was in quiet looks and glances.
How was working with Francis Lee?
Working with Francis was truly, truly wonderful. I had seen God’s Own Country, which I absolutely loved and like many people was very emotionally affected by. I think the thing that struck me the most about him as a director was that he feels huge attachment and affection for every single one of his characters. What that does is make you feel very looked after and supported, all the time. Some of the more intimate scenes were difficult to do, and he was as nervous as we were; but he always felt to me as though he had a better understanding of every character than even we as actors could have. That didn’t mean that he didn’t let us bring our ideas to the table – he was open to that – but he was very detailed. Every look, every pause, every glance – he would know exactly the rhythm of every scene. I was very grateful for that. And he’s also fun! It was wonderful working with him.
How does Mary change in the course of the film?
Mary’s emotional journey was enormous. It’s actually a long time since I’ve played a character with such a massive arc from the beginning to the end. She almost feels like a different person emotionally – but the same morally. At the beginning of the story Mary is tired – tired of living a hard impoverished life; increasingly impatient with her mother; disheartened with her profession and with trudging out on the cold beaches. Emotionally she’s really shut down, and she doesn’t expect life to deal her any nice cards at all. So the attachment she forms to Charlotte is really interesting. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with Charlotte at all – she initially finds her a bit silly and irritating, and doesn’t want to have to look after this tiny little sparrow of an upper class woman who wears the wrong shoes and puts on lace gloves to go fossiling. But her opinion of Charlotte really does change, in spite of herself. Even though they’re from completely different worlds, what you realise is that they’re equals in many ways.
They’re both looking for affection; they’re both trapped in their own worlds, for a variety of reasons. Mary doesn’t have the finances to explore the world; but Charlotte is trapped by her finances, as the quiet little wife who’s very much kept.
And Charlotte’s trajectory?
Mary brings out a feistier side in Charlotte, and Charlotte learns things about herself she never would have known were it not for Mary. She has lost a child, so she’s grieving; through friendship with Mary, she’s able to start thinking about other things, thinking beyond the grief.
Her spirits lift, she gets healthier – and that’s all because of Mary. Charlotte is inspired by Mary: she’s never seen a woman like this, a strong woman who lives alone, who doesn’t have a husband to provide for her. To Charlotte, it’s a lightbulb: “I could be like that. I could bring some of that strength into my own life.”
What interests each woman about the other?
For Mary, Charlotte is beautiful and delicate in a way that she herself isn’t. She’s got gnarled hands, she doesn’t look in the mirror, she barely takes a brush to her hair – so there are many things about Charlotte that she finds utterly fascinating. The way she smells, of perfume and nice fabrics… it’s not Mary’s world at all. There’s an intoxicating aroma that follows Charlotte, and for Mary it’s something very new – something that she’s never imagined she’d stand that close to.
Charlotte in turn feels like she’s almost got to live up to Mary. I know that’s something that was important to Francis: Mary is such an extraordinary figure that the relationship had to be one in which the counterpart was worthy of her.
Tell us about Mary’s relationship with Molly, and working with Gemma Jones.
Gemma played my mother in Sense and Sensibility when I was only nineteen, so to have her playing my mother again was absolutely wonderful! I was so excited to hear that Francis had cast her. We shared lots of stories from Sense and Sensibility – we remembered it like it was yesterday. The relationship between Mary and Molly – it’s quite tense. Mary’s mother has a hold over her. Mary does respect her, and doesn’t want to let her down, but at the same time she is held by this life, by the darkness of this world, and that’s largely to do with her mother being stuck in her ways and scared of change. Mary’s determination to carve out her own personality whist living with another powerful woman was quite difficult – but it’s also quite funny. There are funny moments, where you see Mary roll her eyes behind Molly’s back…. Gemma and I had quite a laugh shooting those scenes.
What appealed to you about Mary as a character?
