My Life in Books: Greta Scacchi

Greta Scacchi was catapulted to stardom at the age of 22 in Merchant Ivory’s HEAT & DUST - based on the Booker prize winning novel by Ruth Prater Jhabvala.

Within a year she was playing Sir Laurence Olivier’s muse in John Fowles’ THE EBONY TOWER and opposite Alan Bates in Graham Greene’s DR FISCHER OF GENEVA. She talks to crime-writer Peter Guttridge about her experiences of playing in these adaptations and numerous others that followed ranging from Austen, Waugh, Dumas and Tolstoy to Michael Tolkein (The Player), Scott Turow (Presumed Innocent), Simenon, Agatha Christie and…The Bible.

In a 40-year career Anglo-Italian Greta Scacchi has acted in well over 50 films, plays and TV productions all over the world. (She is fluent in Italian, French and German.) She has won numerous awards for her performances.

Award-winning crime-writer Peter Guttridge has interviewed on stage hundreds of writers of all sorts at book festivals large & small. He co-founded Books By The Beach in Scarborough in 2014.