I've never had a plan B,' actress Zoe Tapper reveals her survival tactics
By Jane Gordon

As the feisty doctor in the BBC1 series Survivors, Zoe Tapper reveals a gritty determination that has served her well in the often fickle world of acting – she hasn’t had a day of 'rest' since securing her big break in Stage Beauty six years ago. So what are her survival tactics?

'The Survivors cast is just like a dysfunctional family. And because we are always in such extreme circumstances, at times we become a little hysterical,' says Zoe

It’s refreshing to encounter an actress as successful as Zoe Tapper who is so completely casual about her appearance. Asked where she bought the floral vintage dress and the weathered denim jacket she is wearing on the day we meet, she confesses that her biggest worry about being interviewed was answering questions about fashion. As she is trying to remember where her outfit came from – she thinks she bought the dress from a stall in Spitalfields ‘ages ago’ – she is suddenly hit by inspiration; she knows exactly where she got her shoes.

‘Well, my boots, I know where they came from. These are the boots I wore in Survivors. They are so comfortable that I have been running around in them for months now,’ she says with an apologetic smile.

Naturally beautiful (she has perfect skin and only ever wears a ‘dab of mascara’), the petite 29-year-old actress, who plays Dr Anya Raczynski in the BBC series that returns to our screens this month, is so modest and shy that it is difficult to believe she was ever brazen enough to write the letter that launched her acting career. Six years ago, as she was nearing the end of a three-year drama degree, she wrote to leading casting agent Celestia Fox, who was searching for a young actress to take a key role in Richard Eyre’s film Stage Beauty.

‘I cringe slightly about that now, but we were encouraged to write standard letters to agents and casting directors and I had written so many saying, “I am a student at drama school”, and I never got a reply so I thought I would be cheeky. I had heard they were casting Stage Beauty and I wrote something like, “I am your Nell Gwynn: cast me in your film.”’ To Zoe’s astonishment, Celestia phoned her and asked her to come for an audition.

'It was the first time I had auditioned for anything and I arrived on the doorstep of her beautiful house and suddenly had to become Nell Gwynn. I would be terrified to do that now, never mind then, but you have to have guts in this profession,’ she says.

Zoe won the part and – three days after leaving drama school, and on her very first day of shooting – found herself walking naked down a flight of stairs in the famous Painted Hall in Greenwich.

‘It was all rather surreal. When I got the part I was still working as a waitress in Hampstead. At the end of each day’s filming I would have this chauffeur-driven car that would drop me off at the restaurant in time for my shift,’ she says, laughing.

Zoe believes it was a combination of luck and cheek that got her that first break, and she still can’t quite believe that her childhood dream of becoming an actress has come true. With no links to the profession – her mother is a retired teacher and her father a retired wine buyer – Zoe’s ambition to act was fuelled, at the age of 12, by her involvement in an amateur dramatic group near her home in Orpington, Kent. However, Zoe credits her mother Yvonne for giving her the courage to pursue acting.

‘The best piece of advice that my mother gave me is to never have a plan B. She told me to stick to plan A because if you have a plan B you will inevitably fall back on it. At the time everyone else was urging me to go to university to study English because that would give me a sensible qualification and I could always do drama later on. But I knew in my heart of hearts that would be plan B and – thanks to my mum who gave me the confidence to try to fulfil my dream – I stuck with plan A,’ she says with a grin.

It has turned out to be very sound advice because Zoe has not been out of work since Stage Beauty (waitressing is but a distant memory now). Roles in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, ShakespeaRe-told and Hex led to her being cast as the lead in the film These Foolish Things alongside Anjelica Huston and Lauren Bacall.

‘Lauren Bacall told me, “I would give anything to be where you are now.” It was a very moving moment’

‘I was playing this young ingénue actress starting out on her career and Lauren Bacall was playing a grand dame of the stage. There was this incredible moment during a scene where I am looking in the mirror before going on stage and her character says to mine, “I would give anything to be where you are now.” After we had done the scene she took my hand and said, “It’s true, I would give anything” – it was a very moving moment.’

Lead roles in the television productions of A Harlot’s Progress and Affinity (she calls that her ‘costume-drama prostitute period’) followed, before Zoe was cast as the reluctant medic in Survivors. A reworking of the original 1970s BBC series, it is an apocalyptic story in which a virus kills off all but a few who have a natural immunity.

Set in the present day, it follows the progress of a small group of disparate people as they attempt to survive in a changed and often hostile world. On the day we meet, Zoe has only recently finished filming the second series – most of which was shot in and around Birmingham – with co-stars Max Beesley, Julie Graham, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Paterson Joseph.

‘We have been working together for a couple of years now and we are just like a dysfunctional family. For four months of the year we spend five or six days a week living and working together. And because we are always in such extreme circumstances, fighting for our lives, it does get ridiculous. At times we become a little hysterical because we are up to our knees in mud or there is a building falling down around us and something sparks us off – it’s usually around 4pm when we are close to tea and cake time – and we all go crazy.’

Zoe recalls one particularly mad moment early one Sunday when the cast were shooting a scene on a street in the middle of Birmingham that had been closed off and made to look dilapidated by the show’s art team. ‘It was six in the morning and we were all set up to shoot and just as the director was about to shout “action” a door in the street opened and out came all these clubbers who had been in a club all night – they were really confused and frightened until we told them what we were filming,’ she recalls.

The new series, Zoe says, promises ‘more’ of everything: more adventure, more excitement and, she hints, possibly more romance for her character with the brooding Tom, played by Max Beesley. ‘Max is brilliant. He is one of those frustrating people who can do everything – he speaks several languages, he plays the piano amazingly, he can tap dance, he can cook and he takes his work very seriously. I was worried how the relationship between his character and mine would evolve, but I am pleased with how it turns out,’ she says.

One of the reasons why Zoe is so grounded is that privately her own life is very settled and stable. In December 2008 – on the eve of New Year’s Eve – she married fellow actor Oliver Dimsdale, co-founder and artistic director of the Filter Theatre Company, at a venue that now has a doubly significant role in her life, the Painted Hall in Greenwich. They met four years ago and became engaged six months before they married, on a romantic trip to Rome.

‘We were having dinner at this beautiful restaurant when a woman walked in and started singing our favourite aria from The Marriage of Figaro. I said, “Oh, she’s singing our song, how amazing”, and then I realised that she was looking only at me, and Ollie went down on one knee and said he had organised it and would I marry him? I was in floods of tears for three days. We had the song at our wedding too,’ she says.

The couple live in South London and have adopted a one-year-old cat from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home that they have named Bette Davis after Zoe’s favourite actress (babies, she says, will come later). ‘It’s important to be settled. We are both low-key, stable and normal – I think we sought that out in each other – and our families don’t know how they produced actors!’

Zoe has so far resisted the lure of Hollywood but is aware that when Survivors is screened in America this year she will come to the attention of US casting directors. ‘I am glad that the series is going to have a wider audience but, although you can never say never, I would much rather work in Britain, where I can stay close to my family, my husband and Bette Davis. Besides, we are hoping that there will be a third series of Survivors,’ she says as she is whisked off to be prepared for the YOU photo shoot.

As I leave she is looking ravishing in a beautiful Giorgio Armani dress, but still wearing her beloved Survivors boots. ‘Louboutins?’ she repeats uncertainly to the stylist trying to persuade her to slip on a pair of glamorous designer heels. ‘Can’t I wear my own shoes?’

The new series of Survivors will be on BBC1 later this month.

Original article here.