I have always been utterly captivated by any character who is breaking away from societal norms. Even now, we still struggle with that. It was interesting for me shooting the more intimate scenes with Saoirse. It made me almost annoyed with myself, in the sense that I’ve filmed intimate scenes before, but mostly with male actors – and it suddenly occurred to me that there is an automatic power dynamic that comes into play when doing that type of scene with a man. As a woman, you assume the man will take the reins, or steer the energy of the scene, and you as the female character will be ‘taken’ in some way. I realised that I have allowed myself to be that taken one. It’s been absolutely fine, I’ve been perfectly comfortable with it – but to be in a situation with Saoirse where it was utterly equal, it made me feel kind of angry at how that hasn’t occurred to me before. Why shouldn’t I have felt equal to my male counterparts? And that’s the way society is, and now we have to make a noise about it – we have to make a noise about wanting to be equal, about deserving to be equal. Now more than ever, I do feel telling these stories where you see women breaking away from societal norms – it’s incredibly, incredibly important. I feel very lucky to be part of a movement just now; and filmmaking is a crucial part of that movement, keeping female voices loud and proud, sharing these stories and telling them in a truthful, sincere, emotional way. A lot came up for me – lots of really interesting new things about being a woman. I’ve always felt as though I stand on my own two feet, and have a strong voice, and I’m quite proud of that – but I’ve only just begun.
How was working with Saoirse Ronan?
God, it was just so delightful. And fun. And hard, because she’s so good. I think we worked very, very well together. We work in quite different ways, actually, which I think I wasn’t expecting – she’s much more moment-to-moment than me, and for Mary I had to be quite precise, because her movements are so minimal and her looks are so specific. Usually, I’m the one being the free, liberated character; but watching Charlotte become that, and watching Saoirse bring all those qualities to Charlotte was fantastic. We totally adored each other… and being allowed to adore each other was just brilliant. It was really empowering, playing those two roles together – more than I’ve ever felt empowered before. And I didn’t really expect that. I love the fact that I’m older than her, too, as a relationship dynamic – she’s 25, I’m 43. I loved being able to bring that into the character too, the time I’ve had on this planet; the fact that I’m a mother.
We looked out for each other. As actors you always tend to do that – but we really wanted to. It was just great; I loved it.
Could you speak a little more about shooting in Lyme Regis?
Working in Lyme Regis was so wonderful, and the local community were absolutely lovely and very welcoming and fascinated by what we were doing. People there feel that Mary Anning is theirs, and justifiably so; everybody has a story about her, and so hearing all those shared stories was great fun. Because they teach it in schools there, children as young as five and six would see me on the street in my costume and be like “are you Mary Anning?”, and it was just the sweetest thing in the world – it was adorable. It wouldn’t have been the same if we’d had to film somewhere else. We filmed the fossil shop a hundred yards from where Mary lived – these things do make a very big difference. Looking at the horizon and knowing that it was the same horizon that Mary Anning would have seen… it was magnificent to be there, a huge privilege.
What appeals to you about the era in which Ammonite is set?
The era will be eternally fascinating to me – how on earth women functioned wearing those layers of clothes. And the corsets, oh my God. We actually decided Mary would not wear a corset. The costume designer Michael and I just didn’t believe that she could have been as physical as she needed to be in her work and wear a corset – it wouldn’t have been possible. For Saoirse to just bend down and pick up a pebble with her corset was agony. So we made a decision Mary would not have worn a corset; and she also wears men’s trousers under her skirt, which would have been a barrier against the weather. The functionality of Mary’s costumes, I loved – and it’s the first time I’ve played a character from that era and not had to wear a corset, so I was delighted. It’s a beautiful period – the men looked so put together and so dashing.
But the world was a very different place: people’s emotions were much more hidden, things were just much more behind closed doors; religion played a much bigger part in everyday life…
It was interesting playing a woman who has a relationship with a woman and feels great love for a woman. It was new for me – I did see the role of a woman through completely different eyes to any character I’ve played before from that time period. Mary isn’t subservient, she isn’t dictated to – she didn’t apologise for one second for who she was, and that is a quality we should all possess. Walking away from playing her, I was the most inspired I have ever been by any character I’ve played. And I’ve been doing this job twenty-six years.
What would you like audiences to take away from the film?
That it doesn’t matter where you come from, what life you were born into – possibilities are out there, possibilities are endless. Being authentically true to yourself and using your voice to be who you want to be is more important than anything else in this world. That’s what I hope audiences take away – along with a good deal of knowledge about Mary Anning, because she’s one hell of a lady.
Photo by Claire Timmons. Q&A with Kate Winslet provided to Bionic Buzz® by Qinsberg / Libby.